I’m sad.

May not be what you tuned in for…but many have indicated that they enjoy checking in on speaktherights.com because I…well…speak the rights.

I’m sad.

I left my job early today because I knew I had to get to my Granny and tell her a few things before it was too late.  Our conversation will remain private.  I am just thankful we were able to have a conversation…albeit it only lasted a few sentences…and our speaks occurred as she was bed-ridden…it was more than I got yesterday as she was sleeping in her chair for the multiple hours I sat next to her.

I’m sad.

As I drove from work to my Granny’s today…some fifty miles…I thought about other times I have been sad in my life.  Some of them were “duh” moments…others just came back as comical memories as I could conjure up given my grief-stricken state.

I was sad when I got my PSAT results when I was sophomore on high school.  My verbal score was great.  My math score was not good.  When I compared my math score to the scores of my two best friends, I was sad and mortified.  But…you must understand…my two best buddies were math geniuses.  One of them graduated from the University of Louisville’s Speed School of Engineering as its best student.  He is an engineer for a LARGE Indiana corporation as we speak.  The other pal received letters from MIT!  He graduated from college with a double major in biology and math.  These guys are smart.  And then….there is me.  I was sad.

I was sad when the Cincinnati Bengals lost Super Bowl XVI.  Ken Anderson belongs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

I was sad when my friend, Malcolm Todd “Corner King” Lincoln died in 1997.  I am still trying to get over that.  I made mention of the golf match I play every year with three of my chums in an earlier post…that we dedicate to the Corner King.

I have been sad on many other occasions.

Thanks again to all the folks praying for my Granny and my family.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

The New York Giants are playing against the Seattle Seahawks  at this moment.  Eli Manning just inspired me to write these words.

Eli just threw two awesome throws to rookie wide receiver Odell Beckham, Jr.  on the latest scoring drive that put the Giants ahead of the Rain Barons 14 to 7.  Yes, it is raining in Seattle today.  If Marshawn Lynch runs another one like he just did, the score will be tied soon.

It was March 2003.  Spring Break was going on in Indiana.  My dear wife, Carrie, and I were in Mississippi visiting relatives.  On the way down we stopped in Oxford.  It was Spring Football time on the campus of Ole Miss.  That Saturday the Rebels were holding a closed scrimmage at Vaught-Hemmingway Stadium a week or so before they played the annual spring Grove Bowl.  Those two passes Eli just threw to Odell Beckam, Jr. reminded me of the last two passes he threw at the 2003 scrimmage that day.  Those passes we to receiver Chris Collins.

Thanks to a very kind Walker Jones, one of the football staff members, my name was on a very short list on a piece of paper that was on clipboard held by an official Rebelperson.  Proof of my existence allowed me into Vaught-Hemmingway that day to pretty well have the run of the place.  There was still grass on the field.  I stood on it.  An artificial surface would be on there for the season’s first home game in September.  They opened the season in late August in Nashville against Vandy.  The Rebs won 24-21 and it must have been 100 degrees that day.

To see Coach David Cutcliffe in action that day at practice was a great thing to behold.  There is a reason why his Duke Blue Devils are 8-1 right now…him.  His Rebels won 10 games in 2003.  They have not done so since.  The Rebs have a chance to get there this year.

As I said, those two passes Eli just threw looked oh so familiar.  He is still as cool as the other side of the pillow.  He throws a sweet ball.

GRANNY

I sat with Granny yesterday and today.  We watched football.  We didn’t talk that much.  She had an inclination to dose off now and again as we watched.  Every now and then she put some verbal punctuation on a few phrases.  When we started watching LSU play Alabama she was quick to perk up and let me know they were playing in “BATON ROUGE!”  She still likes to talk about Louisiana.

Last night I did get her to laugh pretty good at a couple of stories I told.  I have been doing most of the talking between us.  Though that is not a shock to most of you, our speaks have been much more one-sided than usual.  Believe me, I will take what I can get!

My favorite moment with Granny last night was during a commercial as we were watching football.  I think it was a car commercial.  She hadn’t made a move or said anything for twenty minutes or more.  During this car commercial, the Billy Idol rendition of the song “Mony Mony” started playing. Granny began tapping her foot against her foot stool keeping good time.  I thought the only thing I could think…Wow.  What an awesome and very telling moment.

College Football Picks this week…UGLY.

6 winners and 4 losers.  My biggest loser was Iowa.  What’s with these teams I gave so much love to at the beginning of the year vis a vis South Carolina and Iowa in particular.

The season total thus far:  83 winners 27 losers.

Have a great week.

Speaking the rights.

The Giants just took the lead at the end of the half…17-14.

Danny Johnson

Carrie, my dear wife,  and I both took serious pause and exhaled to the extremist this morning when we got a call from our son, Jarrett, at 6:30 this morning.  Carrie was in her car headed for work.  I was heading out the door when I heard the phone ring.  I answered and caught her before she was down the road.  Jarrett was calling from Atlanta.  He had just landed after a long, restless flight from Dubai.  He is returning home from his job as a helicopter specialist for a major aviation firm.  He has been working in Afghanistan most of this past year, since he was honorably discharged from the Army.  He knows what kind of help our guys need.

I talked to him from my desk at work today before I went home.  He was driving on Interstate 10 between El Paso and Las Cruces, New Mexico to see a young lady he needs to see before he flies home to see us…and quite understandably so.  They are going to see Merle Haggard sing tomorrow night.  Good for them.

Week 11 of speaktherights.com College Football Picks:

The first weekend of November is always a little melancholy.  It signals the last month of the traditional regular season college football schedule.  It make me sad.  I don’t care for sound of orange balls hitting college hardwood floors until March.

So far we have picked 77 winners and 23 losers.

This week:

Georgia will beat Kentucky…Too much run run run by Georgia..and it is a noon start which is much too early for the Lexington set to get excited over football.

Iowa will beat Minnesota…the Gophers are good.  I still believe in the Hawkeyes.

Duke will beat Syracuse….Duke will be 8-1.  There is hope….the Dukies are proof.

Penn State will beat Indiana…The Hoosiers have little imagination on offense.  The run game is good the passing game stinks and that makes the run game bad.  40 to 6, perhaps.

Arizona State will beat Notre Dame….The Domers have been crying foul that they are not higher in the playoff ranking.  The Sun Devils will take care of that.

Marshall will beat Southern Miss…But Herd beware.  After a week of practice during an open date….the Herd should be ready…this is when they have trouble…when you think they won’t.  I hope the Herd starts and finishes strong.

Auburn will beat Texas A&M…Most have.

UCLA will beat Washington…Look out for the Bruins.  They may play last man standing in the PAC-12 and make some national noise.

Michigan State will beat Ohio State…A classic case of two mules fighting over a turnip.  This is like old Big Ten days.  Neither of these teams excite much.  Both are very strong.  Sparty is just a little stronger….by less than 10 points.

Drum roll…please.

LSU will beat Alabama…Sorry Bother Tim.  Les Miles is just enough off plumb to make this happen for Tiger Mike and his merry men.  A night game on national television?  LSU…sounds like they musta got six!

P.S.  There will be a lighter fluid shortage in Morgantown this weekend.  The Mountaineers are going to hand it to the Longhorns.  Bonus pick…that will not count.

And so it goes.

I spent some time with my Granny tonight.  Thanks for so many that have asked about her lately.

We are going to watch a little football together tomorrow…I hope.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

I’m still here.  In fact, this is the 90th post since July 6th on speakthrights.com.

My dear wife, Carrie, just said that did not seem possible to her.

Time doth fly.

I appreciate all the well wishes and prayers sent out to my family and especially my Granny.  She is hanging in there. I spent some time with her this evening.  My greatest hope is that we can spend some time watching college football together this weekend.  My apologizes to brother Tim Petty, but I know Granny hopes LSU will beat Alabama in prime time on Saturday night.  I too hope the Tigers win…for Granny.

I have not posted in a few days.  Thanks goes out to the folks asking me where I have been.  That is quite a compliment, whether they meant it to be or not.  All I can say is…we are still here.

As I type these word I am watching MAC Football.  Northern Illinois is playing at Ball State.  One of the announcers is the former Heisman Trophy winner, Desmond Howard.  Des is a high profile guy that appears in ESPN’s College Football Game Day.  I wonder who he made mad enough to send him to Muncie in the middle of the week to call a game instead of just blowing off about the Saturday games?

I called the games on Saturday pretty well.  8 winners and 2 losers.  That leaves the Week 10  speaktherights.com College Football Predictions total at 77 winners and 23 losers.   Yes, I know that some of those were some easy pickins’…but I hang my hat on the UCLA and Arizona State picks that helped my cred out immensely.  Though many of you on this side of the Mississippi could care less about PAC-12 anything… I respect that.

1975

1975 was my first football year.  I mean the one I remember on all phases….high school…college…pro.

I was seven years old in 1975.  Don’t know why my memory kicked in so vividly with regard to football.  My Dad was coaching a high school team at the time.  He had been doing so before I was born.  Again, why 1975 kicks me so hard I am just not sure.

I can still audibly hear in my memory an edict that was delivered to the Brownstown Central Braves kick-off man as he was approaching the ball on fall night in 1975 by a caring fan I dearly loved.  I won’t give any more details; I am plan on bringing forth more details about this particular player in a forthcoming post.

In 1975 my Dad and I were in Memorial Stadium in Bloomington to watch the Indiana Hoosiers play football against the Utah Utes.  I can’t tell you how significant this was for me.  I was seven years old.  I had heard of Utah.  I had seen the shape of the state of Utah on a map.  But please remember…this was 1975.  We did not have college football games on television on Saturdays from morning until night.  There were two or three games on television at the most.  Translation:  I had never seen a Utah team play in person or on TV.  I had never seen ANYTHING from Utah before that day.  Like the audible memory I have with regard to the high school game I mentioned in the paragraph above this one, I still to this day remember the visual I had looking at the white helmets of the team from Utah.  Also…as an added bonus…the IU kicker, Frank Stavroff, I think he was from another country, kicked a then record tying 52 yard field goal.  It was kicked toward the North end zone.  I remember it.  Indiana won 31-7.

It was December 1975…twice.  Those are my first vivid memories of watching the Cincinnati Bengals and my favorite player, Ken Anderson.  Both games were in December.  The last game of the season against the San Diego Chargers, a 47-17 victory, gave the Bengals an 11-3 record and a playoff berth.  Unfortunately, the eventual Super Bowl Champs from that year, the Pittsburgh Steelers, had a 12-2 record in the same division as the Bengals.  This meant the Bengals had to go to Oakland to play in the first round of the playoffs.  Let me say my Granny has never done me wrong…except once.  I was sitting next to her at her home in Shreveport, Louisiana.  The day was December 28, 1975.  Granny was rooting for the Oakland Raiders to beat the Cincinnati Bengals.  I was offended.  I still am.  Granny liked George Blanda.  He was the field goal kicker of the Raiders…a former quarterback…he was 48 in 1975 as this game was being played.

The Raiders beat the Bengals 31 to 28.

This was also the first time I noticed the time difference across geographic regions that can be noticed while watching a sporting event.  Translation: It was getting dark outside in Shreveport, Louisiana while it was bright and sunny on the football field in Oakland, California.

The irony?  I met my Granny in Hawaii in late April-early May of 1991.  We spent 8 nights over there taking in the sights and enjoying the weather.  We had a great time.  On television one morning at 7 AM, we were watching a World League of American Football game being played in London, England.  The sun had not been up very long in Hawaii.  It was dark in London.  Also…one afternoon in Hawaii, I was watching a baseball game being played in St. Louis.  The sun was bright and shining outside my balcony looking toward Diamond Head crater.  It was dark in St. Louis and I thought that was pretty surreal.

I have my Granny to thank for oh so much.

That, my friends, is Speaking the Rights.

Danny Johnson

DISCLAIMER:

Though it is just after 2 PM on Sunday afternoon as I write this, I have yet to see a single down of football played in any NFL game played today thus far.

Also…these game picks are not official speaktherights.com NFL picks….they are better.  They are my Granny’s picks!

So says Granny:

Tampa Bay will beat Cleveland…The Bucs have better runners.

Dallas will beat Arizona…I can’t pick against my Cowboys!

Houston will beat Philadelphia….Those Eagles won’t know how to play in Texas!

Kansas City will beat the New York Jets…That Jet bunch is a mess.

Cincinnati will beat Jacksonville….The Bengals are better than the other team.

Miami will beat San Diego… The Dolphins have a pretty good team this year.

Washington will beat Minnesota…The Vikings need to play in a dome.

San Francisco will beat St. Louis…The new stadium will help the 49ers.

Denver will beat New England…Even though it is cold as kraut in New England, I can’t pick against Peyton.

Pittsburgh will beat Baltimore…I can’t root against Terry Bradshaw’s old team.

Indianapolis will beat the Giants on Monday Night Football….Sorry, I know you (me) are for the Giants… but Luck will beat their butts!

This is one 89 year-old lady who knows her football.

My dear wife, Carrie, and I just left her house about fifty minutes ago.  She is hanging in there like I know she can.  She is one of the toughest people I have ever met.  We are still having a good time, though I know she is having a hard time with her health.  She is amazing.

I’ll get to my story about 1975 another day.

Go enjoy this one.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

S

As I photographed this pumpkin a few minutes ago, I was wondering how much snow our friends in New Hampshire have had this weekend and just how much celebrating they did when the South Carolina kicker missed the field goal in overtime to preserve a victory for their beloved Vols of Tennessee. I hope their was some Friendly’s Ice Cream involved.

By geographic accounts I am truly a country bumpkin.  According to the map, we live approximately due East of Nowhere.  And that is okay.  As you can tell there is some frost out on the pumpkin this morning.  Last night/this morning was the coldest we have seen so far this fall.

I hope and pray are is well with you and yours this morning on your little piece of the map.

Just walking out in the brisk air this morning listening to what few walnuts that have not already fallen do so was a time to take pause.  I took a deep breath in and exhaled with ample effort to produce a heavy dose of what we call “seeing your breath”.  In my case it is “seeing your hot air”.  Still it was a moment that has not left me.  It is something that still looks the same at the age of 46 as it did when I was plain 6.  There are not too many of those sights to behold as you get older.  Trees grow.  Towns get built up.  Some cities die out.  What was the country  is now a row of shopping places…witness Lakeland Drive outside Jackson, Mississippi the last twenty-five years.  A new subdivision may pop up in a place you didn’t think it was possible.  Still…through it all…when the weather gets cold and  the conditions are just right,  I can still see my breath like I was 6 years old again.

I was six in 1974.

I was seven in 1975.

1975 is….well…gotta go.  I will revisit this later today and lament a few football games that went awry the past two days.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

Last Week was a disaster 5 wins 5 losses.

The season total is now 69 good picks to 21 bad picks on speaktherights.com

This week is not as grand as last week when it comes to exciting match-ups.

Here goes:

Duke will beat Pitt…though it is at Pitt, Duke is the team here.

East Carolina will beat Temple…This should be over by the middle of the third quarter, if is goes that far.  Coach Ruffin has the Pirate ship steered in the right direction.

Iowa will beat Northwestern…This Iowa team has let me down.  I won’t be shocked of they get beat by the Wildcats.

Michigan will beat Indiana….You want to pick the Hoosiers.  Then…the natural order of things kicks in.  I still remember Michigan scoring at the end to dash the Lee Corso-led hopes of a victory in the Big House…it didn’t happen 35 years ago and it won’t happen this weekend.  Though by season’s end the Big House will be cleaning house….the Hoosiers are still fair game on the diet.

TCU will beat WVU…Remember the old adage the first one to 70 will win?  Might be true here.  Might not.

Missouri will beat Kentucky….In another old saying “they are a year away”…that is where UK is with MIzzou in Columbia.

Ole Miss will beat Auburn….Home game and the Rebs will rebound from the implosion that was LSU 2014.

Notre Dame will beat Navy….They have done so regularly.

UCLA will beat Arizona…No one seems to be talking much about the Arizona rise with the two major state schools doing well this year.  UCLA will win at home…as long as they don’t come out in those hideous black helmets and jerseys.  If I went to the Rose bowl to find UCLA in black hats and black shirts instead of gold hats and blues shirts, I think I would puke.

Arizona State will beat Utah…One Arizona team will come through.

Marshall is off this week.

Speak the rights.

Danny Johnson

It feels awkward sitting here looking at the World Series being played without my Dad in the room to talk about game.  My Dad and I always watched the World Series together.  The Kansas City Royals just scored in the the bottom of the second and the score is now 2-0 in favor of the Royals who are down 3 games to 2 in the best of seven series over the San Francisco Giants.

Dad and I did not always agree on what team should win…but we still had a good time watching playoff baseball.

I wonder, as I watch this,  if a young lad sometimes known as “Bunt Boy” in Amherst, New Hampshire is watching the game with his Dad…one of my friends.  They took me to see the Boston Red Sox this past summer.  I’m still coming to grips with the fact that I actually did see THEE Citgo gas sign beyond the left-center field wall of Fenway Park.  I wrote about this visit in one of my earliest posts on speaktherights.com.

I have always had a soft spot for the Royals.  Well, at least since 1979 I have had a soft spot.

Oops.  Blooper to right center falls fair and two more runs score.  Royals 4 Giants 0.

In 1979 I played for the Royals in the Brownstown Little League circuit.  I was eleven years old.  Looking back, I knew more about baseball now than I do now.  I must have.  How else could I have been the starting first baseman hitting #6 in the batting order?

There is a great deal of eye candy/junk in my home office.  I have book shelves that are very deep.  They hold many books…and they hold many artifacts…treasures…some junk.  One thing I am most proud of is the 1979 Brownstown Little League Champs trophy that sits in front of a framed picture of that team that appeared in the July 4th edition of The Brownstown Banner.  The photo was taken early in the season.  We won the the championship in the latter part of the month.

For me, it was a case of win the championship and move on without having a chance to enjoy it much with your teammates.

What do I mean?

Well…during the course of this summer baseball season my family moved from Brownstown, Indiana to Harrison County, Indiana.  My mother was wrapping up her job in Seymour where she worked as a registered nurse in a doctor’s office.  She would drive a very long way to work…some 60 miles…for only a few days.  When she did, she dropped me off at Mike Warren’s house.  Mike and I were both on the Royals.  His parents, Leroy and Sarah, were kind to me.  They treated me like their own.  I had known them a very long time.

That 1979 Royals team I was a part of did not lose a game.  We won them all.  As soon as our championship was over, I was in another county looking at my trophy without ever having the benefit of reliving the season with the ones I played through it with.  I still miss that.  But…of all the mementos I have on the shelves in my office, I look fondly upon that trophy.  We earned it.  This was before soccer moms imparted the need to give every participant a trophy thinking they were doing someone a favor.  We…The Royals…were the only ones to receive a 1979 Brownstown Little League Trophy…as it should be.

GRANNY

Carrie, my dear wife, and I stopped by to see Granny this evening.  Her sister, Lula Hodge, is here to visit her.  Aunt Lula and her two children, Nick Hodge and Lula Candler, brought her up from Shreveport, Louisiana to visit Granny.  As I mentioned in my last post, Granny is ailing.  Her prognosis is not good.  As I walked out the door leaving Granny and her sister, it hit me.  This was the last time I was going to see these two sisters in the same room together.  I shed a few tears.

Thanks to all of you asking about and praying for my Granny and my family.

I’ll leave you with a picture of me and my Granny last Christmas…along with my photo-bombing brother-in-law.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

I appreciated my time last night, Saturday night.  Though my college football picks this weekend were of the epic-loser proportion (5 winners and 5 losers), I still had fun watching football yesterday and last night.

My dear wife, Carrie, and I spent some time with my grandmother last night.  A former Louisiana resident, I have no doubt she wanted Louisiana State to beat my beloved Ole Miss in Baton Rouge.  Granny was diplomatic.  She has always been good at being diplomatic…well…at least about a few things.  Anyway, there we were watching the Tigers beat the Rebels 10 to 7.

While we are never given a solid on how many Saturday nights we are going to get to spend with each other, I paid close attention to the time we spent with Granny last night.  You see, earlier in the day there were a couple of ladies from an entity called Hosparus .  These are wonderful folks that help a person when they have been told they have an illness they are likely not going to recover from.  They are probably going to die soon.  Such is the case with my grandmother, Coralyn Floreta Johnson.  Granny is 89.

Granny, as I said in an earlier post, has had some blood issues.  Platelets. Hemoglobin. White Count.  Lack of production when being stuck for a sample is something I witnessed while she was in the hospital for a few days.

Ultimately, Granny was told she has leukemia.  It was no shock to any of us.  It did, however, bring a source of gravity in play that was not there the five minutes before we got some sort of “official word”…whatever that means.

What it means to me is that Granny is not going to get better.  She is going to get worse.  I pray she does not have a difficult time with the physical aspects of her illness.  I can tell you her heart’s vitality is still strong.  One of the great things I can say about Granny is that she hasn’t grown old.  She has gotten older.  She still acts like a kid at heart.  I am so thankful for that and I hope to hang onto some of those traits myself, if I can.

I’ll give you a prime example:

On Friday evening Carrie and I were visiting Granny at the hospital.  In the hospital room we were watching a college football game between the University of Cincinnati and South Florida.

There was Granny.  She was being tended to by a nursing assistant.  This young lady had a monitor on Grannny’s finger, a blood pressure cuff around Granny’s arm, and a thermometer in Granny’s mouth as she was trying to listen to Granny’s lungs and heart.  All this time Granny was trying to look around the nursing assistant so she could see the ballgame.  When Gunner Kiel, the quarterback of Cincinnati,  took off for the end zone on long run, Granny took she thermometer out of her mouth long enough to declare to me, “He’s gone Danny!”

Pardon me for saying…but it just doesn’t get much better than that, given where we were and why we were there.

I am most grateful to Gunner Kiel for taking off for the end zone.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

The last place I want to see my Grandma is in a hospital.  I saw her there tonight.  Granny has trouble with her blood.  Hemoglobin…platelets…white counts….they are all over the board.  But…let me say this: Granny is an inspiration.  She is as tough as nails.  She has every opportunity to say woe is me as she is hooked up to 3 ivs and getting stuck like a pin cushion on a regular basis.

When she was told she was going to get a two bag transfusion tonight, she said she’d pass the time getting the transfusion by watching Peyton Manning and the Broncos play the San Diego Chargers.  She was quick to remind me that Peyton has had some trouble with the Chargers over the years.

Granny is 89.  She told a nurses aid tonight she is “Sweet 16”.  She is amazing.

Granny also watches college football.

Here are this weeks speaktherights.com College Football Picks:

Wisconsin will beat Maryland:  I make this pick because I am still mad at Maryland for beating Iowa last week.

Minnesota will beat Illinois…Not a very big stretch here.  I am just trying to give the Big Ten a little speaktherights time.

Virginia will beat North Carolina…This could easily blow up in my face.  North Carolina is under an academic cloud that is not good.  Perhaps they will take it out on the football field.

UCLA will beat Colorado….The UCLAs are ready to visit the thin air of Boulder and enjoy some fall weather and give the Buffaloes a butt kicking while they are in the Rockies.

Marshall will beat Florida Atlantic…I know…I know…the Herd’s schedule is weak.  They can’t help it!  They will put up some big numbers on a beautiful fall day in Huntington.

Michigan State will beat Michigan…This is an anomaly of a game.  Two in-state rivals that are not the biggest of rivals.  The big game every year is Ohio State vs. Michigan.

Mississippi State will beat Kentucky…but look out for the Wildcats.  If the Cow-bellers think UK will be a push-over, they may get pushed a bit.  State will have to protect the ball.

Oklahoma State will beat West Virginia…It is played in Stillwater.  Enough said.

Ole Miss will beat LSU…A night game in Death Valley is a true test for any LSU opponent. This ole Miss team is up for the challenge.  Hotty Toddy!

Alabama will beat Tennessee…I will be rooting for the Vols.  Please make a note of this, my New Hampshire friends.  I know  you deferred one week and rooted for my Rebels over the Vols.  God Bless You!  I hope Rocky Top is played often on Saturday.  While you are at it, grab a little Pumpkin Coffee for me.

South Carolina will beat Auburn…No…I am not kidding.  Sooner or later the Ball Coach and his bunch are going to come through for us.  They are due.

The season record thus far is: 64 good picks 16 bad picks.

I did not consult Granny on my picks.  We’d be debating until midnight.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson