Text of Go Blue Bowl Kickoff Speech: "Michigan is This'

This April 4 will be the first Go Blue Bowl, an event to benefit Marlin Jackson's Fight for Life Foundation. It's a flag football tournament with teams of 10 sponsored by local businesses and coached by Marlin, Jason Avant, Jerome Jackson, Donovan Warren, Chris Perry, Cato June, Tim Massaquoi, Marcus Ray, Jeremy Gallon, Roy Manning, Brandon Williams, and Jamar Adams (so far).

On Monday Brian and I were invited to attend the kickoff event and I was asked to give a speech to explain why we're behind this. I figured I might as well share that as a diary, where those who care to read it can, and the overwhelming majority who don't need only put up with a handful of picas in the diary bar for a few days.

Text:

Michigan is This

I was part of that famous class of 1998. Together we won a BCS bowl, 2 Big Ten championships, and twice beat THE university that thinks you need to put an article before a proper noun. The reason you probably don't remember me is Coach Carr here never offered me a scholarship, on account of the fact I was born without any football talent.

I'm just a big fan. As you have probably realized since graduating, being a fan means you are profoundly affected by things you have no control over whatsoever. And because This is Michigan™ [audience adds the 'forgodsakes'] those things aren't just the football things, but also the scholarship things, and the community things.

As your loved ones have probably, carefully, asked  when the Michigan things have threatened your control of your sanity: "Why does it matter so much?"

It's our particular weirdness to think we need a real answer to this. Everyone who went here, played here, or roots there [points toward a photo of the stadium] believes in this exceptionalism, this idea that being "acceptable" in any of these facets is never good enough. We can't all possibly excel at such a level all the time. It is an ideal, and that ideal is what we espouse when we reverentially say "Michigan."

We're here supporting the Fight for Life Foundation and Marlin Jackson because he is the embodiment of that ideal, excelling as an athlete, as a scholar, and in what he does to give back to his community.

When I was first checking out his foundation I thought "wow, Marlin Jackson, remember his first interception on the 7 yard line against Western when he was still wearing number 20 where he went up and we were all like "finally!"…

Yeah so the second thing was I showed this to my wife does this for a living—she's a child psychologist who works with at-risk children—and she was very impressed, said this is what these kids need and what a lot of their schools have increasingly been unable to provide.

They need access to art, and challenges to their creativity and analysis skills, to develop critical thinking. They need assistance to catch up to classmates in their studies, else all that other school is wasted in futility. They need opportunities to function in a team setting, to develop an appreciation for society and their own value to it.

These aren't just things; the scholars in child psychology say that after food and shelter they're the most important things.

Marlin saw that this is what these kids need to succeed as teammates, in the classroom, and as members of their communities, via his own experiences, and from the expertise of some of the top educational thinkers around Indianapolis whom he's brought in to develop his programming. He was put in a position to provide this because he made himself an exceptional athlete. And he knew he had to, because he went to Michigan, and THIS is what we're all about.

We can't always affect this, that, or the other thing. But with Marlin's leadership we can be contributors to the making-the-world-a-better-place-things, that is, the things that make THIS matter.