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As the year winds down we often retreat into reflective mode where we consider the success or perceived failures of our year. It’s almost impossible not to look back and provide a scorecard for yourself.

Did you get that new job? Buy that new house? Lose that old weight? Run that new goal? One of my personal productivity habits is to record three things every day that have gone well. Three. Every day. I would say I have probably missed no more than ten days of acting on this habit in 2016. It’s a powerfully simple tool to stay positive and focused on what you are trying to achieve day in and day out.

What would you write down if I asked you to list three things that went well for you in 2016? What would you write if I narrowed the ask down to three things that went well at work in 2016, would that help? If I narrowed the ask even further by asking you what three work things you are most proud of from 2016, would that be even more helpful? What if I tweaked the question? What if I asked you what three things did you achieve in 2016, at work, that Matter The Most? Would that be even better?

Or would it be harder? Do you need me to define the terms? Are you skeptical of the question? Do you not believe what you do matters? If so, I am here to remind you how much it does. It’s not a message I imagined ever needing to share, but a recent conversation I had hit a nerve with me.

I was talking with an acquaintance whose child is in the business. The child is employed on client-side for a big company that does big sponsorships and big properties. The reply that dad provided to my inquiry as to how the offspring was doing startled me. “Child is doing well,” he said. “But I remind Child often they aren’t critical to the company’s business and that puts Child in a dangerous spot if there were ever layoffs.” Oh man. Do you really think that our business is not important? The very sector your own child is working in?

My immediate reply was emotional. I pounced on the fact that Child was working for a well-respected brand on great properties, with a talented team well admired in the industry. IMHO, Child would be a sought-after asset in our industry if for some reason the powers that be deemed them non-essential to the organization’s success.

My follow up reply was personal. I let Dad know that beyond the lack of appreciation for the skills and experience that Child is acquiring, there he was propagating a bigger falsehood. That what we do doesn’t matter. That a job in the Sponsorship Department is not as vital as the engineers, chemists, salespeople, bankers, traders, researchers, managers, financiers, marketers, promoters, counters, analysts, etc. who populate the many other departments of the organization. Forgive me for my bias, but what we do matters.

It matters to the companies that employ us and it matters to the stakeholders that engage with us. It matters a lot. Because in our world we have one of the few professions in the world where you can sell snow tires and raise money for kids to play sports at the same time. We can open new chequing accounts and put musical instruments in schools. We can sell beer and fund the career of a new fashion designer. We can raise money to cure disease. We can feed the hungry. We can build and uplift a community. We can fund animal protection. We can build new pools. We can clean up waterfronts. We can help a team compete. We can create international champions and champion local heroes.

What we do matters. Don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise. In fact, I would suggest that what we do can matter more on a value basis than many other functions in a company.

Sorry to pick on you, Dad. I know you are Old (actually he’s younger than me chronologically), but I didn’t know you were Old School.

Now it’s time to reflect a little more. I am sure you can now easily share the Three Things You Did This Year That Really Mattered.

 

Hollywood could have saved themselves some do-re-mi by skipping the production of Office Christmas Party and sending some cameras down to The Spoke Club last Thursday for our T1derful Holiday Party.

It seemed like every agency in the city, and many of our respective clients, decided that December 1, 2016 being on a Thursday was too good of a party date to pass up. So we appreciate that there were a lot of choices on your dance card and 206 of you picked our party to attend! For those of you who crashed our party that I don’t know, please email me by December 15, 2016 so our Finance department can send you the appropriate invoice. I don’t know you, but you owe me.

For those of you who didn’t crash, or didn’t invite yourself (ahem), or didn’t fly in from Calgary or Dubai, or stayed at your own party, or got sick the day of, or didn’t RSVP, or… sad music here please… didn’t get invited, sorry we missed you. But hey, there is always next year!

Which is too bad, because this year you missed our T1derful custom holiday card photo activation, with T1’s resident black belt and content hunter, Gab, manning the set, his lens, and all of your iPhones!

This year you missed our T1derful signature drinks:

1. First Snowflake: Champagne poured over Crème de Cassis and garnished with berries, tastes like a wonderland of Kir Royale magic
2. Double Mistletoe: When you’re itching for a party in your mouth but you’re at a work function, this mix of Cognac, Cointreau, Rum, Lemon and Orange is a proper celebration
3. Three Wise Men: What do you get when you cross blood orange simple syrup, lime juice and vodka with ginger beer? A Blood Orange Moscow Mule that will make you see into the New Year

This year you missed our T1derful band featuring Robbie & Matthew.

This wasn’t their craziest T1 gig. That may have been when we asked them to play live on the CN Tour EdgeWalk to help launch AIR MILES’ Detour promotion where we worked alongside AIR MILES, Live Nation, Squareknot, and North Strategic. Much love to Robbie & Matthew. When they say they will play one more song, it really means 17 more!

I only remember snippets of conversation from the night, but here are a few T1derful bits:

• How long have you worked at T1?
• Was I the best intern you ever had at T1?
• I must be your worst client!
• I really liked working for your wife…
• Somebody told me that you sold the agency, I don’t know who, but somebody.
• I lost my name tag in the washroom. What do you mean you didn’t handout name tags?
• You keep dumping me off on strangers.
• I heard that so-and-so is hiring, are they here?
• What’s the name of your tall guy again? How tall is he actually?
• How come I have never been invited to this party before?
• Nobody will tell me where the after party is…

If you didn’t attend, I am somewhat sorry about this blog. I suspect by now you have a T1derfully bad case of FOMO.

This week is always the worst week of the year for me.

The beginning of the Postseason. My Postseason. The week when I’m no longer pacing the mud patch called a football field at Lawrence Park Collegiate. The first week after our last game, where I have no high school practices, no community team practices, no games to scout, or teams to direct.

To be technically clear, I spend much of the fall leaving my office at 3PM, heading 25-minutes north to LPCI, pushing my senior Panthers for two-plus hours. Racing home ten minutes to collar my 13-year-old and his gear before a F1-worthy zigzag further north to our practice field at Keele & Steeles. For the hours of 6:30 to 8:30PM I now have a collection of Bantams from all walks of life to teach and prepare. Night falls and the cold sets in well before we are finished. Post practice includes the usual chit chat with parents followed by our regular run to South Street Burger where chocolate milkshakes, cheeseburgers, or large fries seemed to reenergize my hardworking Toronto Jet.

This year it comes with a weightier finale. The same week we lost the Toronto City Championships, the Grey Cup and Vanier Cup were played. Except for some OFSAA Bowls this week, Canadian football is closed for business until the spring. For the next four months, until my spring Toronto Jets hit the field, I will have to cope with withdrawal pains.

I am going to miss the rituals of fall.

The daily weather check to determine what to wear to practices. It’s amazing how in the same day you can have a rainstorm, a warm evening setting sun, and moonlit chills. I have a longstanding tradition of only wearing shorts when I coach the Jets, so this required some creative jewel warming during the late fall.

Facebook messages from my high school players telling me they “forgot” they had tutoring, a job interview, or drivers ed. Guess I was a little more anal about my schedule when I was 16.

The pre-game self-talk to not yell at the kids, not yell at the refs, not yell at my fellow coaches. Some may say I need to work on this.

The text messages from parents with varied excuses why their kid won’t make practice, accompanied by their plea that it not impact playing time.

The camaraderie and banter among players and coaches that reflects so powerfully in the bonds you build working, striving, and training to get better as one.

The ever obsessive play scripting that kept me from my work, reading, cleaning around the house…

The pitch-black wind sprints as the players worked harder and harder to improve themselves.

The spine damaging yellow school bus rides to places all across Southern Ontario while trying to keep a wild pack of 13-year-olds quiet enough so I could nap or chat with my coaches.

My game day morning runs. I love these. I head out from my office, west through the Annex and loop around Varsity Stadium. Not due to any affection for U of T, but rather I get inspired by the goalposts, yard lines, and benches of a football field.

My post game runs to Starbucks. Runs as in journey, not runs as in jogs. There is something about a walkabout with a cappuccino that I need to help transition my mind from war mode to home mode.

I briefly flirted with “retiring,” if there is such a thing for a volunteer, as a high school coach if we had won the City Championships. I am not sure why. Maybe I was afraid it could never get better. It was such a magical season at Lawrence Park as we made our way to the City Championship. Along the way we had to recover from a tight three-point regulars season loss to our arch-rival. An end of season tie against another rival after we blew a big lead. It’s amazing how a tie can feel like a loss for one team and a triumph for another. We had to come back from a 14-point deficit to win our first playoff game. Staunch defence and stellar punting allowed us to win our semi-final versus the same regular season rival, despite only earning three first downs the entire game. Then we had an unfortunate lapse in the final, where nothing went right and our opponent was a well-oiled machine. But losing didn’t make me angry. Because we didn’t lose, we won second.

Getting that close to the title made me hungrier.

Hungrier to get back out there.

Hungrier to get the whistle in my mouth.

Hungrier to be a better coach.

Hungrier to see who signs up.

Hungrier to keep the legacy going.

Hungrier than I can explain for the Postseason to end.

This week started in Overtime and is staying there right through Grey Cup.

Monday I had a 2-1/2 hour final New Business presentation for an amazing AOR opportunity. Monday afternoon I had football practice for my Lawrence Park Panthers as we prepared for our first appearance in the City Championship since 1982. Monday night I had my Toronto Jets football banquet where I was honoured to hand out awards to my Spring and Fall Bantam teams. Including the Fall “Jet” award to my son. The Jet goes to the player who contributes the most on and off the field in practices, games, on the bus, etc. I would rather have my kid win that award over MVP any day. Although our two MVP’s are two of the best kids I have ever met, and their parents are mightily resisting my requests to adopt them!

Tuesday I was honoured to present What Your Sponsors Really Think of You at AFP. That was the official title. My unofficial title was Why Your Sponsors Hate You. It went well, I was thrilled by the audience feedback. I love the AFP Congress. If you have never been, block the dates for 2017! Tuesday after my Panther football practice I was scared and thrilled to be the opening keynote for an an event staged by the Honourable John Tory. The Mayor’s Music Sponsorship Roundtable was designed to provide Toronto’s grassroots music industry insight into sponsorship best practices, an opportunity to establish new and innovative partnerships with Canada’s biggest corporate brands, and help bolster popular support for the City’s music strategy. I was given five minutes, and not one second more, to get the crowd warmed up for the panel. You can see, and review, my speech here! If you want to see the cool video my team developed that went along with my speech, go here. If you want to see them together, please squint!

Wednesday morning I was presenting an awesome deck developed by my Consulting and Creative teams, at AFP. This one was called What Canadians Want Companies to Sponsor. But my unofficial title was Selling Heartvalves Not Eyeballs. I have to admit I wasn’t my best for this presentation. I probably didn’t rehearse enough (I usually do every deck many times) and halfway through I lost my JuJu. But only one person left during my 90-minutes so maybe I did okay.

I then raced into Metro Toronto Convention Centre bathroom. Changed my clothes faster than a volunteer firefighter from Arnprior. Hopped in a waiting Uber and arrived at Birchmount Stadium in time for the 1:00pm kick off between my Lawrence Park Panthers and the Etobicoke Collegiate Rams. At stake? The City of Toronto high school football championship. Unfortunately we lost. Badly. But as I said to my players, there are a lot of people who have played high school football in Toronto who never went nearly as far.

Now onto some much bigger football championships.

Our team is busy busy completing the Nissan Rally of the TITANs, which we kicked off two weeks ago as a cross-country challenge featuring Nissan’s new TITAN truck, as they make their way to Toronto for a big Grey Cup.

Tomorrow kicks off a ton of Grey Cup Festival events including our Nissan TITAN Street Festival and an amazing event at Ripley’s, as I have heard from many people scrambling for last minute tickets. Saturday is the Vanier Cup in Hamilton. I am heading down with some high school coaches to see if Calgary can keep up with the powerful Laval Rouge et Or. Then Sunday comes the big game!

Deep down I am an Ottawa Rough Riders fan. J.C. Watts, Condredge Holloway, Tommy Clements for me baby! So I will be cheering for the ageless Henry Burris and the RedBlacks. If you are down at BMO Field, drop by the Nissan TITAN Tailgate party we are throwing.

It was an Overtime week for me for sure. I am typing this with one hand because my other is occupied caressing my silver medal!

This week I was in a meeting at Google and I was talking about the amount of Fundraising that occurs in Canada.

When asked I blurted out, “I bet it’s $10 billion worth.” Then I added, “I guess we could Google it!” – thinking I was being funny since the meeting was at Google. Like you, nobody in the meeting laughed. But that is what we used to do before Google and Search was invented. We guessed. Often the smartest people in the room were afforded that title based on their ability to guess.

Many a time when a colleague has been stumped to answer a question, I am sure you suggested they “Just Guess.” You weren’t actually asking them to guess, but you were asking them to think. Use their judgement. Take a stand. Put a stake in the ground.

I am a big believer in informed guessing. Informed guessing really isn’t guessing. It’s applying critical thinking. It’s becoming a lost art. Or perhaps thinking is a science. Probably it is both.

So let’s think about the numbers. According to a supplement in the Globe and Mail this past week, the actual number is $12.8 billion donated by Canadians. That’s a ton of dough! It also doesn’t include the amount of money contributed by corporate sponsors to charities. Still if you ask many charities, they don’t have enough or can’t generate enough.

If you are a not-for-profit, how do you tackle the challenges ahead of you. I actually won’t suggest you guess. This is too important for that. My best advice is to learn from others, and the group behind National Philanthropy Day, AFP Toronto, provides you with one of the best opportunities in the world to do so. Next week they will host the AFP Congress featuring three days of learning, discussion, and networking at the Metro Convention Centre. Whether you are a novice or a pro, a start-up or an established charity, a brand intern or an entrepreneur, I recommend you attend.

But I would also suggest you attend even if you are not in the sector. I know it’s super short notice but I have three good reasons. First, it is the second largest and most influential congress of its type outside of the International Fundraising Congress in Holland. Secondly, the role that not-for-profits play in our society is ever-increasing and evermore important. Thirdly, and connected to the second, this growing importance in our society requires that these groups attract even stronger and more abundant talent. The sector has ongoing demands for new voices, new skills, new approaches, and new minds. It is currently filled with some of the most talented and passionate people in the world and they need more people on the team.

I have blogged many times about the vital role of passion in the workplace. If you want to do more than just donate or volunteer, than commit more of your professional life to philanthropy. You will quickly find that a rewarding career is only just the appetizer in your new world.

If a radical career change is too much than get involved by ensuring your brand, your enterprise, or your institution becomes purpose-driven. What higher good are you serving than just making money for shareholders and owners. (Yes I need to look in the mirror on this one).

I am taking a guess that as the world evolves, it needs more great people doing great work. Google it. It’s true.

Okay, Canada. Now is our chance. It’s our time to shine. The world needs us.

Just when you thought the world couldn’t get any crazier. It did. What we hoped would go away after 600 days of drama, has just been granted a 1,460-day extension. Brace yourself.

But the good news for us is that it wasn’t our election. Though we probably followed it more closely than most Americans did. So now what?

Now it’s time to stop worrying about what we can’t control and focus on what we can. Our country. Our provinces. Our cities. Ourselves. Our Canada.

The world has delivered a golden opportunity into our laps. County after country wants to put up walls, discriminate against religion, stop free trading, hurl insults at cultures, not share currencies, ignore refugees, pollute irresponsibly, and lie without recourse. Now is our chance.

Now is the time for us to go further than ever before as a global leader. Once we get our immigration website up and running again, (sorry Americans we don’t accept faxes), we can get back to business of being Canadian. As Air Canada says, or maybe it was Obama, “The world needs more Canada.”

Let’s give it to them.

Let’s give the world a country that helps people leave their war-torn homeland. A country that uses its personal wealth to support their path to safety, then embraces them and their culture when they are here.

We can be a place where artisans and cultural leaders can ply their trade without the fear of interference.

Definitely we should build walls. Climbing walls for your children. New homes with bright coloured walls for those who are displaced. Walls of Fame where we recognize our achievers. Walls of Shame where we hold the worlds villains accountable. Walls of new businesses, new schools, new pools, new museums, and new community centres.

We should be a country that brings civility to discord. It’s okay to have your own political affiliation. Let’s just stick to the focus of improving our communities. More importantly, get involved. Volunteer. Coach. Teach. Lobby. Campaign.

O Canada we have been given a gift horse. We are having a little party next year for our 150th birthday. We should all invite people to come visit. Even people we don’t know. We should all spend 100% of our vacation dollars here. Travel the country. Celebrate our birthday with our fellow citizens. See Newfoundland, run across the Prairies, or discover the North. Open your homes, your businesses, your lives to the world.

A perfect storm has been created for us to take advantage of. We can be the Number One country in the world. If we aren’t already. In fact we don’t need to be Number One. We just need to be us.

What is that?

It’s whatever you want it to be. Because you have a country that wants you to be free. You live in a nation where opportunity is unlimited. You live on a land that has seen mistakes made, but is trying hard to repair them.

O Canada, let’s do this.

I Dare You, America.

I Dare You to elect the Republican candidate for President. Now that you have confused the investigation of a pervert with a presidential election, you seem to be teetering towards insanity. You seem to be content with throwing all common sense out the window.

So if you want him so badly, go ahead. Make Your Day.

I Dare You to elect a man who believes that voting for him as President also grants him the power to be judge, juror, Supreme Court justice, District Attorney, and Sheriff.

I Dare You to elect a man who will abolish human rights in a way that will place your country in the annals of history alongside countless other dictatorships.

I Dare You to elect a man who will soon make Russian your official second language. The only question is whether he does before or after renaming his official residence the White Kremlin.

I Dare You to elect a man who will waste your tax money suing people who apparently didn’t paint his lobby the correct hue of pink.

I Dare You to watch new levels of Washington gridlock emerge.

I Dare You to have a leader who refuses to pay his own taxes.

I Dare You to enter his altered state of reality.

I Dare You to trade Michelle for Melania. At some point she will have to read her own speeches, won’t she?

I Dare You to elect a man who is going to lock up Hillary.

I Dare You to watch the butt kissing from all the Republicans who denounced him, but now need him.

I Dare You to allow international terror groups to run free with no fear of the world’s “police force” stepping in.

I Dare You to pull the A out of NAFTA. NATO (I know it’s “Atlantic”). The G8.

I Dare You to see how prosperous your economy is, trading with yourself.

I Dare You to watch the ineptitude.

I Dare You to watch him wear the nuclear keys around his neck like a Mr. T ornament.

I Dare You to whitewash the American Dream.

I Dare You to watch your entire high-tech community move to Vancouver, Waterloo, and Mexico City.

I Dare You to elect a man who believes that every woman in America is now his chattel and will find him irresistible. Didn’t you kill a guy in Waco who operated like that?

I Dare You to demand a re-vote as soon as possible.

I Dare You to try to immigrate to Canada. You won’t pass our vetting.

That was one of the most unique questions I have ever been asked by a student when I’ve made a guest appearance in a post-secondary classroom.

It was one of many that was posed to me during my visit to Nancy Spotton’s Applied Business Communications – Personal Selling class at George Brown College last Friday. If you have never met Nancy, there is no more ideal person on the planet to be guiding the development of tomorrow’s sport business leaders. I can’t really do justice to the course she has created, but stealing from her Strat Plan it’s all about establishing your personal brand and building on your strengths.

I was honoured that Nancy asked me to attend and share my story and advice for these young students. I assume the intention was for me to impart some wisdom or counsel to these youngsters, along with a dose of inspiration. I assume they wanted to understand how to go about pursuing that first vital role in the industry and what their expectations should be of that job or internship. There was some great dialogue and excellent questions, even beyond the canine inquiry.

Their questions triggered a flow of memories for me that swamped much of my thinking over the weekend. I guess its been a long time since I shared stories of being a paper boy at 12 and the relevance of that role with what I do today. It inspired me to imagine what I would say if I were to write a letter to my younger self about pursuing my first job.

Remarkably, it seems like yesterday that I developed a list of some 50 companies ranked by my desire to work for them and started to target them for interviews. Fortunately for me, I didn’t have to go down very far on that list before I was hired. Unfortunately for me, I was subsequently un-hired when they lost the client before I even started. Fortunately for me, the hiring manager was both horrified that she had to renege on me and compassionate enough to provide some leads for potential employers. One of them, somewhat remarkably, hired me. Remarkable not that I am being self-deprecating (because pigs really can’t fly), but in the fact that I ended up at a company that had never hired someone right out of school before. Let alone someone who was still in school, me, and would actually start working part-time. I owe a big part of that achievement to my mother, who coached me to write a pitch like document to get the job.

Here we go!

October 27, 1987

Dear Much Younger Mark,

It’s time for you to move to the next stage of your life.

The current stage of your life I would call the nickname stage. Some of your friends call you Herschel (as in Walker); others call you Brunswick (as in the bowling ball manufacturer…due to a horrible haircut one day); your best Black Canadian friend calls you Dark (as in appropriate as they may be); you call yourself Mh3 some days and Herschel others (because you are self-absorbed); and your boss at the University of Guelph calls you “Student” (because you are the only student on the Athletic Department Management Team). But young man, it is time to move on.

The world awaits.
Employment is to be gained.
It’s time to put that big mouth of yours to rest and see some action.

Fortunately, I can provide you with 29 years of foresight into what you should do. As I look back at you, you did some things right and some things poorly. Perhaps if I write these things down you may share them with some friends, new or old, to help them along as well. Even if you feel you have done all these things, perhaps you have not recognized them consciously.

1. You need to develop a personal brand. What is your Mission in life (your value to the world? What is your Vision (where you will be in ten years)? What is your Brand Promise (the commitment that a future employer can expect from you)?

2. Have you clearly articulated your strengths and your weaknesses? Have you done so in a way that a future employer can understand the benefit of hiring you?

3. Have you been working on this for a long time? I don’t mean to scare you, but starting to position yourself as employable in fourth year or late during your post-grad, is going to put you behind others.

4. Do you truly understand the definition of Passion? I really should have put this first. Passion trumps (sorry the word trump has a different meaning in 2016 than 1987, so maybe I shouldn’t have used it) everything in my mind. Allow me to repeat, Passion is the most important quality in any team member, each and every day. Whether it be in the workplace, on a team, in a relationship, or during alone time. Passion. Hunger. Commitment. Motivation. Inner Drive. Resilience. All the same thing.

5. Only pursue jobs you will be passionate about.

6. Find a great boss. A friend of mine speaks the truth when he says, “You don’t work for a company, you work for a boss.” I have seen lots of great people at bad companies and I have witnessed many bad people at great companies. Interview your potential boss. Check them out. Find someone who has worked with them. Understand how they work, what is the boss-employee relationship. Be prepared. It’s not like having a Coach, or a Mom, or a Professor.

7. Show me how you can make my company money. Want a job anywhere in the world? If you can demonstrate your role in boosting the bottom line, you will have an offer from any company you wish.

8. Show me you want to start your own company. I am biased. I love entrepreneurs. Maybe we will end up starting it together.

9. Don’t just sit their and Listen. Listen and ask questions. Listen and probe. Listen and offer an answer. Listen actively. Listen to build. Listen to engage. Listen passionately.

10. Be Your Passionate Self.

I am sorry if you wanted me to tell you where to find a lead or who is hiring today. I have a simple answer. Everyone is hiring. Every company that wants to succeed is hiring. Every boss in the world needs another team member. Every organization is short staffed. When they say they aren’t hiring, what they mean is they aren’t hiring YOU.

Best of luck. If you have read this far, I will give you at least a better than average chance of securing that dream role.

Talk soon!

Much Older Mh3

Why does Donald Trump brush aside his well chronicled sex video comments as “locker room talk”?

Is it because he believes they are harmless? Is it because he believes that a locker room is a cone of silence? Is it maybe because he doesn’t understand what a locker room is?

From my seat, it’s answer number three. There is no way that Trump understands the sanctity of the locker room. If he did, he would not dismiss the impact of his comments, let alone his attitude towards women, in a place that for many holds near religious importance.

How would you define the Locker Room to Donald Trump?

First you would let him know that a Locker Room is not a room. It’s a temple. Because unlike an ordinary room, a Locker Room has a purpose. That purpose is to bear witness to extraordinary accomplishments of triumph and even more extraordinary moments of anguish. That purpose is to build a bond, a sisterhood, a brotherhood, a warring spirit. To meld together a roomful of strangers into a unbreakable unit. To take individual pieces and meld them into a team. To fashion a bond that is unbreakable. No mere room can do that.

Then you would tell him to honour the Code of the Locker Room. Every Locker Room has its own code. Where you sit. How you speak. Who you sit next to. What music is played. Who gets to shower first. Who gets the sauna last. When the coaches are allowed in. When the media is shown out. When you are allowed to invite in a worthy opponent. When it’s okay to cry. What is okay to wear. What topics are permitted. What topics are taboo. How disagreements are solved. How wagers are paid. How debts are forgiven. There is a court of honour and a court of appeal. There is a ruler and the unruly. But there is a code.

If he allowed you to carry on, you could tell him some of your personal Locker Room stories. Recalling the first time you entered after making the varsity team. The last time you were in one, especially if it was to tie your child’s skates. Your painful moments on the trainer’s table. Your anxiety while waiting to find out from the head coach if you were starting or riding the bench. The curiosity around meeting a new teammate. The empty locker of an injured one. The disgusting showers and the nearly unusable toilet. The light that never stopped flickering or buzzing. Watching your team cry after a championship loss. Watching your coach cry after a championship win.

You would also tell him that a Locker Room has superpowers that last forever. Those powers are more powerful than mere words. A locker room can turn heated rivals into brothers in arms. Where the tap on the door from a visiting team may be welcomed with an invitation to share words, a sauna, a beer, a pop, or a postgame message from an opposing coach. A locker room can turn girls into women, boys into men, and men into boys. It can be the motivational source for amazing comebacks and devastating collapses. It can be the room where racism dies, class lines are destroyed and homophobia is vanquished. It’s a place where friendships are built, broken, and repaired again. It’s a classroom, a war room, a waiting room, a triage room, an operating room, a prayer room, a therapy room, an escape room, a conference room, and a bedroom.

Finally you would tell him about the language of the Locker Room. Unlike his assertions, the Locker Room is not a place where men hide behind a door to make childish boasts of clearly imagined sexual prowess. No, the language of a Locker Room isn’t a sound made by human voices. It’s a place where the ghosts of the many games of past are heard. It’s a place where the sound of a stick being tapped or a cleat on the floor is as soothing as a gentle ballad. It’s a place where the true message of your coach is communicated by the lines emerging on her face, not the words emitting from her mouth. It’s a place where you can talk to yourself out loud and no one will notice, unless you stop. It’s a place where the chalkboard pre-game reminders are like a book read by your mother when you were an infant: loving, cautioning, soothing, teaching, inspiring, yet comforting. It’s a place where an apology can be issued with a nod and an explanation can be saved for another day.

In a real Locker Room, words don’t even need to be spoken for a powerful message to be said. Only a person who wasn’t welcomed in a Locker Room would blame it for their own shortcomings.

A little update about football and life for you this week, as I take a break from ranting about measurement, fair agency compensation, and anything to do with a certain U.S. presidential nominee. Small ‘p’ intentional…

Yesterday may have been close to a perfect day for me. Why? My life is surrounded by football and my football is surrounded by my life. I’m lucky enough to work in marketing football, to volunteer in football, and have an unquenchable appetite for consuming football. I probably watched seven full games this weekend…

So you can understand that it’s not hard for me to come to work when we do so many cool things in the sport. Yesterday, I was chatting with one of our interns who just returned from executing some Nissan Kickoff Project events at high schools in Abbotsford and Calgary. It was her first time overseeing a live execution so it was satisfying for me to hear her relay both her nervousness and her sense of accomplishment. Earlier in the day we announced at our weekly team pep talk (staff meeting) that our impressive field coordinator, who has been overseeing the Argos Tailgate program, has been rewarded with a full-time role at T1. Later I was getting an update on Grey Cup activation plans for one of our clients.

But my real joy lies on the field. Right now, a typical weekday for me is a day like yesterday. At 6:30AM I printed out my practice plans for the two teams I coach. During the day I exchanged emails with a few coaches. One had feedback on the practice plans. A few others were weighing in on last week’s Player of the Week selections. At 3PM I left work for Lawrence Park to coach my senior team from 3:30 to 5:30. We worked the crap out of them. I loved it. We need to push these kids harder. At 5:35 I left LP to race home and grab my 13-year-old for the 35-minute drive to northwest Toronto for a 6:30 to 8:30 Toronto Jets practice. I ended up running it a bit late, so it was 8:53PM before we got out of there to do our traditional post practice stop at South Street Burger, for my son’s chocolate shake and french fries. Feel free to judge me. I dare you. At 9:35PM I was on my couch with my microwaved leftovers and a glass of Riesling, ready to watch Minnesota inexplicably go 4-0.

More than once during the day I checked online for past scores of this week’s Panthers opponent (Sir Wilfrid Laurier), as well as my Jets’ opponent in two weeks (Hamilton Jr. Tiger-Cats). I do that far too often. Check on scores. Check on standings. See how our future opponents did against our past. Extrapolate what that means for us. As bad as a predictive index that it is, I somehow believe the numbers speak to me. They shed insight, they communicate and elaborate. I know it’s crazy but I have always felt that way. The results of a game. The statistics of each team, each player. The inputs and factors that may have caused that. Numbers don’t lie. They just don’t predict. Maybe some day I will learn that. One week the numbers (vs. Philadelphia) say my Steelers suck, the next week (vs. Kansas City) the numbers say they are world-beaters.

My two teams are also an interesting story told by numbers.

Story one is my Lawrence Park Panthers. You may recall that this past winter the team faced near death and was dramatically saved by a group of earnest parents and community supporters. Many of whom don’t even have kids on the team. This little crisis actually resulted in some amazing and unexpected chemical reactions. Out of the crisis, new friendships, fundraising groups, and relationships were born. Personally I met some amazing folks who stepped up on the team’s behalf. A fundraising effort has been started, though equipment wasn’t the primary issue, and we are raising thousands to secure the program’s future. But of all the numbers, the most important one is on the field.

For years we have struggled to field teams with more than 24-26 players, which meant that on any given week with 5-6 absences due to work, school, or injury we couldn’t run proper scrimmages, drills, etc. But the threat of extinction resulted in many kids coming out of the woodwork and we now have a pool of 36 players. Which seems small to many powerhouse teams, but is a godsend for us. It also makes it much more fun for the kids and builds their confidence. Coming to practice with ten players, which has happened to me, is a killer.

At the other end of the number story, is my Toronto Jets bantam team. Up at 5:30AM on Saturday (guess hockey isn’t so bad after all), we packed a whopping 16 players on a school bus for a rainy trip to Brantford. There we were joined by three more players, to face a Brantford squad twice our numbers, and many times our skill. While the “Good Sportsmanship Police” froze the scoreboard at 21-0, the real damage was 62-0. That puts us at 0 & 5 for the season, with 44 points scored and 218 against! Remember the quarterback I told you about previously? The hidden gem. Well he quit two games into the season. He didn’t like losing. He’s right, we are losing.

But what the standings don’t show is this. Every kid on my team loves football. In the dressing room after the game I had 19 smiling faces. That’s the real scoreboard. I have 19 kids, and four dedicated coaches, who love this game. I have 19 kids who would rather lose 62-0, than not play at all.

We have one more regular season game. We are playing at Tim Hortons Field. The kids are thrilled. A real CFL stadium. None of them have seen it. My son played in the old Ivor Wynne once, wait till he sees this new gem. Last night they thought I was serious when I joked the game would be on TSN. They laughed when my son said, “yeah, TSN Collingwood.” But for a moment they really thought, we had hit the big time. No TSN, maybe some home movies. The numbers will show that we are going to lose this game. The numbers don’t lie. Hamilton dumped us 39-6 last time we played and I am pretty sure they eased up on us around 18-0.

But losing won’t quell my love for my Football Life, nor will it quell it for my Jets.