A Valentine’s Bonus
The Daily Northwestern features me & Bridgett...surprising Super Bowl viewing poll results...circling back to the one-and-only Caitlin Clark.
Each year, I get my wife some sweets, a card and flowers for Valentine’s Day.
This year, we both got something extra special: coverage in our college newspaper about how we met playing co-ed touch football and have been together ever since. After contacting us a few weeks ago, The Daily Northwestern reporter did an excellent job1 of capturing some of the key points we made during a half-hour Zoom interview.
The most significant one, in my estimation, was this remark from Bridgett:
To be sure, to endure in any close relationship—and particularly a marriage—one must go well beyond the realm of “feelings.” Love is an act of the will.
For example, as I drafted this very portion of my Substack column, Bridgett patiently, indirectly indicated that she could use some help with the laundry. A few times. It took me a minute, but I eventually got the drift and chipped in.
See? I didn’t feel like being a total moron.
The portion of the story that was most humbling and gratifying was this remark from our daughter:
Our journey led off the piece, which also delved into the relationships of three other Northwestern alumni couples. You can read the article, headlined “Alumni couples reminisce about finding their forever valentines at Northwestern,” here.
One last note on this Valentine’s moment: In 1998, we’d gotten a similar spotlight in our alumni magazine—with the same photo that the newspaper used along with a more succinct version of our origin story.
Power in (Solitary) Numbers
At the end of last week’s Substack on watching the Super Bowl alone, I dropped in a poll to see others’ plans. I was somewhat surprised to see that the #1 response was “Watching alone.”
The runners-up were “Watching with 1-4 others” and “Not watching.”
Circling Back to Caitlin Clark
Two weeks ago, I shared my experience covering Caitlin Clark when she and her Iowa teammates put a thumping on the Northwestern Wildcats.
After her 23-point first quarter on Thursday, I really thought she had a shot at breaking the NCAA women's basketball single-game scoring record (61). Instead, she merely shattered the career scoring mark, as expected.
Along the way, her 49 points against Michigan were enough to set a new Hawkeye record. Over the next three games, she figures to surpass Pete Maravich’s 3,667 points, tops among men’s college hoopsters.
Comparing their respective stat lines goes only so far.
On the one hand, “Pistol Pete” played only three years at Louisiana State University, since freshmen were not allowed to play varsity ball back when he played from 1967 to 1970. But on the other hand, Maravich truly was a gunner, averaging 38 shots a game, 51% of his team’s total attempts during that three-year period.2
Do you think it might have helped that his coach happened to be his father, Press?
I’ve been the subject of stories enough times over the years—for my work as a journalist, mostly—that I gird myself every time for whatever appears in the story. Will the reporter botch a quote, take it out of context or otherwise do something cringe-worthy? In this instance, Misha Oberoi did a stellar job.
By comparison, Clark takes about one-third of her team’s shots—a rate that has held steady all four of her seasons.
"Love is a choice" is a powerful quote I took a few decades ago from a community billboard of the local Unitarian church. It has served me in my approach to strengthening my romantic relationship with my spouse of 36 years. I'm reassured to hear it again from the younger generation. On another point to the why for this article, I enjoy the tradition some folks practice, that Valentines day belongs to friends and family love too. Second: We were intrigued this year to learn we were not the only household among friends choosing to watch the Super Bowl alone. A lot about this choice makes sense to me. It's a long event, boredom can exacerbate the tendency to over drink and over eat, whereas on your own there is no pressure to keep everyone entertained the entire game time. Using the game as a conversation starter, later, is a much more satisfying way to engage with friends, I find.