Month: September 2008

Bullball Suggestions

Two suggestions to the University of South Florida regarding its football program and fans:

1) Re-think the reality implicit in the discontinuation of the USF-UCF series. With last Saturday’s game in Orlando, the four-game series came to an end. UCF wants to continue; USF doesn’t.

For USF, it’s understandable that the Bulls, the more successful program, have more to lose than gain by playing a lesser, non-BCS conference opponent. But that overlooks key points.

UCF is the rivalry game that USF, hardly steeped in gridiron tradition, needs. The sort of event that annually energizes a student body and players, many of whom played with and against each other in high school. It also guarantees a sizable profit with big crowds and low overhead – a bus ride across Interstate 4.

And if USF would win most of the time? Well, call it a bonus.

2) Memo to USF students: Should USF knock off nationally-ranked Kansas on Friday night, don’t chant “Over-rated” AFTER the game. Learn from last year’s upset of West Virginia and confine the standard taunt to pre-game hijinks.

Rap Claptrap

Just when you think you’ve heard it all in the name of curricular relevance and student-improvement strategies, we have SpringBoard. That’s the new Hillsborough County program that aims to teach language arts and math by playing down the traditional lecture role of teachers and playing up group problem-solving and role-playing. There’s even a provision for rewriting some Shakespeare as text messages and hip-hop.

Three points.

First, after a year of pilot programs in four schools, SpringBoard is now districtwide. Not all teachers are comfortable — or on board with the student-centered dynamic. It appears that school-busing wasn’t the only school district area to be communication challenged.

Second, in the tightest of budget eras, the county plans to spend more than $30 million on SpringBoard over the next five years.

Third, in a recent Tampa Tribune story, a SpringBoard trainer, Joanne Patchin, explained the process. “Sometimes students learn more and faster from each other than the teacher,” she told teachers at a county workshop. “It’s noisy, but they have fun and they’re learning.”

That’s a pedagogical red flag.

As a former English teacher, I’ve heard this refrain before. Nobody, of course, wants bored students and unsatisfactory results. But there is a difference between creative and chaotic. The key factor: the quality of the teacher. The best ones combine lectures and discipline with real-world motivation and a sense of humor.

I’d invest that $30 million in trying to lure more of the best and brightest into teaching.

Conventional Wisdom: Gatherings Still Have Value

For the last fortnight, the political conventions have been providing their usual fare: lots of stagecraft, non-stop schmooze-control, celebrity scrutiny, “defining-moment” speeches and over-analysis fodder for pundits and partisans. The ambience is equal parts pep rally, infomercial and Rotarian reunion.

Time was when these conventions actually chose a presidential candidate. Back when smoke-filled back rooms were no mere metaphors. Now these gatherings rubber-stamp and coronate candidates.

Which explains, in part, why some of Hillary’s Harridans won’t concede. The other part is that for those women who have outsourced their identities to Hillary Clinton, this election is no longer about the party and the country – it’s about them. But enough, at least in this space, on that.

But just because the nominees have been pre-selected, platform planks pre-set and goofy hats prepared, doesn’t mean these conventions are nothing more than atavistic exercises in pomp and partisanship.

I remember chatting with Al Austin, the finance chairman of the Republican Party of Florida and Tampa’s “Mr. GOP,” at the 2000 Republican Convention in Philadelphia. Austin still found enough value in the quadrennial gatherings to attend them. He cited two main reasons.

“One of the biggest problems we have in this country is voter apathy,” said Austin. “An event like this is an opportunity to get people focused on the fact that there’s a presidential election coming up. It’s a way for voters to get aware and interested – and introduced to candidates.”

The other benefit, noted Austin, was what you’d expect from any convention – from hardware to pharmaceuticals. These are forums to reward, to share strategies and to energize the troops, those who labor in the trenches in their home counties, to go forth and, well, sell.

“It fires these folks up and generates a lot of enthusiasm for carrying the message,” underscored Austin. “If you’re a delegate, this is an honor. They feel like they’re part of something big.”

Convention Bonus

Lost amid the Clinton melodramatics and the historic nomination of an African American candidate for president, is a move to improve the primary system in 2012.

Democratic nominee Barack Obama named a committee to consider revising the party’s rules for the next primary. Here’s hoping that rotating, regional primaries finally result.

Tom James: Bay Area’s Modern Medici

Tom James has always liked collecting stuff. Early on, it was coins and stamps. Later on, it was satisfied clients.

And then there is his art, the investment where the bottom line is much more passion and patronage than pure profit. Starting innocently enough when he was a magna cum laude undergraduate at Harvard, he began buying local New England art. He kept at it through his Harvard MBA days.

“I wanted memories of things I identified with,” recalls James, the long-time chairman and CEO of Raymond James Financial Inc. Nearly a half-century and lots of travels and memories later, James has accumulated one of the largest private art collections in Florida. The Tom and Mary James/Raymond James Financial Art Collection now totals more than 1,800 pieces – from original paintings to bronze sculptures to graphics. The Jameses own 90 per cent of it. From Andy Warhol and Peter Max to Joan Miro and Salvador Dali to Jamie Wyeth. From local wildlife to Western and Southwestern artists. The latter now comprise more than half the collection.

He buys only living artists.

And they’re on display – integrated by style and theme – on all 28 floors of the four towers of RJF headquarters in St. Petersburg across from Feather Sound.

“I enjoy helping young artists with talent,” explains James. “Helping them showcase their talent. Helping them make some money.”

One such artist is the award-winning Ernest C. Simmons of Dunedin. His wildlife work is well represented at RJF – and is prominently exhibited in the annual “Wildlife and Western Life Vision Art Show” at RJF. “Tom has an educated eye for art, and he likes a good deal,” says Simmons. “He’s definitely a Republican, but with the heart of a Democrat. He’s a really cool guy and a great patron.”

But James does a lot more than buy art, support artists and host the Wildlife and Western show. He’s the catalyst behind RJF’s sponsorship of the annual Raymond James Gasparilla Festival of the Arts in downtown Tampa and is working on plans to establish a museum in downtown St. Petersburg to display his Western and wildlife art. RJF, in conjunction with St. Petersburg College, is building the new home of the American Stage Theatre Company in St. Petersburg – the “Raymond James Theatre.” Moreover, RJF is a corporate sponsor of the Salvador Dali Museum and The Florida International Museum.

James is also president of the Dali Board of directors and a key behind-the-scenes player in the complex scenario that is the new museum plan.

“Tom is really engaged with the museum