8

 Four weeks of the regular semester left. My students were alternately joyously engaged or sullenly disengaged this week. I have one class that is so much better than my other three that I'm tempted to manipulate my schedule so that they're the last college class I actually walk out of (it will make it seem slightly less certain that I've wasted the last forty years). The talk of me giving a going away speech, which would turn into the Gary Scudder Symposium, has reared its ugly head again. I'm honored, but the only thing I hate more than public speaking is being the center of attention, so I need to be even more deliberate in my no (although I've been pretty deliberate so far). 

Thanks to Zach Collaros for loaning me his number 8 for the Countdown. Collaros is a favorite of mine, not simply because he currently plays for my beloved Winnipeg Blue Bombers (they are one of my four favorite CFL teams), but also because he played college ball at the University of Cincinnati (where I attended graduate school). He was born in Steubenville, Ohio, and after his career with the UC Bearcats he went undrafted by the NFL. Callaros was on the practice squad of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for one year, but after that he's spent more than a dozen year north of the border. Along the way he's played for the Toronto Argonauts, Hamilton Tiger-Cats, Saskatchewan Roughriders, and Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Along the way he's won three Grey Cups, one as a backup for the Double Blues and two as a starter for the Bombers (he also lost three straight Grey Cups after the initial success - to be fair, two of them were last second heartbreakers, and in the third he was hurt in the game). While in college he roomed with the Kelce brothers, which means he essentially is dating Taylor Swift.