Columns
Coach Cignetti, The Philosopher King
Curt Cignetti was hired to be Indiana University’s football coach beginning with the 2024 college football season. In 2022 IU’s record was four wins and eight losses. For 2023 it was three wins and nine losses. In 2024 IU lost two games, one in the College Football Playoffs, and won eleven. IU just won the College Football National Championship for 2025-26 by being the only undefeated college team and posting sixteen wins and zero losses. IU started 2025 as history’s losingest college football program based on over 700 losses. A couple of basic questions are: How did IU go from the whale dung of college football to Marathon type victors (490 BC) and who wrought this miracle?
Those are important issues to ponder. However, America is currently dealing with other much more important matters than sports. Perhaps we can learn something as a country by examining how Indiana University went in two years from football fodder to pundits accusing my alma mater of cheating to win games. That has been the ultimate unintended compliment from the envious. We are now so good we must have called upon the gods or stolen signs or somehow bought a championship with NIL money. Surely no mere educational ivory tower could turn southern Indiana limestone into football lemonade in only two years.
Dunn Meadow and the Little Jordan River must have been co-opted by trolls or John Mellencamp and Mark Cuban. Only magic and money could explain the college that lost its first game in 1887, then followed it with over 700 losses, to winning the National Championship on January 19, 2026. But, what if instead of just assuming this Hoosier triumph is but a logical lacuna, we try to learn something from IU and its miraculous turnaround that can be applied to help America out of its miasma.
Is it possible that Curt Cignetti and his staff are the Philosopher Kings of football whose methods should be applied to our democracy? As Plato recommended in his Republic, instead of us choosing our leaders on the basis of popularity created by promising to give stuff away or to conquer other countries because we want their stuff, maybe we should elect our leaders based on their character, ability and hard work as proven by their past performance. Maybe we need portals which incorruptible leaders could pass through to be rewarded for their proven public-spirited expertise; Name, Image and Likeness indeed, but most importantly, proven character!
Instead of our political leaders being voted into office based on the drivel of cackling TV panelists who hate or love whomever they are promoting or opposing, what if we citizens evaluate our future leaders as Coach Curt Cignetti and his staff did for our Indiana University football champions? Quality of past performance, not feckless promises of future nirvanas are the lodestone we voters can learn to follow based on the example of these 2026 Hoosiers. Too often five-star potential from our politicians metamorphosizes into a sense of entitlement without the sweat required for production. Maybe what America needs from its leaders is evidence of proven positive results based on performance. What if we stop mouthing MAGA and adopt for our motto: “Hoo, Hoo, Hoo, Hoosiers!”?
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Hallowed Halls of Laurel
HALLOWED HALLS OF LAUREL
It is kinda’ like how I felt when the sister and two brothers I grew up with became a college professor, a world-class musician and a leading legal scholar. Where did that come from? Gentle Reader, you probably have had the same puzzlement about the neighbor kid you played house or marbles with who is recognized later in life by others as brilliant. You most likely ask yourself, “Who snatched their body away and replaced them with this heroic icon?”
This Gavel Gamut could not be written until after Indiana University’s football team won the CFP semi-final game against Oregon on 09 January 2026; IU did! So, now the ultimate issue to be decided is, will IU beat Miami for the National Championship on Monday, January 19, 2026? In spite of the “rat poison curse”, I say they can and will have done so before you read this column. Miami is extremely well coached and talented, but IU is even better. Discipline and turnovers will decide the outcome. I submit no college football team is better disciplined nor as adept at causing and capitalizing upon their opponent’s mistakes as IU. Yeah, I cannot believe I am writing that either!
Now back to the theme of this column; where the devil did this come from to a program that was the first in college football history to lose over 700 games? What ironic quirk of athletic history brought the college I first saw lose in 1963 to, hopefully, the National Championship a lifetime later? I still remember countless games we lost in the fourth quarter, even in the last seconds of the fourth quarter, or because of some idiosyncratic football faux pas? Where is that team of hard striving ultimate losers who kept falling just short of glory only to be patted on the helmets as if they were incapable of being even average, much less victorious?
Fall 2024 to January 2026 seems as dreamlike as my surprising siblings or friends who found marvelous success and brought me joy in the process. So, has IU won the National Championship? I do not yet know. But I already know my Alma Mater is no longer the doormat of college football history. While I expect IU to beat Miami, I know they have already covered those hallowed southern Indiana limestone walls with laurel amidst all that ivy!
On Facebook follow us at “Jim Peg Redwine” or Substack “@gavelgamut”
Want to see those southern Indiana limestone buildings! Click on this link for more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCK0DpkswvY
Therapy
America needs therapy; about 350 million counselors seems about right. Where to find them and how to compensate them are the seminal issues. As therapists always approach client treatment with the same, lone question, “How do you feel about that?”, the answers to America’s dilemmas and to each of our personal problems must lie within. We need only to bring forth for analysis the quandaries we are facing, then have other individuals or groups help us solve things for ourselves.
For example, a Catholic penitent might say, “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned”; he or she divulges the sin, then does whatever penance, say ten Hail Mary’s, the priest decides will expiate those transgressions. Or we pay $500 per hour to psychiatrists who might treat us by asking, “How do you feel about that?”. An example of a United States problem in need of therapy might be invading Greenland or Venezuela. Perhaps we could allow our Congressional therapists to have us explain to ourselves why America deserves and must have Greenland or Venezuela or even Iran or whatever country it will take to “Make America, or us as individuals, Great Again”.
This approach to therapy for people or for countries has been used for thousands of years. The Greeks in Persia, the Romans in Palestine, the Zionists in Palestine, the United States in Iraq, etc., etc., etc. If armed conflict offends your sensibilities, one could simply join a group that can ask that age old question, “How do you feel about that?” and let each American respond with the knowledge our group will help us work out how we truly feel. The answers are always within, it is just bringing them out that is difficult.
A literary example of successful group therapy was Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast in the Paris of the 1920’s. Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound and James Joyce to name just some of the group would meet at Silvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Company Bookstore in the Montparnasse neighborhood on the left bank of the Seine River and interchange what would become some of the best writing and therapy of any generation, especially the Lost Generation of post-World War I.
Hemingway’s experience came to mind when my long-time friend, fellow jurist and fellow writer sent me a Christmas present of his therapy group’s book, Holiday Tales from the San Juans. It is a compilation of his writing group that meets each Thursday morning, if so inclined, at the Ruby M. Sisson Memorial Library in Pagosa Springs, Colorado. This Ruby’s Writer’s Guild consists of Judge Albert Northrop, my friend, and some of his friends in Pagosa Springs. Anyone who wishes can offer a written item such as a poem or a personal story for the rest of the Guild to ponder and pontificate upon. This is the epitome of the therapy America needs. Put the innermost thoughts out first then listen to well informed and well-intentioned responses.
An example for America might be, “Should we adhere to our Constitution or ape the behavior of despots such as Putin, Netanyahu or Hitler?” As for this one American, admittedly in need of therapy myself, I suggest a country of Ruby’s Writer’s Guilds generously sharing their thoughts would be more likely to make America America again than heedless hegemony.
Highly Resolved
Abraham Lincoln published one of our nation’s solemn resolutions in his address at the dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on November 19, 1863. The over three thousand dead Union soldiers were the particular men Lincoln referenced that day. However, since President Lincoln’s main focus of the Civil War was to hold our country together, most likely he had in mind all the dead and wounded on both sides when he said:
“…[W[e here highly resolve that these dead
shall not have died in vain…”
That resolution was not made for a New Year, but it was a noble hope for our country’s future. From 1863 until 1914 this goal was fractured by almost continuous death and destruction, such as the Indian removals, the Spanish American War and then “The War to End all wars”, World War I. After that final war, America fought WWII, Korea, Viet Nam, The Gulf War, Afghanistan, The Iraq War and so many conflicts most Americans cannot recount whom we have fought and are still fighting nor why. We are currently aiding and abetting and directly involved in Palestine and Ukraine along with Venezuela and bellicose behavior bordering on armed conflicts with so many countries and groups even the cable news cannot keep up with them.
President Lincoln’s resolution for our country has gone the way my 2025 New Year’s Resolutions have. I dug through my devout promises to myself last year and find I do not need to address any new 2026 resolutions as, just like our government, the resolutions from 1863 until January 2026 will suffice.
Therefore, I resolve to give up on exercising more, saving more, losing more weight, being nicer, helping out around JPeg Osage Ranch more and restraining my penchant to gossip about politics. After all, not one of my 2025 ideas that I have offered to our leaders has even been acknowledged, much less implemented.
I, therefore, resolve my 2025 resolutions shall “perish from the earth” should anyone be interested.
The Reasons For The Season
Clark Griswold is a Christmas everyman. He is to a family Christmas reunion what Oedipus was to reunions with his father, whom he kills, and his mother, whom he marries. Both Oedipus and Clark performed well intentioned acts which resulted in disasters. That illustrates one of the main problems for all writers after the Classical Age of Greece. Such playwrites and philosophers as Sophocles already wrote 2,500 years ago the plots the rest of us just keep repeating in different formats, such as this Gavel Gamut column.
As for the hapless Clark Griswold, all he wants is to provide his family with “A good ‘ole family Christmas” and fate punishes his every move. By the end of the National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation movie (1989), Clark has destroyed his and his neighbor’s homes, has enabled the explosion of a public sewer and the kidnapping of his boss by Clark’s idiot cousin. All-in-all, Clark’s nostalgic yearnings turn out to be just what many lovers of the Christmas season secretly dread is bound to be a fait accompli, no matter how hard they try to put the perfect bow on the Christmas family holiday.
At our home in our isolated prairie cabin, Peg makes sure we do not succumb to the vanities of a Perfect Family Christmas. She is forever hopeful and positive about what makes each season bright. She starts decorating for Christmas as soon as the pilgrim and turkey touches are put away even though nobody but she and I ever see even one of the “twinkling little lights” at JPeg Osage Ranch. Then she will begin orchestrating storing the Santa Clauses, etc., for 2026 before we finish our glasses of New Year’s champagne.
However, as Clark Griswold explains while he is standing among the ashes of his Christmas tree that burned up when his drunken Uncle Louis lit his cigar, Christmas means something different to everyone. It is not truly about presents and decorations but:
“The most enjoyable traditions of the season are best enjoyed
in the warm embrace of kith and kin.”
This is so even if there is geographical distance between us and our friends and family members.
Clark is right, even if it took a few disasters for him to realize what is truly important, and not just at Christmas. So, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to and from our family to yours, Gentle Readers!
A Wee Philosophy
Robert Burns (1759-1796), Scotland’s best-known poet and farmer, was ploughing his field one day when he upended a mouse’s winter nest. The poem Burns wrote in the original Scots language, “To A Mouse”, is as difficult to decipher as Peg and I found trying to comprehend conversations when we visited Scotland. Therefore, I will cite the English version that in part says to the “Little, sleek, cowering timorous beast”:
“I’m truly sorry man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union,
And justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes you startle,
At me, your poor earth-born companion and fellow mortal?
….
But Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes of Mice and Men
Go oft awry,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain .…”
Then Burns turns his thoughts inward towards his own fate:
“Still you are blessed compared with me!
The present only touches you:
But Oh? I backward cast my eye,
On prospects dreary!
And forward, though I cannot see, I guess and fear.”
In other words, the mouse may have lost his present home, but it is not burdened with regrets from the past or dread of the future. Shelter alone is the mouse’s concern, but Burns is chained to past misfortunes and the possibilities of future disasters, much as each of us humans are. The mouse’s loss of a temporary home pales in comparison to mankind’s sentient reality.
Gentle Reader, you may wonder what these two conflicting perspectives have to do with anything. Of course, you may not even take note. However, to me the dilemma between the Wee Beastie’s loss of a nest and Burns’ acknowledgement that “ignorance may be bliss” came clearly into my mind when Peg said, “Jim, I smell a dead mouse in the kitchen”. Naturally, the onus was upon me to answer for the mouse’s demise and alter any more future consequences. I am married; I know the drill.
My first response was my fallback position for all domestic quandaries, I ignored it. Unfortunately, Peg was not willing to let nature deal with nature so waiting until the smell was gone was not feasible. Then I searched for a mouse corpse in the usual places, such as under the kitchen sink or near the pantry, nothing. Next, I checked around the outside of our log cabin to see if there was an odiferous source in Peg’s dried flowers, nope.
All easy solutions failed me. The dreaded, “Jim, someone (me) needs to crawl under the house to see if some animal (we have lots of them) died there and is rotting away”. Oh, the glories of flashlights, facemasks, knee pads and possible confrontations with Big Foot or perhaps an upset skunk. I donned my gear and armed myself with a large trash bag and a short-handled shovel.
After about an hour of banging my head and digging up suspect piles of damp dirt I declared a truce with Ma Nature and told Peg I thought the smell was well on its way to dissipation so we should just hang on awhile. You might already know how that resolution was received.