In Chicagoland for Thanksgiving on my final week of vacation this calendar year.  I flew in on the first trip from LaGuardia to O’Hare Saturday morning, arriving before the worst of a storm that dropped a lot of wet snow on the area.

I went to the state high school football semi-final game between Glenbard West and Cary-Grove with my Dad and brother Chris on Saturday afternoon.  Chris lives in Glen Ellyn and has become a big supporter of the Glenbard West football team.  Not only is it a fun, inexpensive and accessible activity, I think it’s a nice way for my brother to strengthen his bond with a community he and his family only joined three years ago.

West is on a run of dominance in recent years:  nine straight postseason appearances with trips to the semi’s in six of those seasons and a state title in 2012.

Undefeated this year, Glenbard West beat Cary-Grove 21-6 Saturday in a game that really boiled down to the persistence of West’s star running back Sam Brodner.  Listed at 5-11, 210, Brodner earns yards the hard way.  He’s a bull.  Brodner doesn’t have an explosively quick first step.  Instead, he seems intent on surveying the landscape in front of him for a moment.  He looks for a hole and then commits to exploit it.  He fights off tacklers exceptionally well.  Brodner got loose on a pitch-sweep right in the first quarter that tied the game and it was finally then you saw another gear in the open field.  On the day, he carried 50 times for 292 yards with two TD’s.  He’ll go to Vanderbilt next year but he has one more game left as an all-state high schooler and that’ll come Saturday the 28^th in the 7A state title game in DeKalb.

Brodner was asked to carry the ball fifty times in part because the weather conditions made it difficult to pass the ball.  The wind was out of the dead north at 25 plus and the snow was blinding for all of the first half.  Because the field is laid out north-south, the side marching into the wind really had no choice but to run.

The heaviest of the snow fell in the 90 minutes prior to kickoff and during the first half before tapering off as the teams came back to the field for the third quarter.  A single plow cleared the field prior to the game’s start but a good three or four inches – maybe more – covered it again as the game went on.  Staffers with brooms tried to keep yard lines clean in ten yard increments.

In the stands, an estimated crowd of 3500 braved a one-two punch of wet, soaking snow followed by a sharp decrease in temps in the second half.  The P-A announcer repeatedly cautioned fans to take extra care on the very slippery snow-covered aluminum bleachers.

This game was supposed to be played at Duchon Field, Glenbard West’s picturesque home venue.  But five days before the game, the school announced it was moving the contest to Glenbard South which is another Glen Ellyn, IL public high school three miles due south of West.  No mention was made on the school’s web site explaining the site change but when my brother went to purchase advance tickets at West on Thursday, he was told by the ticket-seller that it was being done in the name of player safety.

Trib sportswriter Mike Clark said the game was moved because of the expected blizzard but it’s more likely rain earlier in the week clinched the decision.  After all, the forecast for Saturday was fluid up until about 24 hours before kickoff.

I think given the intensity of wet snow before and during the game, it ended up being a very sound decision to play on the artificial stuff at South.  Duchon’s natural grass surface would have been a soft, gooey mess – and it would have been much more difficult to clean both the sideline boundaries and yard-line marks every ten as they did at South.

The criteria for gaining home field in the Illinois state high school football playoffs is a little goofy.  It’s a spread-the-wealth mentality with home games awarded to the team that’s played fewer home dates in the playoffs up to the time of the matchup at hand.  Ties go to the higher seeded team but it still seems unfair to the higher rated, higher ranked team to go on the road in the postseason.  In this instance, West had the home field nod but moved it down the road and still ended up having what felt like at least a little home cooking.

The 11.2 inches of snow recorded at O’Hare Friday night into Saturday makes it the biggest November snowstorm here since 1895.  After the snow, the temps plummeted.  The nearest official National Weather Service station to my brother’s house (at DuPage Airport) registered 5 degrees F (above zero) on Sunday morning.

I go to my Mom and Dad’s house in Huntley Sunday night and will spend the week with them.

For the first time in my adult life, I have a work schedule that gives me full weekends off. Every week. It kind of landed in my lap unexpectedly.

I’m just a couple weeks into it – and it may only last six months or so – but I like it. It’s been jarring to move parallel with the masses. I’m so used to the zig when everyone else is going zag, but I’ll take it.

My lack of a normal life is exposed when I get home from work on Friday afternoon but I think I’m gonna try to take it all in and enjoy it.

I went to a college football game last Saturday. Columbia played Harvard at their really nice off-campus field in Inwood. I took the train up there and sat on the Harvard side of the field. It was ten bucks to get in. Ivy League football isn’t the SEC but it’s a good brand of game. Columbia has been an Ivy doormat in football for forever but apparently wants to change that given its hire of the all-time winningest coach in FCS history. Columbia somehow enticed former Penn coach Al Bagnoli out of retirement. This is year #1 for Bagnoli who was said to receive a five-year deal from Columbia with the attached promise the football budget would go up at least 50-percent.

Harvard was undefeated going in and won by eight but Columbia was competitive on both sides of the ball, especially on defense. Bagnoli is the real deal although Columbia inexplicably followed up its stout effort against Harvard with a dud in Ithaca getting shut out by a lousy Cornell team 3-nil.

If you want a true college football experience and never thought you’d find it in the five boroughs, I’d recommend hitting a Columbia game. It’s easy to reach and cheap to get in. Concession prices are low. Dinosaur Barbeque has a stand there. The game program is free. You can basically sit wherever you want but there is some atmosphere. I really got a kick out of Harvard’s band. They filled gaps in play with unique sounds. They were having fun throughout and it rubbed off on those around them.

Let’s see if Bagnoli can complete a full turnaround. It’s not at the top of the university’s mission but it’s a fun time to follow Columbia and the Ivy League.

The second Saturday in my new routine was yesterday. I ordered pizza, watched Bama/Miss St and then went out to see LVL UP at Baby’s All Right. I had a couple at East River Bar and then went to the rock venue. The guy working the door said it was “sold out” but then added “I can sell one more.” Admission was $15. The headliner was Dilly Dally but I have a hard time watching anyone play after LVL UP given how great they are. So I didn’t dilly dally. I left after LVL UP’s awesome 35 minute set. They opened with a couple new ones which were awesome. The sound at Baby’s is almost always spot on. There was no mention by the band about Paris – nor did security at the door do anything obviously different on the way in.

-On Mizzou, my alma mater: I’m not there nor do I have a full handle on day-to-day doings on campus but I started paying attention to the story when the hunger striker launched his effort and would not have predicted the dominoes to fall as they did. When Mizzou’s President cited Psalms in his resignation speech, any compassion I had for the guy left me. My main reaction to the story and the subplots is that the only way to truly address racism at any institution whether it’s a school or workplace or neighborhood is to populate it with diversity. When I went to Mizzou, less than 1 in 10 students were black. That ratio remains much the same all these years later. It’s out of whack. The one in 10 or 11 is always gonna feel isolated. The white majority in that scenario will not benefit from the rewarding knowledge and understanding that comes with the melting pot. The incidents cited by those upset with the climate at Mizzou would not fester or find space in a community that is more broadly represented by the way our world looks. That you have administrators in a university setting acting tone deaf is something worthy of highlighting. But the real fight and focus here ought to be on the enrollment, the cost of higher ed and how we make our student body more diverse.