Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
    where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord,
    the Maker of heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot slip—
    he who watches over you will not slumber;
indeed, he who watches over Israel
    will neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord watches over you—
    the Lord is your shade at your right hand;
the sun will not harm you by day,
    nor the moon by night.
The Lord will keep you from all harm—
    he will watch over your life;
the Lord will watch over your coming and going
    both now and forevermore.

• Psalm 121:1-8

The Scripture above talks of God not slumbering in his protection of Israel, but the Scripture says nothing about the upcoming Peach Bowl.  The combatants are my alma mater, Ole Miss (the University of Mississippi) and Penn State.  I live in Penn State country.  Okay, Penn State, according to a nuclear physicist graduate from there, is in the center of the state of Pennsylvania, equally inaccessible from all four corners of the state.  Having visited there once on a job interview (at least near the campus), I agree that it was a hard and long drive, through the center of Pittsburgh from the corner where I live.

But the church’s Sunday School Coordinator and her husband are both Penn State grads.  We have talked over the past couple of years about each of our schools.  Now they are facing each other in a bowl game.  Both teams have ten wins and two losses.  They both lost to a team that is in the National Championship series, Ole Miss losing to Alabama and Penn State losing to Michigan.  Their other losses were to teams that barely missed the Championship series, Ole Miss losing to Georgia and Penn State losing to Ohio State.  The teams, on paper, could not be more equally matched.  But that is on paper.

When I see the Sunday school coordinator, likely since I teach one of the adult classes, it might get, umm, awkward.

I am not a trash talker.  If I started trash talking, it would seem like I had little confidence in my alma mater.  Why boast?  Why puff out my chest?  For one, I am not on the team.  For another, since I am not a trash talker, it would seem that I am trying to make up for what I see as a shortcoming in the team.  Otherwise, why not let the playing of the game be the only factor?  Then, I will not say something banal like “let the best team win.”  The team that wins is usually the team that shows up prepared to win, and actually shows up – since many bowl games have players who choose to not play or players that get caught up in the pageantry and forget there is a football game to play.  So, even more of a coin flip than when we started.

But as I prayed about how to broach the topic, I started thinking about why I went to Ole Miss in the first place.  Mississippi State University is where my father went for a year before he dropped out to work on the railroad and prepare for World War II.  MSU is the larger engineering school, but the Ole Miss dean of engineering at the time was my brother’s father-in-law.  He brought me to Ole Miss and recruited me while MSU did not.  Ole Miss was commuting distance from home, and I did so three full years and a couple of months of my sophomore year.

Oddly, when I was walking out the front door of the engineering school building shortly before graduation, a secretary called for me to see the dean.  The dean apologized.  He said that a student on the dean’s list would have been invited into the dean’s office.  I had made the dean’s list four times with no invitations.  An officer in the Engineering Student Body would have been invited into the dean’s office many times, and I was the secretary.  He could say the same about being a Tau Beta Pi, the engineering honorary society, member, and I was the treasurer of Tau Beta Pi.  I was president of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) student chapter and vice president of the southeast regional convention.  I had written articles for the University newsletter about engineering and about Army ROTC.  I was outstanding junior and outstanding senior in chemical engineering.

I am not bragging.  He listed all those things and said all those things should have gotten me an invitation to his office, but he was afraid that someone would make the connection of my sister-in-law being his daughter and then my accomplishments would be tainted by a false sense of nepotism.

Like the Scripture above, he watched over me, but unlike the Scripture, he was afraid to protect or promote me due to that familial connection, however tenuous it was.

So, my reason for going to Ole Miss in part was no reason at all.  Yet, the classroom size was small, and I do very well on a one-on-one basis with a teacher.  And the preparation structure, at least at the time, was vastly different.  MSU prepared you for a job, while Ole Miss prepared you in a broad sense for any number of jobs, just not the details of any one job.

As it turned out, I changed career fields and industries a few times.  Having the broad knowledge of how things worked, I adapted to new challenges a lot better.

But if Ole Miss wins the game, I will smile and softly say, “Hotty Toddy.”  Nothing more.  After all, I did not kick the ball, catch it, run with it, or tackle the person who did.

But unlike my brother’s father-in-law, at the time, God looks over me and He has my back.  He picks me up when I fall, and He holds me on His shoulders whether I succeed or fail.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.