Patrick Kwiatkowski Coach Kwi

I was having a yard sale to clear out my late dad's stuff. It was brutal. Every item was a memory. A teenage boy walked up and stared at my dad’s old acoustic guitar. It was a nice Martin, easily worth $500. "How much?" the kid asked. "Three hundred," I said. He sighed, pulled out a crushed twenty-dollar bill, and looked defeated. "Can I just play it for a second?" he asked. I nodded. He sat on the curb, tuned it by ear, and started playing "Blackbird." It was my dad's favorite song. The kid was phenomenal. "Where did you learn to play like that?" I asked. "Self-taught," he said. "The school music program got cut. I just borrow my friend's guitar when I can." I looked at the Martin. My dad would have hated it sitting in a case in my closet. "Hey," I said. "Give me the twenty. It's yours." Music is meant to be played, not hoarded. Anonymous

Yes

On this date in 1976, “I’m Just a Bill” first hit the airwaves on Schoolhouse Rock!. #70s #nostalgia

I’ve sat in recruiting meetings where a coach pulled a kid OFF the board Not because of his film. His film was great. Because another coach visited his school and heard from a teacher that the kid was disrespectful in class One conversation. One teacher. Done. Your character evaluation is happening whether you know it or not

“Now we’re just supposed to hug and kiss everybody. You know what? Do your job right. Go to class and you won’t hear about not going to class. Kids have so many distractions they don’t stay focused on the task at hand. Accountability is going to be big until I leave,” Tom Izzo

Incredible that it was only 66 years from the first controlled, powered flight to landing on the Moon!

America only turns 250 once. Commemorate this historic milestone with a genuine $2 bill featuring the White House and USA 250 emblem. Each comes crisp, uncirculated, and display-ready with Certificate of Authenticity. Secure yours before this anniversary edition is gone.

Teachers vs Professors This has been on my mind since I first encountered it almost 15 years ago. When I was in high school, I had a few teachers in the humanities/social sciences who were really, really good: deep, serious thinkers, with lots of interesting views synthesized over decades of globetrotting experiences. As teachers, even at a nice private school, they were not real “winners” in the sense of climbing a prestigious career ladder, and neither did they publish academic papers. You could call them very advanced amateurs, and as dabblers they got to toy with lots of interesting ideas, kind of randomly assembled, without outside judgment. When I got to the University of Chicago, known for its life of the mind in the humanities, I didn't really find anybody who seemed to be as deep or as interesting a thinker as these teachers I encountered in high school. I always wondered why. Partially, it's because I got lucky with my teachers. They were the best we had. Maybe I didn't get so lucky with my professors. But today I may have figured it out: I think the actual reason is that my professors at UChicago were, in a sense, winners on an academic career ladder. It’s an extremely competitive environment, and they had somehow made it to the top. By definition, this is a tremendously powerful filter. And I think this had actually filtered against a whole group of people whom I consider interesting. This has become especially clear over the last few years, as a lot of traditional academia has been losing prestige rapidly: people are trusting the kind of professorial expert class less and less and less. It turned out that professors of ethics and sociology are just as unethical and susceptible to groupthink as the general public. And the general conformity of ideology and thought in academia is now well-known. These professional humanities academics may publish papers that are respected or even highly esteemed within their own niche communities, but this particular value system has long since been removed from what I consider interesting, or, in many cases, even related to the pursuit of truth. Reflecting on it, the heart of the matter is that those teachers in high school were unconstrained by convention and had been allowed to fully lean into their interests — kind of like the platonic dream of academia — whereas the professors I encountered in university, even when very successful, had been conformed by the academia-industry pressure cooker and their work sanitized, professionalized, and ultimately made uninteresting under the constraints.

Golda Meir, born in Kyiv and raised in Milwaukee, became Israel’s Prime Minister in 1969. The first woman Prime Minister in a Western style democracy, and a global symbol of leadership.

This day keeps getting worse!! R.I.P. Mean Joe Greene!!! 😔 🙏

Sylvester Stallone said the iconic Rocky steps scene was filmed illegally without permits just before the police showed up. “I wasn't even thinking about steps. We didn't have money to shoot there.” “I just got out of the car, I said, 'Let me run up steps, get a shot of it.'”

BREAKING: A massive meteor fragment discovered in northern Ohio could be the largest ever found in the state’s history, measuring a staggering 9 inches wide. The measurement remains unofficial and has not yet been confirmed. The rock was reportedly found near Cuyahoga County after a bright fireball streaked across the sky, triggering a powerful boom heard across multiple states. Officials say the space rock was originally about 6 feet wide and nearly 7 tons, with most of it burning up in the atmosphere as it broke apart. Only fragments are believed to have reached the ground.

America’s first federal highway wasn’t new. It followed a path that was already there. In 1806, Congress approved what became the National Road… running from Cumberland, Maryland to the Ohio Valley and beyond. Construction began in 1811. But the route itself wasn’t original. It closely traced Nemacolin’s Path, an Indigenous corridor later used by British forces during the French and Indian War. They cut it wide, laid it in stone, and fixed it into the ground with bridges like Dunlap’s Creek (1839), the first cast-iron arch bridge in the U.S. By the 1820s and 1830s, traffic didn’t stop. Wagons, stagecoaches, livestock… moving day and night. In some stretches, there was nearly a tavern every mile. The road created movement. Indiana’s population quadrupled between 1820 and 1840, in part because of it. Towns formed along its line. Economies followed. Then railroads took over. Later, cars brought it back as U.S. Route 40. Large parts of it still exist… running through places that only exist because of it. This was an old path made permanent.

How many people remember a time when Coors Beer could not be legally shipped east of the Mississippi?

HISTORY FOR CHICO! Luke Chicone is the first two-time NABC All-American in @JCUMensHoops history! More on this incredible honor for Chicone via @NABC1927 ⚡️ 📰 jcusports.com/news/2026/3/18… #d3hoops

The @JCUFootball @BuildBridge2020 Showcase Tuesday, June 2nd. This camp has sold out every year. Don't wait. $25. Use the link to register. @MacStephens @neohiohsfb @NHPreps @mgoul @Bryan_Ault @egoldie80 @Coach1Tyme @Mark__Porter @Browns @BrownsYouthFB @DreKnott @mgoul

35 years after throwing off the yoke of Communism, Poland becomes the world's 20th largest economy. The warmth of capitalism is lifting an entire nation out of poverty. apnews.com/article/poland…

Happy feast day of Saint Patrick, Patron Saint of Ireland 🇮🇪

There’s something about teaching that I don’t think that non-teachers understand: You’re running a show every day. You have to be “on” no matter how you feel physically, mentally, or emotionally, because the kids deserve your best. I love my job, but these breaks are vital!

Happy birthday to the Father of the Constitution and the architect of the Bill of Rights, James Madison. Madison also authored some of the most influential essays in The Federalist Papers.