newjerseynewsroom.com

BY STEPHEN SCHIMMEL

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

COMMENTARY

There are moments in history, few and far between, that we all carry with us as collective badges of generational solidarity. Where were you when man first walked on the moon? When Kennedy was assassinated? For the falling of the Berlin Wall? On September 11, 2001?

What about January 8, 2002? Can you remember where you were? I was a sophomore at North Brunswick Township High School, chewing on my pencil in my favorite math class: “Beginners’ Addition for the Mathematically Illiterate and Generally Incapable”. Addition was my favorite, and it was the only math class that I ever got an A in (“Subtraction for the Surprisingly Inept” was tougher than I bargained for). That’s when the announcement that forever changed my life came through over the loudspeaker.

“Good afternoon boys and girls. It comes with great regret that I inform all of you that President George W. Bush has just enacted the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). As a result, Swimming Pool Geography, Words that are Spelled as they Sound, and of course, Beginners’ Addition for the Mathematically Illiterate and Generally Incapable have all been canceled. Please pack your bags and enroll yourselves in Advanced Calculus.”

Damn you Bush, you’ve done it again. As you may recall, NCLB requires that all schools and students be held to the same minimum level of accountability, thus ensuring that all children have the same opportunities regardless of geographical location, and that math class as it was once known, would no longer be the same. It also ensured that all children be held to equal standards.

Nearly 10 years later, with the New York Football Giants sitting on a 3-2 record, it appears that perhaps President Bush was onto something. Perhaps NCLB was taken from a lost page in former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue’s diary, a post originally referred to as “No Team Left Behind.” Tagliabue envisioned an NFL where all teams had the same strength of schedule and the NFC West (worst division of all time) didn’t exist; a 7-9 Seattle Sea Hawks team would never make the playoffs (see 2010) and rookie quarterback Andy Dalton would not carry a hapless Cincinnati Bengals to an undeserved 3-1 start. That’s what Tagliabue foresaw—the type of NFL I envision for my children and my children’s children.

But alas, we are not there yet, and disillusioned New York Giants fans like me hastily fell victim to the imprudent notion that a 3-1 start meant that the Big Blue was back. It’s easy to get caught up in wins and losses—that’s what the NFL is about, but it’s important to remember that even I got an "A" in Beginners’ Addition for the Mathematically Illiterate and Generally Incapable.

In other words, the Giants have (barely) defeated the St. Louis Rams (0-4),the Philadelphia Eagles (1-4) and the Arizona Cardinals (1-4)—three teams with a collective two wins under their belts. The idea of a Giants team that lost to the Washington Redskins and Seattle Sea Hawks being “good” is an insult to good teams everywhere.

The fact is, the Giants haven’t beaten any good teams, and they’ve lost to a pair of bad ones. Perhaps Sunday afternoon’s 36-25 loss to Seattle was an unwelcome reminder that the Giants are in fact who we thought they were: an injury-riddled team with a poor run defense (opponents average 122 rush yards per game) and a propensity for turning the ball over in the crunch (the Giants turned the ball over five times on Sunday). The Giants (along with the rest of the NFC East) had the good fortune of being paired up with the NFC West for the 2011 schedule, but early-season cakewalks against the league’s worst teams are not doing the Giants any more good that swimming pool geography did for my high school classmates and me.