Inside the Cupboard
In celebration of Marianna High School celebrating its 100th anniversary for the second year in a row, I am starting Inside the Cupboard with a math lesson.
In all seriousness, everyone knows I objected to last year’s celebration. If you are born (or in the case of MHS), opened on 9/6/1926 (school used to start the day after Labor Day), your school would be zero year’s old, correct? So, on 9/6/1927, you would be one year old! BINGO! You don’t have a birthday party the day you are born to celebrate being zero-year-old, or did you?
If you did, I want pictures.
Everyone knows how I am about sticking to the rules, reporting things as I see them when that report isn’t always popular, I’ve always done my best to verify the information. If it’s a state record, I’ll search high and low to find it before I print it – that’s just how I am. So, you can imagine my rationale behind my objection to last year’s celebration of a zero birthday for MHS football.
In reality, does it matter? I guess some would say it doesn’t. But let’s look at budgets and what it does to budgets – we are straddled financially to say the least.
Not just ‘we’ as in the school system, but all over our county. What happens when we celebrate last year and we get donations, do fundraisers, etcetera (I don’t know if we did or not but I’m sure funds were expended because tee shirts aren’t free, maybe cheap, but not free).
A 100-for-100 board is offered to former Bulldog players to have their name on the board. Here again, isn’t having played for your Bulldogs worthy of a name being on a board?
I have no problem asking for those who can contribute to do so, but not in making that a requirement. That’s like saying, “Big deal, you gave up summer time, you gave up afternoons in the fall, Friday night dates and events, spent hours on a Yellow Dog traveling to heaven knows where.”
That is a big deal and I just believe they should be offered the opportunity to have it on the board whether they pay nothing, $10, $50 or $100.
Think about this you’re talking 100 years times as many as 40-50 players a year if you include varsity and junior varsity.
I didn’t see it clarify varsity only.
Here comes the math lesson: 100 X 40 equals $4,000 times $10 equals $40,000! Double it and you have $80,000.
That is a lot of money and that’s just the bare minimum. There are many very successful people who donate yearly to MHS and I truly believe they will for this occasion, because once a Bulldog player always one and that sense of loyalty and teamwork always seems stronger in the football program and that’s the way it is from Inside the Cupboard.
