It’s great to be back in Grinnell for another semester. We just wrapped up our second week of classes, although based on how much work I’ve been doing it already feels like midterms. It doesn’t help that in my infinite wisdom I decided to schedule all four of my classes in a row, meaning every hour I have ten minutes to scurry across campus on sheets of ice in subzero temperatures.

I’ve also begun writing weekly articles covering campus sports for the Scarlet and Black, our campus newspaper at Grinnell. I’ll be posting my most recent one in full shortly, but until then here’s a link to last week’s article. Although writing for the S&B doesn’t pay much, it’s a great way to keep working on my writing ability, especially when I’m assigned to cover sports that I don’t know as well as football. I also get to meet cool people and pretend that I’m important, so I’d chalk that up as a plus. I’ve also been asked to begin providing content for the Grinnell Football blog, a responsibility I’m not quite sure I should be trusted with. Hopefully as long as I stay away from the fart jokes our coaching staff will tolerate my increased online presence.

With the advent of a new semester comes constant reminders from professors and coaches that I should be doing schoolwork, although I still find myself playing unhealthy amounts of Mario Kart. The way I see it, I don’t need a logic class when I’ve learned enough logic about how to properly use green shells on Rainbow Road. Why should I be concerned with how to start my paper when I’m still trying to finish watching season 4 of Dexter?

I should feel nice and recharged, having had five weeks off to play Call of Duty and blow bubbles with my own spit. But the academic rigors of Grinnell have reduced my willpower to shreds in a matter of two weeks.

It doesn’t help that since I’ve been back, Iowa has been in a consistently ball-freezing state of weather. I’d rather not get up at 6 AM to lift with the team when it’s almost cold enough to make my snot freeze (not to mention, it’s 6 in the frickin’ morning). To counteract the extra harsh cold brought on by living somewhere that doesn’t have mountains to protect me from the wind, I now have an Under Armour ski mask/face guard/burglar’s accessory.

Above: Am I about to break into your house or just heading to the dining hall? You decide.

I get some weird looks walking around on campus looking like a 265-pound ninja, but I figure since I chose to be in Iowa instead of California I have to figure out a way to keep from going into cold shock and hypothermia.

Things have been going especially well for football. I’m trying to step up and be more of a leader for the team now that I actually know the guys I’m playing with a lot better. At CC, I found that I grew a lot closer to my teammates in the offseason, and that’s definitely the case here at Grinnell. I see most of the guys working out in the weight room and in Coach Hawsey’s speed and conditioning class, and we all hang out on the weekends and have a good time. Being able to still be a part of football (and being able to go out and have fun on the weekends) is what keeps us all sane during tough classes.

We’re focusing on doing a better job of everything as a team, whether that means pranking Coach Hawsey (I didn’t do it, Coach) or reaching out to the community. Tonight at 7 we’re hosting a fundraiser to help out the family of a Grinnell College staff member whose house recently burned down. We’re having campus celebrity and linebacker extraordinaire Cody Weber do his guitar and singing thing to attract some donations for the whole shindig. I had originally considered live blogging the event because it’s a positive thing for Grinnell Football and the College as a whole. I then decided that lugging my computer around a crowded concert/fundraiser was probably a great way to break my computer, so now I’ll be semi-live tweeting the whole event on my Twitter page. Check it out if you think you’re cool enough.

Although I plan on talking about the event tomorrow-ish, as well as dropping some other goodies on the blog this weekend (keep an eye out for a paper from my Coaching Methods class), I thought I’d leave everyone with the music of Grinnell’s own Cody Weber:

Questions? Comments? E-mail me at chris [at] thed3experience.com. All original material copyright © 2008-2010 Chris Jarmon.

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• You know it’s time for winter break to be over when you spend part of your day learning the c-walk. #
• Just saw a guy wearing one of those swine flu masks in the airport. Had the overwhelming urge to go up and ask him, “do you have SARS?” #
• Just arrived in the great state of Iowa. Boy, what a wonderfully bleak landscape. #
• Now that I think of it, landing in Iowa in January is eerily reminiscent of Rocky landing in Russia in Rocky IV. #
• Jason Giambi is going to look fantastic in a Rockies uniform. Maybe he can help us not get swept in the World Series. #
• It’s almost 8:30 in the dorm and I woke up smelling syrup. Not sure if it’s a mirage or some crazy kid cooking french toast in their room. #
• It’s become pretty typical to wake up on a Sunday and find someone passed out on the bathroom floor. Funny that it’s always someone I know. #
• Tim Tebow might not make the pro bowl every year, but he’s a guaranteed annual Walter Payton Man of the Year candidate. #
• Tomorrow morning at 8 AM it will be time to start another academically brutal semester at Grinnell College: where GPAs go to die. #
• Just finished a draft of my first article at the S&B, Grinnell’s campus paper. Making 20 bucks to feed into my college tuition wood chipper. #

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• Maybe I’m just a homer, but I find the NFL Playoffs much less exciting without Josh McDaniels swearing on camera on the sidelines. #
• Truly impressive feat. Seau will always be one of my all-time favorites. RT @NFLFanHouse: Junior Seau Completes 20th Season #
• I don’t carry around those lame survival guides. I just carry this: http://macgyver.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_problems_solved_by_MacGyver #
• This Pack-Cards game is nuts. Any time you score 45 points in regulation and still have a chance to lose, you know your defense sucks. #
• What a crazy ending to the game. Scoop sixes are always exciting. #
• The new Grinnell website has been unveiled. New look, same Vista-esque lack of functionality. http://www.grinnell.edu #
• Based on how many teams are going after Denver’s assistants, I’m gaining a lot of respect for McDaniels and his ability to run a program. #
• Tony LaRussa is a mess on Sportscenter right now. They’re interviewing him via phone and you can hear his computer and cell phone going off. #
• Lately the Colorado Avalanche’s games have been going to a shootout more often than Brett Favre goes to the bathroom (Flomax, my friend). #
• I would personally take Mariucci over Kiffin at USC, but I guess it’s their school. Tennessee is gonna be pissed though; they’ll lose Monte. #
• Today is a sad day for offensive linemen everywhere as Redskins OL coach Joe Bugel retired; he nicknamed the Redskins OL “The Hogs” in 1982. #
• I just realized that based on the way my hair grows curly in the back, I could grow a pretty sweet Kenny Powers mullet. #
• It’s time for the Winter Olympics, that magical time once every 4 years when Apolo Anton Ohno becomes relevant again. #
• Back at Colorado College’s campus for the first time since May. Gotta say it feels pretty strange to be here. #
• No more field goal posts on the CC football field. They always take them down for lacrosse but this time they’re down for good. #
• Pretty pumped to see that the Broncos will be playing in London this season. It will further Denver’s quest for world domination. #
• Based on how many juniors have declared early for this year’s draft, some of Grinnell’s seniors may have dropped a round or two. #
• If Parcells was still coaching the Cowboys Suisham wouldn’t have made that second field goal. He would have been fired after the first miss. #
• They’re not real people, so it can’t be very much. RT @KingLaserface: What’s the fine for killing a kicker? Can’t be more than $500. #
• As a Broncos fan I love nothing more than watching Chargers fans squirm. struggle. #
• Truth. RT @VeryFakeAlDavis: “500 Days of Summer”–he falls for a girl named Autumn. There, Uncle Al just saved you 2 hours…. #
• Spending the night doing a little bit of tweaking work on some of the finer working parts of the blog. Small improvements are improvements. #
• Watching the Real Sports segment about the Cowboys practice facility collapse. The video from the whole thing is bone chilling. #
• Frank Deford looks like a much cooler investigative journalist with that mustache, but the guy he’s interviewing has him beat. #
• Bryant Gumbel just said he’s always advocated for the removal of the facemask so guys don’t lead with their heads. Great idea doucher. #
• Moving the Pro Bowl date was a horrible idea. Now it doesn’t mean as much to be selected. #

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As I made the familiar drive into the heart of campus last Thursday, a confusingly wide range of emotions washed over me. So much had changed since I rode the other way in May, taking one last look at Washburn Field but trying to keep my thoughts away from the pain of leaving.

In one year, Colorado College Football had become one of the sole focuses of my waking consciousness. Now, many months after leaving CC for the last time as a student, I couldn’t help but think of how this time around a different person was taking exit 143 onto Uintah Street.

Two hours earlier I had set out on a pilgrimage in my decrepit ‘92 Camry. A box of Cheez-Its, a Gatorade and a GPS device served as my collective co-pilot. My aim was to spend some time hanging out with some of the guys who stayed behind for one reason or another, the guys who were surrounded daily by reminders of what they no longer have.

I figured that in the process of doing this I’d be able to reflect further upon my life since March 24th. I was able to figure out a piece of the puzzle during my first semester at Grinnell, but a true test of how things have changed for me would be my feelings upon returning to campus. I didn’t know how I would react to seeing the same surroundings I had spent quite a bit of formative time in. I was happy with my decision to transfer to Grinnell, but had no idea what suppressed thoughts might bubble up and run over.

Beneath an uncharacteristically cloudy sky I found a rare parking spot right next to the El Pomar Athletic Center, the dumpy building that I was supposed to see renovated in my time at CC that couldn’t even sustain the teams it housed. I considered going inside to talk to the athletic director, but decided that I had little else left to say since I last spoke with him; instead, I made my way towards Washburn Field to reflect on the many hours I had spent sweating and bleeding into the rubber-filled turf. As I observed a lone lacrosse player practiced shooting on a fraying net, I also noticed the lack of field goal posts on the field. They get taken down each year for lacrosse, but this time they were gone for good.

I met a few guys at the dining hall for lunch, and the further immersion in once-familiar surroundings felt alien to me. The more time I spent on campus, the stranger things felt to me. I remembered this place once being a home to me, but now it felt like a distant moonscape. Other than the familiar faces of friends, the place felt hostile.

While I was happy to swap stories with my old teammates and catch up on our different lives, I couldn’t help but think how at home I now feel in rural Iowa. I knew that I had made the right decision when - in the very moment that Ken Ralph told us our football program was over - I chose to leave Colorado College.

As I made the nighttime drive back up I-25, I tried to reflect on where I am now versus where I was at CC. Since March 24th - a short time that has felt like an eternity - I know that I have become a better football player (earning All-Conference a second time), a better student (with better grades than I had with CC’s block plan), and a better man. And for this, despite the adversity I’ve faced, I’m thankful.

The pain is still there, mainly because on my visit I saw the ongoing struggle my buddies are going through to find themselves in the confusion of a drastically altered collegiate experience. It was something I could hear in their voices; a bitterness that still resides in their souls. Several times I would remark on something new the school had installed on campus, to be met with “Yeah, they came into some money recently. About $700,000.” The $700K, of course, was the budget room gained by cutting our program.

I still share their bitterness towards the college, and I still miss them every day, but I’m glad that I don’t have to share their level of burden in the experience. I’ve forged my own path, and I’m excited to see where it leads.

Questions? Comments? E-mail me at chris [at] thed3experience.com. All original material copyright © 2008-2010 Chris Jarmon.

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• After Cutler left I was worried the Broncos wouldn’t have anyone good enough at throwing pick sixes. Orton has disabused me of this notion. #
• Pulling into the rec center parking lot to lift, and it’s completely packed. On a monday morning. I hate people’s New Years resolutions. #
• …and everyone’s on the treadmills. What a surprise. #
• Chris Myers: “[The Lions defensive line] broke through like they were at airport security in Amsterdam.” Ah, football: the ultimate simile. #
• See, Houston Texans, this is why you can’t have nice things: http://tinyurl.com/y86qlm6 #
• Why is it that all the people at the rec center look like people who never go at all and should start going? #
• Kool and the Gang is probably one of the better halftime music choices I’ve seen in a while. Great job by the Orange Bowl organizers. #
• If I was in charge of a university’s marketing I would buy TV ads in random bowl games just to catch people off guard. #
• You can now find The D3 Experience on Facebook. In other news, I am a new media whore. #
• That’s what Twitter was created for. RT @d3football: Better to be first and wrong than right, right? #
• Did my running this morning in a blizzard. Had to run fast or else I would have had a couple inches accumulate on me. #
• is wearing my lucky Vince Young jersey. Let’s hope it works tonight like it did last time. Hook em! #
• Everyone was talking about how Texas’ offensive line would decide this game, but right now it’s Bama’s o-line that can’t adjust to blitzes. #
• Based on how many USC guys there are declaring early for the draft, I’d be surprised if they weren’t doing it because Carroll won’t be back. #

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