Looming ahead of me through the gray mist, a sea of red jackets and a wall of sound. Just behind me, a sea of blue jackets and another wall of sound. Directly ahead, 22 big bodies each tensed in a crouch, facing each other in two lines of eleven each. Somewhere a whistle blows and the noise becomes still more deafening.

The Cortaca Jug is about to kick off.

College sports has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I was an undergraduate at The University of Michigan during the height of the Bo Schembechler – Woody Hayes rivalry. It is an unforgettable experience to stand with 110,000 other fans in the big bowl in Ann Arbor and cheer on the home team. But that pales next to the experience of standing on the sideline next to the Ithaca College football team. The ground level perspective completely changes your understanding of the size and speed of the athletes. On those occasions when the play comes directly at you, you look for a hole to dive into.

That this is the “biggest little game in the country” makes the sideline atmosphere all the more intense. Ithaca College and SUNY Cortland have played each other all but a few years going back to the 1930s. The rivalry was already well established nearly a half century ago, when childhood friends Dick Carmean and Tom Decker were elected team captains for Ithaca and Cortland respectively. They decided that the two teams should be playing for a trophy of some kind, and shortly after that noticed a row of jugs on the porch of a farmhouse in the nearby town of Homer. A brief negotiation with the farmer led to the purchase of one of the jugs. Forty-nine years later, the two old friends return to this rivalry game, bringing the jug to the center of the field and pledging it to the winning team.

Last Saturday, the undefeated Cortland Red Dragons met the once-defeated Ithaca Bombers with NCAA playoff seedings at stake. Ask any Ithaca College player, though, and you would learn that for them the real stakes of this game are possession of the Jug, bragging rights for the year to come, and the life-long pride that come from being able to answer the question that every Bomber fan will ask for the rest of their lives: “How did you do against Cortland?”

It rained almost constantly during the 2008 Cortaca Jug game, alternating between a light drizzle and a heavy downpour. Had any of the fans actually sat down they would have found very wet seats, but none did. The Ithaca College students kept up their cheers and chants for the entire game, pausing only to roar their approval of a big play. In a complete reversal of the usual role, cheerleaders on the sidelines would pick up on the chants coming from the stands rather than the other way around.

Three hours later, the fiftieth line of print was ready to be painted onto the Cortaca Jug. It will read: 2008 – Ithaca 35 Cortland 13.

On November 8, a memorial service for Dr. Robert "Bob" Baker was held at Ithaca College, where he had been a trustee for the previous 17 years. Dr. Baker was one of those special people who manage to pack several lifetimes' worth of achievements into one -- he was a naval officer, an orthodontist, an innovator in the organization of orthodontic practices, and a business and real estate entrepreneur.

None of those elements of biography, though, capture Dr. Baker’s true legacy. He lived his life by a code and was not afraid to share that code with others. Indeed, part of his code was the obligation to instruct others in how to live life to its fullest. The two key elements of that instruction: fulfill your potential and give back.

Friends, family, and professional acquaintances testified at the memorial service to the lessons they learned from Dr. Baker -- on the benefits of education, on the practice of orthodontics, on strategies for good investing, on the importance of leaving your community a better place. As Dr. Baker walked through the offices of the real estate development company with which he partnered on a variety of projects, he would look into the mouths of employees and say "I can fix that" -- and then would proceed to do so, sometimes on the spot using the bag of tools he carried with him. He once took his young grandson to the Tompkins Trust Company, led him to the office of the president, and had him open his first savings account. The grandson learned that he was the fifth generation of his family to do his banking in that building.

You don't get much more Ithacan than that.

Dr. Baker believed in education. The first in his family to go to college, he quizzed his children and later his grandchildren beginning in elementary school about what college they would attend. He himself was a graduate of Cornell (baccalaureate), Penn (school of dentistry), and the University of Illinois (orthodontics). Later in life, he was a benefactor to all three of those universities, as well as to Ithaca College, which he adopted as an extension of his love for Ithaca. True to his code, Dr. Baker gave back at every opportunity.

More fun-loving than formal, Dr. Baker’s larger than life personality nonetheless commanded respect. For years his son-in-law called him Dr. Baker rather than Bob. Asked shortly before the birth of his first grandchild what he wanted to be called as a grandfather, he twinkled and said "Dr. Baker, sir."

I never met Bob Baker -- he was in his final illness by the time I arrived in Ithaca. Had we met, I would have thanked him for helping the Ithaca College community fulfill its potential, and for giving back. And I would have been pleased to call him "Dr. Baker, sir."

Last week the Ithaca College Board of Trustees held the first of its three meetings for the 2008-2009 academic year. A number of weighty topics were on the table, led by discussion of the economic turbulence of recent months and how this may impact the ability of families to invest in a private college education for their children. This was my first board meeting as president, and you can well imagine how much energy I and the vice presidents put into our preparations for every point on the agenda. And yet, as happens at every board meeting I have ever attended, our presentations and discussions were not the highlight of the meeting. Once again, the students stole the show.

Trustees on the Campus Life and Community committee heard students describe their peak educational experiences at IC. Shannon Archer ‘10, an integrated marketing communications major, described how her PR and marketing courses came to life for her while creating advertisements and t-shirt designs in a fund-raising effort for Colleges Against Cancer.

“It is a revelation,” Shannon said,” to realize that you have skills and talents that can be used to help others.”

Chris Lee ‘10 gave the trustees a taste of celebrity when he described opening for Incubus in front of 17,000 people as a member of the campus singing group Ithacappella. Sarah Hathaway ‘09, who studies communication management and design, interned on the Ellen DeGeneres Show and at the Make-a-Wish Foundation while on Ithaca’s Los Angeles program. She described what it felt like to be honored on the American Idol Gives Back program, standing on stage with other extraordinary volunteers. Listening to these students, the trustees were enthralled.

Meanwhile, spouses of the trustees were having lunch with my wife, Amber, and with some of the over 30 IC students who served as interns during the Olympic Games. Robert McHugh ‘09, a cinema and photography major in the Park School interned with NBC at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York. He was asked by a fellow intern from another college what high position his parents had at GE (the NBC parent company), to enable him to get this internship. Robert, who enjoys no such connections, felt a burst of pride at realizing how far his own hard work has already carried him.

Mario Nishihara ‘09 is a sport media major who was born in Japan and interned in Beijing with the Olympic News Service. “Every day I see something that makes me reflect further on the time I spent in China,” she said. “I will always see the world differently because of this experience.”

Listening to these students, one of our trustee spouses noted the contrast from when she was 21 years old. “How do Ithaca College students come to be so self-confident,” she asked, “so thoughtful in learning from their experiences, and so gifted in describing those experiences to others?”

I wish I knew the answer to that question. What I do know is that amazing students know how to get the most out of amazing opportunities. And the trustees, who of course serve on our board precisely because they care about the education of the next generation, are reinvigorated by every opportunity to hear what students have to say.

Trustees and the administrative leadership used the board meeting to make some important headway on key issues facing the College. But as always, the lasting memories were forged by students.

I had the opportunity recently to join a group of Ithaca College alumni, parents and friends in the owner’s box for a Tampa Bay Buccaneers football game, courtesy of Ed Glazer, co-owner of the team and member of the Ithaca College class of ‘92. The evening before, we took a tour of the team’s new training facilities, including an opportunity to talk with Coach Jon Gruden. As we walked from the magnificent lobby through locker rooms, weight rooms, training rooms, meeting rooms, and media centers, our group of Ithaca College supporters could not help but note features that we might want to incorporate into our own Athletics and Events Center, an ambitious undertaking on which the College hopes to break ground next spring.

The most striking aspect of the tour, though, was to see how strongly team images were incorporated throughout the facility. Our first hint was the giant Buccaneer flag that flies between that stadium and the training center a half mile away. Within the training center itself, the Buccaneer red and silver is everywhere, along with the team logo. Giant photographs of players in action adorn the walls, as do reminders of the team’s triumph in Super Bowl XXXVII in 2003 In the weight room, where players push their capacities and in which the team gels into a band of brothers, banners spur the players on with such slogans as “You Get What You Deserve” and “How Much Do You Want It?”

An NFL team in a typical year will have a large number of players who were not on the team the year before. Since the average professional career is less than five years long, a significant fraction of the players will be new to the league. Others will be new to the team through trade or free agency. Molding 53 athletes into a cohesive team is a challenge renewed every fall.

A college campus, by contrast, is a bastion of individualism. Students are on campus to extend their horizons and hone their skills as individuals. Dorm rooms and faculty offices are decorated according to personal taste, and adornments are carefully chosen to proclaim one’s unique identity and interests.

Despite those differences, a professional sports team and a college campus are united by the pursuit of excellence. Every day on South Hill sees the creation of several thousand stories of striving for greater insight, capacity or performance. Breakthroughs are made in studios, seminar rooms, laboratories, clinics, practice rooms, and rehearsal spaces. Students have their “Eureka!” moments in the library and on stage. Although we never come together as a single unit on Sunday afternoon to measure our progress in competition against an opponent, the Ithaca College campus is as focused on the development of human potential as are the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

On the day we were there, Tampa Bay soundly defeated the team that had previously been in first place in their division. You get what you deserve.

I chatted recently with Mr. Kevin Lee, master bricklayer, as he repaired a brick wall adjoining Textor Hall. Mr. Lee was using recycled brick from a building that had been demolished somewhere else in the region. The brick had originally been made in a now-closed manufacturing plant in the nearby town of Horseheads. The distinctive HH emblem could be clearly seen on the side of each brick before it was laid.

I was especially interested in the periodic placement of bricks that were discolored and twisted. Mr. Lee said these bricks -- known as "clinkers" -- were not made that way on purpose, but had been put in the kiln at an odd angle or baked too long. Use of these bricks on Ithaca College walls creates a distinctive mosaic of texture and difference that I had noticed the first time I set foot on campus. I asked Mr. Lee if it was common to use these in constructing brick walls.

"I've laid brick around the country and in other parts of the world," he replied. "I have never seen these bricks used in construction. They are usually discarded."

I walked back to my office thinking about the use of such a variety of bricks as a parable on diversity at Ithaca College. Tolerance of diversity implies a willingness to use every brick as a way of making the fullest use of the complete range of available materials. Celebration of diversity implies a positive appreciation that the wall with clinkers is aesthetically superior to a wall composed solely of bricks that are even in color and smoothness. But the true embrace of diversity means getting away entirely from the concept of a "normal" brick. Before talking with Mr. Lee, I had assumed that the clinkers were an intentional expression of artistic sensibility. If anything, I believed, it must take greater artisanal skill to make a clinker than to make a smooth six-sided brick. In talking with Mr. Lee, I lost my uninformed innocence about clinkers -- will I ever look at these walls the same way again?

The phrase "all humans are made in God’s image" is one that many of us hear so early and so often in life that we become insensitive to how radical a proposition that is. Can we see in everyone we meet not just someone who merits our tolerance, not just someone who deserves our respect, but someone who is beautiful and uniquely perfect?

Which I suppose makes us a community of magnificent clinkers.