So we all learned the story of the first Thanksgiving, right? A bunch of Pilgrims on-board the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620 and set up a new colony. A year later, in 1621, they held a feast with the local Wampanoag tribe to celebrate the first successful harvest. Then after the feast, the men, in their funny black hats with the gold buckles, watched the Cowboys game while the women, in their bonnets, hurried off to go shopping. (OK, some of that may not be entirely accurate.)
But seriously, have you ever really thought about that story, about who the Pilgrims were? Dictionary.com defines a pilgrim as “a person who journeys, esp. a long distance, to some sacred place as an act of religious devotion”, and that’s exactly who the Plymouth settlers were. They were Puritans, English separatists who believed that the Church of England had become so tainted by politics and man-made doctrine that it was beyond reform. Many of them had initially fled England for Holland before joining up with another group of Puritans to settle in the New World.
This wasn’t an easy task. There were no guarantees that any of them would survive, and in fact two of the pilgrims died even before reaching land. Disease was rampant, food was scarce, the weather was extremely harsh, and there was always the threat of attack from the native tribes in the region. But they came anyway, not for financial gain — as those who settled in Virginia did — but because of their devotion to God.
And I have to wonder, would I do the same if I were them?
Last month 
They’ve invented a metric called the “Fairness Index”, which “measures the average ratio of the champion’s regular season record to its team with the best regular season record.” By their calculations, the much-maligned Bowl Championship Series, with its convoluted system of computer rankings, human polls, and exclusionary provisions, has a fairness index of 97.2%, while the NFL’s playoff system comes in at a mere 91.6%.
