Secure the bag

Having spent a couple of my post-college years as a sports editor up in the Mitten State, I sit here with a bit of a post-Big Game glow: the Los Angeles Rams (who, coincidentally, got their start as the Cleveland Rams before moving in 1942) just topped one of my Cleveland Brown’s hated division rivals in this year’s Big Game.

Having made the painful mistake of adopting the Detroit Lions as an ancillary favorite team, I’ve always been a big fan of longtime (and once downtrodden) quarterback Matthew Stafford.

Matty Staff was downright excellent for his new team this entire playoff run, culminating in a superb championship-clinching fourth quarter performance on sports' biggest global stage exactly one year to the day he formally requested a trade away from Motor City Kitties. Pretty cool, right?

Stafford’s numbers in the fourth quarter when it mattered most this season: 71% completion percentage, 14 touchdowns, 0 INTs and a sparkling 123.2 passer rating. That’s what the kids these days call “securing the bag.”

Since I started reporting on the horticulture industry, growers have constantly grappled with the never-ending challenge of securing good employees — the kind that, like Stafford, completely rewrites the narrative and leads you and your team to horticulture’s own version of a championship.

If there’s anything I took away from this year’s Big Game — other than the halftime show being a nostalgic trip back in time to my late-Nineties teenage years — it's that finding good employees and leaders with the potential to one day be great has never been more critical.

So, how do you make that happen? Well, one of our regular columnists has some thoughts on that very subject in this month's Hort Truths column.

Here’s hoping your 2022 spring season is both fulfilling and championship-quality!