There’s a great line in the new film Concussion by Alec Baldwin’s character, a doctor. “It is a mindless violent game. And then it’s Shakespeare.” Having raised two sons (mostly in Dallas Cowboys territory) with a sports-loving husband, I can talk football. Occasionally I’ll even watch it, as I did Monday night when Alabama and Clemson tackled and touch-downed their way through the national championship game. As good as it was, it was an ad that smacked me upside the head. Most scholarships have historically been divided between two categories: athletics and academics. What about the other kids?
Huh? For a moment, I had a brain freeze because what else is there apart from sports and academics? While it’s true a student can go to a college to study the arts, the point was that only a small percentage of scholarships go to art students. The ad was from The Taco Bell Foundation, which was announcing $1 million in scholarship money to the kids “whose passion, creativity and curiosity may just be what changes the world.” Wow. Not just the money, but the fact that the ad appeared during the biggest college football game of the year. A 30-second ad cost about $1.2 million. Maybe Taco Bell got a discount? I have no idea, but I will tell you that the ad didn’t seem to register with any of the sports enthusiasts who wrote about the game. In all the blow-by-blow coverage, I saw no mention of it. But Taco Bell has a website for the scholarship program, which is called Live Mas. They’re planning to give out 220 scholarships ranging from $2,500 to $25,000 totaling $1 million in 2016, the inaugural year for the program. The deadline to apply is January 31st, and the application sounds fun and relatively simple. Make a 2-minute video that tells the story of your life’s passion. Thirty-plus years ago that could have been someone like Steve Jobs, the college drop-out who changed the way we buy and listen to music–along with a few other things.
It’s a bright start to the New Year. What could be next? As long as imagination and art exist in the world, I have hope.