Go Big Red

I’m a big football fan, and over the weekend I watched most of the games that were televised in my area.This week I started to analyze and reapply some things that I’ve known for years, but never applied outside of the game. From a fan’s perspective, games basically divide up into three parts, the pre-game analysis, the game, and the post-game interviews and recaps.In the pre-game analysis, pundits, ex-players, and retired coaches dissect what they believe the outcome of the game will be. These are not uneducated assessments. They come from years of watching, planning for, practicing, and playing the game of football. Every person who wears a microphone during the pre-game show has an intimate love of the game, and an understanding of what leads to success and failure.They spend a lot of time discussing and arguing about the fine points of each team’s running game, how effectively each tight end and receiver run patterns, and how accurately and consistently each quarterback has been able to pass the ball to the right spot. They discuss the particular strengths and weaknesses of every player on both defenses and how that plays into the particular expertises of that week’s opponent. At the end, they make an assessment of how the game should turn out, in their opinion, based on their view of the given outside influences on that particular game. Is there a significant difference in the weather? Who’s crowd will be cheering the loudest? Who will be more affected by traveling, all sorts of factors that could play a role in the game that is going to be played.This conversation in many ways mirrors what the coaches are doing in their planning sessions. The head coach sits down with his assistants, and they watch hours worth of videotape of their next opponent. They look at the formations, sets, which types of plays the opponent calls when, who seems to run the most consistent patterns, who the quarterback seems to trust more often to give the ball to, how effectively that exchange is made, who looks lost on which plays, who misses their assignments, basically a man-by-man statistical breakdown of precisely HOW that team wins, or loses.For the coaches, this is just the first part of the process of game planning.Next, they examine their own team with an equally candid eye. What plays have gone well in practice? Who’s still a little gimpy from a hard hit last week? Who can we count on to gain us yards, and eventually score us points? Who do we have that specifically counters a particular strength of our opponent, that we can leverage somewhere in the plan to give us an advantage? What plays can we use that we capitalize on the confusion of that middle linebacker who gets lost in the 4-3 every time his role switches from pass rushing to short field zone coverage in the middle of a play? All of those factors go into the process of developing a game plan. It is a full time job that starts all over on the plane ride back after the most recent win or loss. Finishing your plan is indicative of nothing. It simply means that you have a theory, and have developed a hypothesis. Your theory will be tested on the gridiron in front of a collection of well-wishers and critics. In this day and age, they will be knowledgeable, (unless they’re SEC fans. Smile, it’s a joke.) they will have an opportunity to see your experiment unfold and succeed or fail, in high-definition, super-slo-mo, with Telestrated highlights, compliments of the analysts.No pressure.With that complete, you move to phase two. The game. I won’t dwell here, because the game is in some respects the least important part of the analogy. I want to fast-forward to halftime. There is a moment, in EVERY organized and televised sporting event, that is contractually required before the coach can head to the locker room for the second most important part of his job that day. It comes in two parts, and they are critical to our conversation here, although you don’t realize that yet.Part one: The journalist/reporter says some variation of the following…“Coach, you screwed up [this facet] of the game. What are you going to do about it?” Part Two: The coach says some variation of the following…“We’re going to make some adjustments.”( You know what? That came out strong enough that I don’t have to write much more. I thought I would, but its not necessary. Just remember this, the coach makes this statement, fully realizing that he’s already spent at LEAST a week planning his strategy. But some part of it has been less than perfect, so he’s getting ready to go chew some ass, and swap out some part of the plan that’s not working, SO HIS TEAM CAN WIN THE GAME. )Here’s the point, imagine if the Athletic Director/General Manager, or University President/Team Owner came out, grabbed the microphone and said: “We’re looking good. Not gonna change a thing!”Well, I don’t have to imagine it. This morning, for the 50th time, and yes I’ve been counting, MY President said:“We’re gonna stay the course in Iraq.”Discuss???

Cry From The Middle

PCP user and infamous traffic law violator Rodney King deserves an important place in the cultural hall-of-fame. I contend this is true for more than “just” the public beat-down he took at the hands of the street gang colloquially known as “The Protect and Serve posse.” From the perspective of conversational history and its evolution, Mr. King provided us with a new cliché that slides perfectly into a language void I suspect we were unaware of. I don’t even need to describe his hall-of-fame moment to you, because I am positive your mental Rolodex has already stored it, and will allow you instant access to the image. Swollen-faced and black-eyed Rodney, [realizing that his ass-kicking, and the subsequent acquittal of the gangstas involved with it, has sparked the biggest riot in Los Angeles since the last time the blue-clad PS posse miscalculated the public’s interest in their treatment of citizens and launched the Great Watts riot(s) of 1968] looks into the camera of a local television news outlet and responds to a question about the hundreds of millions of dollars in damage, dozens of lives lost, and brutal assault of innocent bydriver Reginald Denny with the plaintive plea … “Can’t we all just get along?” It was a poignant and dignified moment from an unlikely source. They were perfect words, spoken clearly through still-mending facial bones and broken teeth. King, off the cuff and without a speechwriter, had summed up in seven syllables the complexity of what most of us were thinking as we watched day after day of the slow burn in LA.Today, I summon the muse of Mr. King in an appeal for a new approach in one of my favorite sports--politics. I love politics with a very similar passion to my basketball and football fondness. But watching this particular era of the game makes my stomach hurt.Pure politics is the process you use to arrive at policy in matters of setting up, operating, and protecting a government structure. Don’t bother looking for that in the dictionary, because it’s a Stew definition. But I’ll stand by it, and suspect that Noah Webster wouldn’t give me much hassle about the wording. Politics involves interaction with the public, discussion, debate, deal and decision-making, compromise, consensus brokering, salesmanship of your conclusions to the populace, and underlying agreement with principle. For all the talk about the Founding Fathers, I don’t believe that what’s happening now is related to what I’ve described, or they envisaged.I love America. I love being an American. I have legally carried a firearm in defense of her interests. I have earned and claim the right to speak out on behalf of the IDEA of my country.There’s no interaction with the public. All we get is lectures from the non-verbal president, and spin/talking points from our legislators.There’s no discussion. Statistically, a full two-thirds of the country is ON RECORD as saying they think we’re on “the wrong track” … whatever that is, and nobody’s talking about anything that will get us on the right track. In that uniquely ironic American way, the discussion IS ABOUT the fact that two-thirds of the people think we’re on the wrong track. Fucking waste of time.There’s no debate. Last week in the House of Representatives, in spite of the facts that:• we are fighting at LEAST two separate wars• gas at the station next to my house is still hovering near $3• mortgage foreclosures are about to reach record highs• the current budget calls for us to spend roughly $9,000,000,000,000 more than we believe or can accurately forecast generating through taxes or investments, and yes … that’s $9,000,000,000,000 … twelve zeroes, indicating trillions of dollars. • more than a year after Katrina; South Louisiana, and Mississippi’s Gulf Coast still look like a fucking hurricane hit them• 25,000 veterans who started the century in good health have lost an arm, leg, major brain function, or a combination in combat actions over the past five years• minimum wage hasn’t moved in the better part of a decade• five years after 9/11, ground zero is still a sacred hole in the ground• the average American secondary public school graduate doesn’t know, or hasn’t been exposed to as many ideas as his counterpart in virtually every other developed nation• 1,000,000 people have been murdered in Sudan. ONE MILLION MEN, WOMEN, and CHILDREN have been MURDERED in Sudan. ONE MILLION POTENTIAL HUSBANDS, WIVES, BROTHERS, SISTERS, AUNTS, UNCLES, GRANDMOTHERS, GRANDFATHERS, POETS, MUSICIANS, ARTISTS, LABORERS, CRIMINALS, COOKS, FARMERS, STUDENTS, ORATORS, PATIENTS, TAXI DRIVERS, NEIGHBORS, READERS, CUSTOMERS, BUSINESS OWNERS, PLAYMATES, HAVE BEEN MURDERED IN SUDAN. This is a point that deserves illustration. If you invited 100 of your friends to a party, and they each brought 9 of their friends with them, you’d have 1,000 people at your party. If there were parties just like yours in the 999 houses closest to yours, one million people would be partying in your neighborhood. Several weeks ago, my local neighborhood paper editorialized OUTRAGE about a house-party stabbing that happened not far from my house. The precious life of ONE young man was tragically ended FAR too soon. It was sad for his mother, his father, and our community. But let's have a bit of perspective, shall we? To equal what has happened in Sudan, a person with a submachine gun and a shit-ton of ammo, would have to go into ALL 1000 houses, and kill EVERY PERSON IN EVERY HOUSE! Now I REPEAT, ONE MILLION PEOPLE HAVE BEEN MURDERED IN SUDAN. • as many as a reported 20-million people have had lives and situations so desperate that they left their home countries at risk of life and limb to illegally come here and try to blend into the fabric of our society without an infrastructure to support them• there are literally a thousand other things our congress could’ve chosen to address Do you know the one piece of legislation that moved anywhere last week?What item would you guess rose to the level of deserving congressional attention?Your house of representatives spent September 6th in consideration of a bill to:“…prohibit the shipping, transporting, moving, delivering, receiving, possessing, purchasing, selling, or donation of horses and other equines to be slaughtered for human consumption, and for other purposes.”What? You’ve spent time around the water cooler. Have you and YOUR friends ever even DISCUSSED the fact that there are three slaughterhouses in the country that kill horses for meat, and ship their products overseas?Your congressional representative has.Don't get me wrong, I'm sure this is a very real problem with very real consequences. In no way do I mean to disparage those to whom this issue is important. Nor do I suggest that Congress should've taken no action regarding this cultural scenario. But if they could only get to one thing ... There’s no dealing or decision-making happening. There’s just hot air, and plenty of it.There’s no compromise, consensus brokering, salesmanship of your conclusions to the populace. There are just two groups. Identical in every way, including their hatred of the other group, singing the same extreme verse of the same extreme song they’ve been singing since their term started.Hey Congress, FUCKING DO SOMETHING! Watching YOUR version of the game is turning my stomach.I remember a phrase P-Diddy flaunted in an MTV campaign some years ago. Vote or Die. Well, I voted. And people are dying anyway.Of course, Sean Combs is no Rodney King.

(10 Sep 06)