Tag: Football

The False Nature of Teams: Reflections on the Ohio State win over Michigan

I saw some of the most bizarre behavior during the Ohio State football game at Michigan in Ann Arbor over the weekend that its worth some observational notes. I don’t watch much college football all though I enjoy the ambiance of all fall football. The details are often too boring. The students are not yet perfected to the level of the pros and I don’t enjoy watching them. I think colleges hold back people; it doesn’t enhance them. They are good for educating people into procedures and to be good employees, but not so good in turning out unusual thinkers willing to push the limits and during the game my concerns were more than confirmed. If the goal is to find one’s place into some pecking order of procedural thinking, colleges do what people spend their money on. But they do not make leaders—I find that colleges openly lie about this objective and they charge way too much money for it, yet they convince people to pay it due to these sports programs.

Watching the Michigan side, complete with Tom Brady providing commentary in favor of the “Blue” of his former school there were these bizarre statements about teamwork, and that the team is greater than any individual, any player, any coach, anything. This was astonishing to me because I hear that come out of the mouths of many people all through my professional life from the statehouses across the country to the intimate business meetings that happen hour by hour. People say these really dumb things and it makes you wonder where they get this information. Well, I know that the colleges have become in America excessive liberal factories trying to program political activism into their students and charging a lot of money for the opportunity. In trade, most companies, especially large ones agree to hire the kids from the colleges because secretly they just want nice employees who won’t rock the boat with new, breaking thoughts. They will just do what they are told and suppress any frustrations that might arise from the arrangement. But here, at the Ohio State game was lies about the arrangement, that no individual is more important than the team and that’s just not how the world works. The snake oil salesmen have obviously been hard at work in the broadcast booths of our nation’s college football games.

In the end the game was a blowout in favor of Ohio State winning 56-27. The point of the whole exercise was to make people who have attended these universities over the years, which is the point of all college sports programs, is to give those who have graduated, a continued value for their money spent. These days its like getting DLC content for a completed video game. It gives the participants a feeling of unity and a kind of family atmosphere in those massive 100,000 people stadiums where these games are played. But right after the game is done and everyone goes home, the specifics are forgotten and its off to the next thing. The whole experience is to unify people into the team concept of college sports and to coax them into continuing to spend money on the perceived results. For the amount of money that we are talking the whole scam is pretty pathetic.

So it went at the start of the game and during all this fluffy commentary about team work being so much greater than any individual, yet the results of the game was all about individuals being better than others, and the rest of the team sat on the sideline cheering them on along with the people in the stands. The terms, “we won” as was the common term used after the game, or “we lost this one,” were ludicrous. Ohio State had better individual players who picked up the team and took them to victory. In this particular game the quarterback and the running back were the two main positions where exceptional play took place, but most of the rest of the game was just a bunch of average people fulfilling their positions. Sure, the quarterback needs someone to throw the ball to, and the running back needs blockers—but in those positions, most anybody can play those roles, which is normal for the college experience. Most any graduate can be hired or replaced, and nobody would notice. But, the exceptional players J.K. Dobbins finding holes to run through or some of those deep, accurate passes from Justin Fields weren’t part of some team other than they needed to follow the instructions of the leaders in running the proper routes and getting open to make a play. The individual efforts were far more important than any collective message about unity.

Tom Brady’s comments in support of Michigan were bizarre as well. Let’s try an experiment, let’s take Tom Brady off the New England Patriots professional football team and see how many games they win. Or let’s take away their now famous coach. The lie that a team is what wins football games is told everywhere in modern culture, people buy it completely due to these kinds of recreation events justifying their comments, but reality is not being observed. The hard work that Tom Brady has always put into the game is why his teams have changed the players but they always continue to win. He is the stabilizing factor; the players come and go but the victories are the results of the many extra hours of hard work that Brady does to stay ahead of the competition. The teams under him get the ability to win a Super Bowl ring by sitting on the bench as opposed to playing for some other team where they might be expected as individuals to do more. But the truth is, they are irrelevant to the winning process, but Tom Brady is the key to a chance—and nobody else.

And it wasn’t Michigan who made Tom Brady who he is. They didn’t give him his natural talents. They gave him a chance to show it off but Brady didn’t come out of his big win over Ohio State a number one draft pick. He had to work his way up and work harder than everyone else, and still to this day he does that. That’s why he’s over 40 and still has a starting job in the NFL. Who else is going to be better than him? In the end, it comes down to the exceptional who carry the masses—always, in sports, in business, in politics—in everything. Everything. The colleges lie to justify their roles, and the masses buy the lie so that they can feel like they are part of a winning formula. But it always comes down to individual effort that leads teams to victory. Not the other way around. Everytime someone says something so stupid as the “team” is bigger than any one person you can always know that the person saying it has no idea how the world really works, and they are faking leadership. Because leadership is not about team victories, its about doing what leaders tell you and riding their coattails to success. And like I said, a good quarterback, running back, or business partner needs someone to throw the ball to. But wins and losses do not happen as a team, they happen as a result of leadership by individuals over those hungry to be led somewhere for an effort they couldn’t get any other way. That is a truth many aren’t prepared to contemplate, yet it’s the true essence of this ever-present reality.

Rich Hoffman

The Guilt of Sean Payton: Murder, bounties, and the NFL hiding behind gun control

I don’t like Sean Payton, the head coach of the New Orleans Saints football team, mostly because I’m a Tampa Bay Buccaneer fan. I think he runs a dirty organization as was the evidence of his one year suspension a few seasons ago, and I think he leads a team of thugs.  That could be said of many NFL teams, but when a coach like Payton exploits that thug culture to squeeze out a few more wins for his own personal advancement I think he opens himself up to an extra level of scrutiny when something goes wrong.  And when an ex-star player of his, Will Smith was gunned down in the street on April 9th 2016 Payton didn’t blame the football players involved for their very bad behavior leading up to the tragedy—he blamed guns and took a progressive position socially to camouflage the failure of a culture which he has helped create—and that makes him a scum bag.

Former Saints DE Will Smith and his wife were out for a night dining with friends.  One of those friends just happened to be a cop who was involved in a shooting of the father of Smith’s future murderer—later that evening—ironically.    Smith had friends in law enforcement and he was a star football player and Super Bowl champion—so he had a sense of entitlement based on his behavior.  He was doing good things with his life and looked to be a good family man.  He had celebrity friends and was the star of whatever event he attended.  All was well until he started driving home and accidentally bumped into the very expensive Hummer driven by Cardell Hayes.

After Cardell Hayes lost his father to a police shooting the city of New Orleans paid the minor league football player a hefty sum of money for which he purchased a bright red Hummer.  It didn’t sit well with the football player to be rear ended on a late night Saturday while stopped in the road.  Hayes moved toward the sidewalk to get out of the way of traffic and settle the matter with the driver who hit him.  But instead of pulling up behind to exchange insurance information, like what was supposed to happen by law, and call the police to file a report, the car driven by Smith ran off invoking a hit and run incident.  Well, being a young football player who has had to scrap for everything on every play to get what he needs in life, watching that car run from the scene of the accident was apparently too much for Hayes who gunned off in pursuit of the fleeing vehicle.  It was unlikely known at the time that it was the famous Will Smith who had hit him and whom Hayes was chasing.  All Hayes knew was that someone had committed a crime against him and he was going to get the guy.  What Hayes should have done was write down the license plate number.  He would have had his justice and everyone would still be alive.  But instead Hayes torpedoed his car into Smith at a traffic light several blocks up the road and the two drivers met on the street for an angry brawl. One thing led to another and before anybody realized how serious the situation was, Hayes shot Smith in the chest six times killing the New Orleans football star.

Hayes stayed on the scene and admitted what he had done to police and everything was cleaned up and looked to be a pretty straight forward case of road rage. But it was in the aftermath that Sean Payton obviously missing his friend and speaking with a heart rooted in tragedy said that he hated guns, and that New Orleans was like the wild, wild, west.  Payton used the death of his friend to advance a progressive anti-gun stance without addressing the behavior that actually caused the violence in the first place, and that was disgraceful.  It made Payton an even worse person than I already thought he was and he appeared to think as Smith did that his level of celebrity could free him of the burden of judgment.  For instance, if Smith was as smart as news reports obviously wanted to portray him in this tragedy, why did he participate in a hit and run?  Was he counting on making a call to his friends on the police force to resolve the issue and to ensure that he was above justice because of his celebrity?  It certainly looked that way.  Payton seems to think that he can make reckless progressive statements because the people of Louisiana want another Super Bowl win so he calculated that they would just put up with his banter without question.

Most of the people I know in my neighborhood have guns and they often carry them.  Yet we never shoot each other—even when we get into traffic accidents.  It was only a few months ago that a lady hit me on my motorcycle nearly injuring me badly.  I was literally a half-inch away from losing my right leg.  We were both armed with guys, yet even in such a crises it never occurred to either one of us to shoot each other.  I simply yelled at her, and then once I saw how sorry she was, we quickly went to the business of settling the accident.  It was a very civil way to settle a tragedy.  It certainly didn’t devolve into the kind of violence that killed Will Smith.  That is because the problem isn’t guns, its behavioral science.  The football culture that Will Smith and Cardell Hayes lived within is built on primal valor and coaches like Sean Payton exploit that pent-up energy to win football games. For young people like Smith and Hayes—who often grow up fatherless, but find social redemption in popular gladiator sports the ethics on a football field often depend on an eye for an eye mentality.  There is a lot that goes on during a football game psychologically that never shows up on a television screen for which Smith and Hayes have made their livings and it’s not easy to turn all that off for civilian life.  Many football players have a hard time with that adjustment.  Will Smith was apparently attempting to do that and he was mostly successful.  But when you play a game where the alpha male rules the field and that an entire team depends on your ability to assert that dominance over other alpha males—the nature of the game doesn’t just leave the mind on the football field.  It sometimes carries over into the streets of whatever communities they live in.

Will Smith abused his rights as a private citizen when he attempted to roll away from the accident.  When he was challenged by another alpha male for attempting to flee likely they said things to each other that required in their minds an ultimate statement on who was the alpha male.  Hayes not having any other intellectual resources to guide his actions went for his gun and the rest his history.  But it wasn’t the gun that was the problem or that people carry them.  It is that we have a society that doesn’t understand how important alpha males are and how hungry young people are to either become them, or yield to them.  And for coaches like Payton who build alpha males for the benefit of football victories so that the people of New Orleans can feel good about themselves on a Sunday afternoon—he should have known better than to say the stupid things he did about guns.  In a lot of ways Payton was just as guilty of what happened in that murder as the gun was.  He breed and exploited the circumstances for which the violence was provoked in a road rage incident and like a coward—he deflected the blame to an inanimate object—instead of the behavior of the participants.  For a coach that paid players on his defensive teams, which Smith was a part from 2009 to 2011—to physically harm other players to take them out of a game, the morality of gun violence doesn’t hold much water when Payton helped create a culture that inspired violence against others.   

How guilty was Payton, well, for the NFL they came down on him hard—a $500,000 fine and a year suspension.  Considering the problems the NFL has had and how much they’ve let go over the years—Payton must have been pretty guilty.  If Payton had been a better coach and mentor, it is highly unlikely that Will Smith would have run away from a hit and run accident, or ran his mouth when cornered down the road by the victim.  We are all products of our environment and in the world of professional football; the head coach is the judge, jury and executioner of environmental influence.  Will Smith was a product of Sean Payton’s professional football teams and that product showed itself most when he crashed into Cardell Hayes then left the accident scene expecting to be relieved of the guilt.  Why shouldn’t Smith have expected to not be punished when he watched so many of his friends and fans forgive his head coach and push behind justice just so they could witness one more win in New Orleans on any given Sunday? The answer is, Smith didn’t know better and that was the fault of a culture who made him that way—and the guilt for most of what shaped that culture for Will Smith led right into the office of Sean Payton.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/thehuddle/post/2012/03/sean-peyton-suspended-saints-fined-for-bounty-program/1#.Vw-3Wo-cHIU

 

http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nfl/new-details-from-police-help-shed-light-on-smiths-shooting/ar-BBrHtMU?ocid=ansmsnsports11

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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