Tag / football

by Nathan Coumbe

Baseball follows the decline of American democracy

“Baseball suits the character of this democratic nation. 

Democracy is government by persuasion. That means it requires patience. That means it requires a lot of compromise. Democracy is the slow politics of the half-loaf. 

Baseball is the game of the long season, where small, incremental differences decide who wins and who loses particular games, series, seasons. In baseball, you know going to the ballpark that the chances are you may win, but you also may lose. There’s no certainty, no given. You know when the season starts that the best team is going to get beaten a third of the time; the worst team is going to win a third of the time. The argument over 162 games—that middle third. 

So it’s a game you can’t like if winning’s everything. And democracy is that way, too.” 

—George Will, “Ken Burns: Baseball“

I would now posit that Americans’ declining interest in, and ability to watch and focus on, baseball directly correlates to our declining democratic ideals. 

When winning is everything—like it is in the new American pastime, football—and our culture reflects that, American democracy can no longer function. 

Baseball has become the jazz music of American sports culture: something we created that truly reflects who we are as a culture, yet no one cares about anymore.

Baseball and jazz—two of the greatest cultural creations that are 100% genuine American innovations—are the same two things most Americans don’t care about, understand, or appreciate. 

We’ve traded cerebral, authentically human jazz for three-minute pop songs, mostly created by computers with singers who rely on autotune to hit anything above or below a 5-note range. A 162-game baseball season over 8 months, for a 16-game football season that lasts 5 months. 

I’ve often said that our declining interest and ability to follow baseball is an indication of social media’s detrimental impact on our ability to focus for long periods. 

Now I’m quite certain it heralds something much worse.

by Nathan Coumbe

Police escorts & football

What does it say about us as a people that we assign police escorts to every college football coach in the nation? At every game!

It’s a football game… It isn’t a debate between future elected leaders. These are football coaches!

Are we really a nation of people ready to attack our football coaches at a moment’s notice if things don’t go our way?

Do we really want to be? It’s just a game.

And if we aren’t that kind of people, then what’s it for? 

To show status? “I’m important enough for a police escort, and you’re not.” Is that it?

At what level does one become important enough to warrant a police presence at all times?

Wouldn’t security guards be enough to protect these men (yes, they are almost all men)?

Surely the police and state troopers have better things to do than this…

It just goes to show how much importance we’ve put on certain trivial institutions in our society. 

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by Nathan Coumbe

Creating Football Fans

There are two components to learning a subject:

  1. You must want to learn whatever the subject is.
  2. You must constantly engage with the subject until it becomes a part of you.

This is how die-hard football fans (and players) are made. We don’t give them a textbook and test them on all the information it contains – we create an environment where a person wants to learn about the sport, and then we expose them over and over again until it becomes a part of his or her identity.

How do we replicate this in a classroom? How can we create people, children and adults, obsessed with learning something other than sports?

We’ve gotten really good at creating a culture obsessed with football; we’ve done a poor job of creating a culture obsessed with history, literature, or science.

by Nathan Coumbe

One hundred

There is something magical about the number 100. Nothing that comes before it really has the same feeling of meaning associated with it.

Think of the first time you had $100 in your hand. Today, that really doesn’t stretch very far, but do you remember the feeling? It was powerful, a feeling of wealth, of richness, of feeling as though you could do anything and buy anything you wanted.

Or what about Napoleon’s 100 Days? He escaped from the island of Elba, rallied 1,500 men, marched on Paris, and became emperor once more. Of course, he was defeated at Waterloo and kicked out again, but he still had those hundred days.

Or maybe working out? Have you ever done 100 push-ups or pull-ups? Have you ever put 100 pounds on a bar and lifted it for the firs time?

United States has exactly 100 senators. And the other important thing to many Americans: there are 100 yards between end-zones on a football field.

100ºF is extremely hot for humans; 100ºC will boil water into vapor.

100% is total, complete, a perfect score.

Most great lists of music, actors, artists, influential people, and books are lists of 100.

There is truly something special about one hundred.

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by Nathan Coumbe

Averaging out

It is amazing that our workplaces push so hard to average out employees in a culture that places so much emphasis on sports.

“How could you have a soccer team if all were goalkeepers?”

–Desmond Tutu

On a football team, players have specific roles assigned based on their talents and, many times, physical traits. Quarterbacks don’t fill in for linebackers and vice versa.

The only way for businesses to thrive is to focus on and develop the strengths and differences of their teams; averaging them out into mindless automatons squashes creativity, collaboration, and synergy. Different strength areas in an individual combined with the complimentary strengths of others make an effective team.

If there are genuine weaknesses inhibiting an employee from performing, it must be addressed. However, to focus exclusively on weaknesses, rather than the uniqueness of the individual, makes little sense. Even as children we were taught not to attempt to fit round pegs in square holes. The shapess are different, and they are ideally suited certain places.

The same is true in work: find the right person with the right talents that multiplies the performance of a role and team.

Making everyone a linebacker makes for a losing team.

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