With the new football season only a week away, I started gearing up for my fantasy leagues. I'm usually in at least one, sometimes two, because I love the science of football. I love any sport that is highly quantifiable, and football has recently begun to have more than its share of statisticians break it down.
To learn as much as I can and prepare, I've studied the game closely. The best sites I've found are Football Outsiders and Advanced NFL Stats (I'm open to more if anyone cares to share). Call them sabremetricians for football, and as Bill James' work revived my love for baseball, these people keep my enjoyment of football very high.
The real value of fantasy leagues are the communication which takes place between the participants. It tightens the bonds of friendship and improves the vibe in an office. People who once had only work in common suddenly have much to talk about.
The old saw that you don't discuss religion or politics in polite company should probably be revised to include sports. Specifically fantasy sports, but sports in general can be very messy. Many of us have had disagreements and arguments over sports. Regardless of quantifiability, the question of who the greatest players are will always be fraught with emotion rather than pure reason. Barstool logic tends to predominate these discussions.
One could say barstool logic predominates most emotionally driven discussions.
"Some of us will do our jobs well and some will not, but we will be judged by only one thing-the result."
My favorite coach of all time (many peoples' favorite), Vince Lombardi, was often called upon to share his opinions on business, politics, and religion. Vince was a devout Catholic, a very tough taskmaster, but he was known to have a heart of gold. His views on the relationship between success and work for the achievement of victory continue to resonate through the years. He was a man who took control and didn't place blame, he inspired people to perform a job.
His final speech is one I believe should be taught to all seniors in High School. You could build a class around this speech. It has various themes, but all tie back to the same main point. Lombardi had a knack for making sure there was only one message, but he found a variety of ways to get that message across. His message was never accept anything but the very best, and push yourself to achieve the very best.
He never belittled losing teams, never made fun of people who couldn't live up to his high expectations, but he used his toughness as well as his tenderness to motivate people to work harder and meet those expectations. After losing the NFL Championship to my favorite team in 1960, he promised his players they would never again lose a championship game if he was coach. They believed him, and lived up to that promise.
Vince Lombardi never had a losing season as a head coach. He finished first in his division in six of his ten seasons as a head coach, and second in three others. He recognized defeat was part of the game, but used it to motivate for victory.
"If you can't accept losing, you can't win."
What made Lombardi unique was the fact that he won with what was handed him. He didn't blame his predecessor for problems, he took over a downtrodden Green Bay team, and making only a limited number of personnel changes, had them in a championship game in two years. He didn't look at the team and say "we're going to overhaul this", he told the men they were winners and they could win with what they had if they took the right attitude into each game, and worked hard. Despite a five game losing streak in his first season, Lombardi knew he had the core of a winning team. He knew it was just a matter of finding the right individuals to play the key roles. He found one in Bart Starr.
“Individual commitment to a group effort – that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work."
This is what politics is about. Lombardi recognized something intrinsic in humans which most politicians do not, and certainly Obama cannot. What he realized is the coach can't, and shouldn't, do the work of the individual parts of the team. The best he can do is help them prepare themselves, and motivate them. He realized that as much as this was a team game, it was a team game made up of individuals. His job, as coach, was to get the individuals to focus on themselves and their jobs, so that each one could make the team, as a whole, better.
“Leadership rests not only upon ability, not only upon capacity – having the capacity to lead is not enough. The leader must be willing to use it. His leadership is then based on truth and character. There must be truth in the purpose and will power in the character.”
“The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will.”
Our nation is a team of individuals. It's a team that, regardless of our beliefs and differences, will still stand behind a person who is willing to lead with valor and a sense of conviction. There is a reason why Democrats today may not like Ronald Reagan or his achievements, but have a deep sense of respect for what he did for the country. They may not have supported him, but they know success when they see it, and it's very hard to reject how the country improved while he was president.
A good leader will find a means to inspire. This is why great teams have coaches who are in demand. Everybody wants to understand the nature of success. Many people try to provide shortcuts to success, but there are none. Edison pointed out that he didn't find 700 ways to fail, but rather just 700 ways that didn't work. Calvin Coolidge and Theodore Roosevelt both have quotes pointing to hard work and perseverance as the means to attain goals. So did Vince.
"Football is like life - it requires perseverance, self-denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication and respect for authority."
So as the football and political seasons progress, it's worth looking toward Lombardi as a guide for what to seek in a leader. I hope someone will finally step up and grab the reins in a manner which is consistent with the values of this nation, and use the opportunity both inspire and guide us to a better place.
And I hope my Philadelphia Eagles finally put it all together. I'm getting more than a little tired of underperformance in politics and football.
