Sports Ethics: Put on a Game Face

"Put your game face on" is one of the many sports expressions that pervade American English. It's an odd expression. I mean how do you put on a new face? Much as I'd like to do it, it seems very hard. Of course in LA plastic surgeons will do it for you.

Putting on a game face means something quite important, plastic surgery aside. Have you ever stood in front of a mirror and practiced different faces, no, not guitar gyrations, but different faces? It turns out that something important happens when we change our facial expression.

The human face is so powerful and human perception is so face dependent, that faces not only communicate immense amount of information, but they influence our cognitive and emotional states. Changing your face can  literally change our brain activity. Smiling can be an exercise to become more happy; frowning can make you more sad, scowling more angry. The face is an exquisite monitor of our emotions but it is also a generator. So putting on a game face can involve changing your internal emotional and cognitive balance.

When an athlete prepares for his or her game, he or she attempts to develop a focus for the game that is appropriate to how they carry themselves best in the game. Some players play best angry or fierce. Others take on a role of care free but focused players. Still others develop an eerie calm that helps them persevere with an even temper amid the chaotic emotions and emotional momentum of a game. Others manifest a preternatural concentration that unites their body, mind and emotions into a flowing zen like movement. Putting on a game face reminds us athletes perform just like Greek tragedy actors who donned masks to play their roles.

The game face focuses and carries the player into combat. Putting on a game face also implies an element of choice and control. If someone "loses it" in competition, they lost their focus and their face reflects it first. They lose the tuned balance of emotion, focus and skill deployment that enables them to perform at their best. Many game plans are built around trying to get players out of their game face and to lose it. Losing it can be contagious neurologically and socially. Whole teams can lose their composure and you see it in their faces. Teams often know when they've won long before they take the lead by the faces or body carriage of an opponent.

Last weekend I watched the University of Washington team have what their coach called a "melt down." In the third quarter of the game the players clearly lost focus, and their faces and body language showed it. They lost some bad calls and could not let go of the calls. Their anger and frustration kept them from complete focus upon the play at hand, instead they were resenting or replaying what they lost. The team imploded with sloppy play and penalties. But the issue here covers not just players but coaching accountability. If you watched the bench, the coaches yelled and rattled around. They contorted and yelled and shouted at the ref. Several had to be restrained from running on the field.

The coaches are leaders. Their demeanor models what the students expect and live up to. If coaches lose it and yell, how are the twenty year olds supposed to keep focused on the game?

Coaches must also put on game faces. Players take their cues from coaches, and as Sun Tzu and his followers emphasized in the Art of War, a leader must be tranquil and clear thinking at all times. Coachers may think they are firing up their players, but their bulging faces and angry strutting only model losing it to their players. Their own contorted faces give permission to players to remain upset.

The coaches' faces create contagion and pass on to the players the anger and lost focus, not just energy and intensity. Coaches need game faces too and having seen enough coaches lose it and not help their teams, I am becoming more comfortable with the Bill Bellichick or Tom Landry school of keep it intense but keep it controlled. Game faces matter for coaches and players. The Washington Husky's young coach Steve Sarkesian admitted as much in a post mortem, ""I am a passionate guy," he said. "I want to do everything I can for our kids to give them the best chance to win. And I felt like there was a point there that maybe my emotions got the best of me because I didn't feel like it was right. But I've got to show more composure, if I want our kids to show more composure." Motivating athletes is one thing; leading them off the edge is another.

Putting on a game face is fundamental to being an athlete or a coach, or for that matter being a professional of any sort. Like the Greek insight into play, when we "play ball' we put on masks that help us perform but also change and reflect whom we are.

Why the Seahawks need a Leader not a "Game Manager"

Pete Carroll the coach of the Seahawks has decided he does not need a quarterback. Given the two he signed, I can see why. Carroll has fallen prey to a widespread coaching assumption in the high ego  NFL that he does not need a quarterback, he needs a game manager. When he defends his non-quarterback quarterback Tavaris Jackson, the best he can say is that Jackson makes no mistakes. He also generates no points so the Seahawks are off to another losing season with one of the worst offenses in the NFL.

I wrote earlier about what a mistake it is for a coach to seek a game manager rather than a quarterback. It all comes down to coaching hubris, but also the thin spread of talent. I want to revisit the post to explain why the Seahawks are failing and will fail as long as Carroll thinks all he needs is a game manager who becomes an extension of his will.

Essentially Carroll and those coaches like him want a manager, not a leader. A manager works under terms of predictability and implements  directives. You expect reliability and consistency from managers. The manager, unlike a leader, implements rather than creates. To be a good manager, you focus upon judgment, but very constrained judgment within a system of limited options.  Making a QB a game manager does several things:

1)            The plan matters more than the player. The QB under this rubric executes a plan that the coach conceives. In a sense this resembles baseball's VORP measure, it assumes a  minimal quarterback at league average with no real value above replacement. So the plan matters more than the player.

2)            This demonstrates a very risk averse approach where a coach/team emphasize minimizing mistakes and sticking with the plan. It reifies limits in the team. 

3)            It instantiates the utter dominance of the coach and the coach’s mind—the plan—over the talent or status of the QB or team for that matter. The QB reduces to an automaton, a certain coach’s dream. The QB's discretion exists but within a narrow universe of calls.

All teams approach games with a plan based upon scouting the other team’s tendencies and built upon one’s own team’s strengths and weaknesses. As Dwight Eisenhower reminded us, “plan, but don’t trust the plan.” A good plan serves as a frame to guide and probe and then adapt to what the other side throws at you. A game manager approach minimizes the guide and maximizes the plan is the plan, a soviet approach to play.

The problem with game manager approach to football lies in the rigidity and predictability. It places severe self-imposed limits it puts on the QB, the team and even the coach. The coach has defined as out of range an array of tactics and strategies for the QB and team. Having a game manager philosophy narrows the job of the opposing defense because they know what not to expect and can concentrate upon the limited repertoire of the game manager.

No plan survives contact with the enemy, and game managers are not trained to overcome adversity or surprise. Game managed team do not come back when down. A game managed team will struggle facing new alignments or surprises. The plan dominates the mind set and schemes, but plan driven teams leave very little room in its captain, the QB, to improvise and adapt. Worse a game manager is not given the chance to grow into a leader and to inspire confidence and high performance from his team when faced with challenges. Managers manage existing resources, they do not lift the performance level to new levels under pressure. Leaders and quarterbacks to that, not game manager mimics of a coach.

All you have to do is see the miserable state of the Seahawks offense. It is not that they are not scoring but they are not even creating runs or series yardage gains. The other teams know so well what limited things the Seahawks will do and they know that the quarterback is under orders to take the least risky approach, that they can be overly aggressive and not worry about repercussions or surprises. So their yards per carry and yards per pass are exceptionally low and it is not just about the talent. It is about a system that precludes innovation and adaption under pressure. That is what a game manager and a game managing coach breed.

Another language exists to describe quarterbacks—leader, playmaker, captain, game-changer. This can flow from talent and skill, but it also describes an attitude of player and coach. More than a few of the game manager QBs reflect a coaching assessment of their limited talent. It reflects the coach's lack of confidence in their players and overconfidence in themselves. It reflects a coach who is not willing to risk the mistakes that growth requires. The plan/manager approach locks in limitations before the game starts. It represents the triumph of risk assessment over play.

Reset Games: the Logic of Football

The Seahawks numbed my mind this weekend with seven punts and one failed fourth down try. But what struck me beyond the futility of it all was watching the repetition of a sequence. Before the punt, all the action stopped and two totally different groups of players ran onto the field; they punted, returned, then stopped the action, had a commercial and then two other completely different groups of specialized players ran onto the field.

Now this happens so often we take it for granted. But think about this. Unlike in life, in football all the action just STOPS. The game STOPS AND RESETS. The players huddle, coaches call different plays for offense and defense, then the down plays out and action stops and the whole cycle repeats itself.

The game stops. I mean think about it! The game just stops, everyone regroups and starts again. Would that life was so accommodating.

Football epitomizes an entire class of games I call reset games. The shape of the game and competition is determined by full stops in the action. At the end of a play, not even a point, everything stops. A new play can be called; players take their positions and then they play again. Each team has time to regroup and call a play. The reset effect is amplified because teams turn over positions—the teams switch from offense to defense with a staid almost ritual transition. So after three and out and punt, the other side gets the ball. Each team gets to play offense and defense in sequence. Volleyball, tennis, baseball and softball all have the same reset structure, but I will focus upon football.    

       

Reset gives a sport a particular cast. First, it injects the coach far more aggressively into the game. Each reset gives the coach time to call a play, talk/yell at players, adjust to the other side and send in substitutions. This injection makes the games more cerebral because not only can coaches call plays and substitute, but they can change a formation or recast it with new players. Each coach endlessly adjusts to micro-changes from the other side resulting in an interactive battle of wits.

Second, reset games spawn specialization and place immense stress upon stopping the other side. Not only does play stop after each point or score, but in football, if the other team does not score within an allotted time/down sequence, it loses the ball. So team defense becomes incredibly important not just to stop the offense, but to gain the ball back for the offense to score again. Volleyball and tennis changes this dynamic even more when a defensive stop actually gets a point awarded to the successful defender.  Reset games place huge emphasis upon defense and specialists.

Third, reset sports have rhythms but not flows. The reset stops play. Runs and cascading moment are discouraged; reset sports slow pacing, undercut momentum and give chances to regroup. The games move with stop/start staccato rhythms. These stops break momentum and give teams chances to recover, and unless complete collapses occur teams can claw back into games.

Fourth, reset games spawn elaboration and complexity in their offenses and defenses, and football represents the most luxuriant growth of this. Because they have the time to stop, think, reset and play again, coaches anticipate and scout and prepare packages and sets just designed for the other team. Modern football breeds unbelievable complexity in play design, scouting, adjustment and specialization. All this is made possible by the combination of reset and substitutions.

The pattern of allowed substitutions profoundly alter reset games. Free substitutions permit coaches to constantly tinker with teams and invite intense specialization. In football whole new teams come for punts or offense and defense. Coaches fine tune formations by putting in specialists for nickel defenses or running or passing plays. If you limit substitutions like in baseball or arrange them like in volleyball, the game becomes much less specialized or unit oriented.

Stop. Think. Reset. Play again. Stop. Think. Reset. This reset structure means that players can reflect and adapt or they can disengage. If they are struggling with the other teams offense or actions, it terminates action for a second. The reset can protect teams from roll ups and huge runs. Each play can be analyzed and adapted to. In football it evolves into elaborate chess matches where teams have studied each other’s tendencies and personnel and have time to implement them because of the stops.

The reset configuration unleashes a bonanza for TV and radio. Each reset offers time for commercials, and now the reset times are determined by commercial breaks. The commercials themselves are constructed to fit within the time of reset.

The structure points to strategies to take advantage of it. The hurry up offenses or no huddle offenses are all designed to disrupt the specialization and regrouping aspects of reset games. Oregon’s speed demon offense lives as much by its ability to disrupt and tire the other team as by its sophisticated approach to the game. But it depends upon subverting the default rhythms of the game.

Reset games encourage disruptive tactics. Because teams rely upon reset and coaching domination, teams tend to plan and invest in sets. If an opponent comes up with surprises or finds a weakness, it discombobulates the other team. Specialization, planning and commitment become a problem as the team and coaches struggle to adapt to the surprise or the suddenly exposed weakness.

Finally reset games encourage teams to get try to work on headgames and influence the other team's mind set. Because of the time to stop and think, reset games can lead to over-thinking. The stop, reset, play pattern lures players to think too much, and the cognitive pattern of thinking diffuses their attention and undermines their pattern recognition and reaction time. Given the speed and force of modern sports, players depend upon trained pattern recognition and trained reaction, if they stop to think, their game dissipates. The same thing can happen to coaches who get twisted up in trying to anticipate the next move and fall back on predictable patterns.

The reset logic highlights how football is just a game with invented rules. We need to remember that despite our penchant to saturate life with sports metaphors, life does not offer instant resets. Life does not stop time and permit substitutions. Life is not football and we should not forget that.

Sports Ethics: Playing with a Chip on the Shoulder

I was reading an interview with some USC players who talked about how they were handling the pressures of fewer scholarships and another year of probation. One player proclaimed, “we have a huge chip on our shoulders. It will motivate us.”

I have always been struck by that phrase “chip on a shoulder.” I wonder what it means in athletics as a form of identification and motivation. A lot of players carry it as a badge of honor, and coaches build cultures around a chip on a shoulder like the New York Jets. Isiah Thomas a wonderful guard here at UW talked about being drafted last in the NBA draft as "just one more chip to add to my shoulder," and talked about how he would prove everyone wrong.

The term chip on a shoulder grew up in the 18^th century where workers at the London shipyards would put a wood chip on their shoulder to dare another worker to “knock their block off.” A man with a chip on his shoulder lives by challenging others and must prove again and again that they can best others. Their chipped attitude defies everyone around them as possible enemies to be knocked down.

A chip on a shoulder signals a wound, a deep wound that never heals. The person or team with a chip on their shoulder must prove themselves over and over again. Somewhere somehow they believe they did not get their due and have to prove their worth over and over.

The player or team is motivated because deep down they feel disrespected or unjustly criticized. Worse, someone else gets the credit or the spotlight the player should get. An abiding resentment drives them. It provides resilient energy to beat down others and knock their blocks off.

One of my least respected coaches Rich Rodriquez late of West Virginia, then Michigan and now at Arizona lays out this motivational structure well. " I always tell the players that no matter what happens, I always want you to come out with a chip on your shoulder and feel like you have something to prove every day and every game...I'm no different." This is not an invitation to grow as a human being or player in a way that sustains development or achievement.

Being driven by a chip on your shoulder requires effort.  It takes hard work to feel disrespected and to make enemies out of everyone you play against. It hardens the player and the team. Coaches like Rodriquez have to work to demean their players and instill a sense of wounded esteem inside them to draw out that anger and desperate need to prove oneself over and over again. This seeps inside a person and a player. Chip on shoulder guys are not easy to be around, not even on their own team. These players must even challenge their own team members and beat them down and this makes it hard to cooperate, trust or build a deep bond with each other. Such players don’t make good locker room folks and often not very good teammates because they are so driven to prove themselves even at the cost of the rest of the team. Teams driven and motivate by that are not much fun to play against but possess a brittleness and anger that flares but often folds under pressure.

The wounded self-worth that the chip scabs over never heals because the player or coach constantly irritates it to keep up intensity. The players never have a chance to grow up or achieve a deeper or better sense of themselves. The players must depend instead upon the relentless need to achieve external domination to prove their worth. Every failure hurts twice as much because it confirms the internal self-loathing, the secret fear in their heart the he or she is not really worth it.

Playing with a chip on your shoulder works for a while, but this approach never deepens internal confidence. A player never grows into their full potential because they are driven by the need to beat others, not develop their complete and highest excellence. It turns victory sour and defeat into humiliation.

Competition tempts athletes to anchor identity into external validation, not internal strength. The chip on shoulder approach intensifies this vulnerability. We all carry wounds to our self but we should not be controlled by them. Playing with a chip may contribute to a win, but not a victory.

"Friday Night Lights"-the Significance of Football I & II

“Can you be perfect?” Coach Garry Gaines asks his Odessa-Permian high school team at the start of August practice in the movie Friday Night Lights. Perfect, the word will have profound importance for the team later, but at this beginning of the football season, at the beginning of every football season like this week, perfect beckons players to a faultless season of wins and a state championship. To garner the championship the team must surmount the favorite Dallas-Carter, an all black power house with eight D-1A scholarship players. As the ubiquitous overlapping radio announces “It’s football time in Texas.” And this movie presents one of the finest portrayals around of the relation between football and identity by focusing upon high school football in Texas where the lineaments are inscribed with crystalline clarity.

Friday Night Lights is one of the best American sports movies and the second best football movie. The rise of fine football movies reflects the cultural shift to football as the axis of national sports consciousness. The movie later morphed into a critically acclaimed soap opera on TV. For two generations, however, the best movies and books on American sports focused on baseball, but as the center of sport gravity moved, art has caught up and FNL epitomizes this new generation of books and movies.

H. G. Bissinger’s book Friday Night Lights: a Town, a Team,  and a Dream is a modern American sports classic. It reveals an intimate painful look, almost anthropological in its intuitions, of the 1988 quest of the Odessa-Permian football team to win a state championship. The huge sign before the school and stadium announces the four prior state 5A championships as a warning and challenge to every player on the team. The community expects this team to win the championship for the town and the book, and movie etch an unforgettable portrayal of football as a way of life that still resonates today

The movie pans over the dry flat arid plains surrounding Odessa,Texas. An oil town surrounded by brown plains and monotonously pumping rigs, it lies in the heart of the Permian basin, old oil country and in the shadow of Midland. This is East Texas where football grows from the soil and players, like the warriors of Thebes, grow from the dragon teeth planted by parents and culture. Forgotten and feeling forsaken, the town defiantly proclaims its identity and worth through its team.

 “You have played since you were 8 years old,” Coach Gary Gaines, played with superb understatement by Bill Bob Thornton, tells his team. Beleaguered, thoughtful and realistic, he reminds his players, “You have dreamed of this for 17 years.” The first day of practice he informs them they will win the championship; they have no options, and by the way, neither does he. The movie sweeps along with a track of ubiquitous overlapping radio announcers incessantly dissecting the team and especially the coach.

The movie engraves the deep-rooted relation between the town, forgotten and barren, and the team, its crowning glory. The coach challenges his team “can you accept the responsibility to protect this town.” In the final showdown, he demands, “show them who we are.” The team represents the towns avatar, and generations of people haunt the players from trophies to the sheriff with his state championship ring to the disturbed alcoholic father of Don Bllingsly who tortures his son over his own failures. The team offers redemption and purpose to a town simmering with resentment and little hope.

Rooted in the soil and town, the team must be carried by its players and above all by its coach. The first glimpse of Gary Gaines frames him sitting watching film with laser intensity. Behind him stands the totem of all coaches, the depth chart with 2 deep names attached. It provides the first glimpse of the names that will be so familiar by the end of the movie.

Mike Winchell plays quarterback. His leg pumps constantly as he sits across from his mother reciting plays and responses as she shoots football situations at him as unerringly as a linebacker breaking through. Her medicines lay on the table nearby. Some families might use flash cards for French; she uses them for plays. Mike never smiles and carries the weight of the team, town and caring alone for a very ill mother on his frail shoulders.  He feels cursed, and only trusts Coach Gaines who recognizes in Mike the courage and resilience to take control of his own life. Mike’s perplexed resignation leads a recruiter to ask him, “is it fun for you?” It is “supposed to be fun.” Football should be fun, but for the players of Odessa it feels like a burden. After one critical loss, Mike Winchell bangs his head against the concrete wall groaning, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

James “Boobie” Miles stands as the polar opposite. Arrogant, self-absorbed and abundantly talented Miles is destined for greatness. He is the star and the reason for the team’s high rating. Letters from schools such as USC and UCLA rain down on him offering scholarships, although he can barely read the letters they send him. Brian Chavez, linebacker, Harvard bound and the emotional center of the team, helps him read them. But Boobie does not believe he needs to know how to read since he proclaims he will be a star and all Winchell has to do is hand off the ball to him. Boobie skips on weight training and succeeds through sheer bravado and athleticism. He represents the ideal and temptation of sport. A young man raised by his beloved uncle and whose life depends upon the dream of getting to the professional ranks. After he is hurt in an utterly senseless play, the team falls apart and loses a game. Their offense and morale collapse. He and his uncle travel to Midland hospital where the doctor tries to inform him that he needs surgery and cannot play.

Boobie and his Uncle ignore the doctor; lie to the coach, and Boobie gets into the last regional game when Permian must win. In the game he destroys his knee and leaves in pain. The coach walks over to him and turns away expressionless, “he’s gone.” No room to mourn or miss, the coach has to send in a play, find a new back and somehow hold a shattered team together. They lose for the second time and only get into the playoffs on a coin toss.  Later Boobie, now diminished from the extravagant personality he had adopted, watches a garbage man pick up trash seeing his own future. After collecting his gear for the last time, he breaks down with his uncle “I can’t do nothing else but play football.”

The fragility of athletic glory lingers behind every play along with the fickleness of fans. When Boobie goes down, his third string understudy, Chris Comer, whom Boobie had named “the water boy,” emerges as a star. By the end of the movie, all the colleges have lost interest in an injured Boobie Miles, and the town has replaced him with Comer in their mind. For the coach, the losses lead to threats to be fired by the leading boosters. All their schmoozing with him hid the moral ignominy of boosters solely dedicated to winning, heartless and racist about using the kids for their own dreams, and ready to dump a coach on a dime. It reminds us why good high school coaches are quitting in droves and how the big time football boosters mirror a deep model of callous sycophants.

The movie does not flinch from nor romanticize the physical violence of football. The day-to-day brutality of practice, the tortured drills in 102-degree heat unfold as normal for these kids. They have played in the Odessa leagues since 8 years old, rising up through the ranks culled and groomed to participate on the team. The movie relentlessly reminds us how much sheer pain a football player must endure. Chris Comer remains on the sidelines from his fear of being hit. Even when Boobie Miles goes down, he must grapple with the reasonable fear of being hit by multiple G forces. Boobie Miles ends his career in pain and despair as two players on the side slap each other “job well done.” Players stumble out unable to figure out where they are.  Harried trainers send injured players back into the chaos of the field to plug holes. Don Billingsley has his dislocated shoulder popped into place on the sideline so he can play the last series in excruciating pain. Mike Winchell, the QB, faces dislocated fingers, punched faces, bleeding scars when someone kicks him and plays on with a scary resigned stoicism. Anyone who has played or been close to football knows the sheer physical assault and pain experienced by the players. A stoic courage drives the players to stay in when most of us would quit.

That courage plays out in another way. Not only must they overcome their fears like Chris Comer but also discipline their demons. Don Billingsley wrestles with his father’s endless abuse and periodically erupts on the field causing penalties or blown chances. Like so many young men who channel their barely controlled anger, he can lose it and in the final game gets a penalty for a late hit. Coach Gaines tells his team, “We are small” and the only way they will win is with “heart,” “mind,” and “discipline.” The movie makes clear how discipline, focus and courage must exist on the football field.

Part II  follows and examines the movie's insights on race, class and community.

As Friday Night Lights unfolds, we realize that for many of the players, football provides the only order in a chaotic life. Mike Winchell escapes his mentally ill mother who quizzes him on plays. Don Billingsley gets away from the mental and physical beatings of his father. Others do the same, and the coach becomes their surrogate father as much as coach. The coach also has to bench them, corral them, encourage or scream at them sometimes in the same game to move them beyond their fears and personal devils.   When it is over, the three seniors who have played together for a decade walk away. “I will miss the heat.” “I will miss the lights,” say Chavez and Billingsley. But Mike Winchell was never sure he liked the game and not sure he’ll miss the game, for him it comes as a relief.

In this the players join with the community which anchors so much of its identity with the team and the narrative of victory that the football team provides. But for the town and the players, each game, each season ends; the evanescence of glory only remains as a haunting memory. The town and the players forge their narrative from the team, but the narrative lingers as fragile as fleeting radiance of victory.

At the drive-in an old state champion quarterback prophetically tells Winchell, “Make memories.” Don Billingsley’s father, in a moment of lucidity, begs his son,  “you just ain’t getting it…you got one year, one stinkin’ year to make yourself some memories, son. That’s all. It’s gone after that.” For most of the kids who will never play football again, not only did the game give order but meaning and worth, these are their “glory days.” No wonder the town and the older players vest so much in it, because the life awaiting them on the streets of Odessa, forgotten by the American dream, offer little.

To portray football in America also is to portray class and race. The Permian team is working class or poor. The player’s homes have large signs with their names, but no one is wealthy and most barely get by. A few rely upon free meals from local businesses a sort of natural perk for members of the team. But the Permian Odessa team is integrated-white, black, Hispanic-reflecting the diverse groups that work the oil fields. They share a deep blue color ethic and resentment. They fear and distrust the big cities. When Boobie Miles hears from the Midland doctor that he cannot play, he almost assaults the doctor and accuses him of trying to hurt Boobie's team to help Midland.  The focus upon the dream and team enabled the players to deal with the racist tensions that bubble up.

Coach Gary Gaines has to deal with the casual racism of the “boosters” of the program. They carelessly throw out the N word referring to their stars and treat them as meat for the grinder. When the championship game is set up, a  startling meeting occurs where the Dallas-Carter representatives, all black, face off against the all white state and Permian representatives. They haggle over sites—neutral Astrodome and who will be the refs. The Dallas-Carter representatives want an equal race balanced crew, the state officials expect to use an experienced crew who have worked together. Race chafes the entire meeting.

During the game, one egregious call on a bounced pass reception comes from the sole black referee and goes in the favor of all black Carter. Permian knows it has been shafted but must keep discipline and go on. On the other side, the Dallas-Carter school epitomizes a street swagger and intensity, even arrogance, when they strut past the smaller Permian team. The usually unflappable “Preacher” Ivory Christian tells Gaines, “They’re fast, they’re big, they’re dirty…plus they’re fast.” The dirty play feels race based but it’s as much about urban versus rural and as another voice over announcer broadcasts “East Texas” versus “West Texas” which might as well be a civil war.  Remember the late eighties glorified the rogue Miami teams, and dirty play just fed intimidation. The race, geographic and class conflicts spill over into the game, but the rules and demands of the sport channel it and harness it as long as the refs keep it together.

The class pervades in another way. You sense it from the hanger-ons from Dallas-Carter, but Coach Gaines has to entertain or be entertained by the well off boosters of Odessa. They visit his office unannounced with ideas for formation and package sets and demands to play Boobie Miles both ways. Every compliment to the coach is tinged by “when we win the state championship.” In the end the boosters threaten his job, and his first loss produces a yard full of for sale signs placed there by thoughtful boosters.  The money speaks but only to victory, the rest, players and coaches, are expendable.

In the movie at half time, the Permian Panthers are been battered. They verge on losing their coherence and will. Suddenly the Preacher, strong and silent and aloof, explodes in outrage at how they are playing and being treated. He demands better of his team and himself and shocks everyone even himself out of their lethargy.

Before they return to the field, Coach Gary Gaines talks one last time. He reminds them that the vast majority of them will never play football again; this is it. He again reminds them to be “perfect.“ But this time it is different and he captures the essence of athletic competition:

“Being perfect is not about that scoreboard out there. It's not about winning. It's about you and your relationship with yourself, your family and your friends. Being perfect is about being able to look your friends in the eye and know that you didn’t let them down because you told them the truth. And that truth is you did everything you could. There wasn’t one more thing you could've done. Can you live in that moment as best you can, with clear eyes, and love in your heart, with joy in your heart? If you can do that gentleman - you're perfect! “

Gaines touches upon the fundamental moral moment for a competitor—being present to self, game, team and excellence. The rest is dross.

The movie ends with Mike Winchell saying goodbye to his friends and tossing a spiral to young kids playing football in the shadow of Odessa-Permian’s huge stadium. It feels like handing on the legacy to the next generation.

But the real end is less theatrical and more real. Coach Gary Gaines is in his office and gazing at the 2 deep chart. One by one he removes the names of the seniors from chart and drops them into a drawer. One by one the players we have come to know and watch fight through games and lives drop off. Coach Gaines places a new name at the top of the depth chart. At last he comes to Mike Winchell’s name. He pulls it off with ritual care, stares at it for a moment and gently drops it into the drawer.

The season is over. The memories made. The glory passed. The players departed. But the coach and town continue the narrative with a new cast and new dreams the next day.

"Friday Night Lights"-the Significance of Football

“Can you be perfect?” Coach Garry Gaines asks his Odessa-Permian high school team at the start of August practice in the movie Friday Night Lights. Perfect, the word will have profound importance for the team later, but at this beginning of the football season, at the beginning of every football season like this week, perfect beckons players to a faultless season of wins and a state championship. To garner the championship the team must surmount the favorite Dallas-Carter, an all black power house with eight D-1A scholarship players. As the ubiquitous overlapping radio announces “It’s football time in Texas.” And this movie presents one of the finest portrayals around of the relation between football and identity by focusing upon high school football in Texas where the lineaments are inscribed with crystalline clarity.

Friday Night Lights is one of the best American sports movies and the second best football movie. The rise of fine football movies reflects the cultural shift to football as the axis of national sports consciousness. The movie later morphed into a critically acclaimed soap opera on TV. For two generations, however, the best movies and books on American sports focused on baseball, but as the center of sport gravity moved, art has caught up and FNL epitomizes this new generation of books and movies.

H. G. Bissinger’s book Friday Night Lights: a Town, a Team,  and a Dream is a modern American sports classic. It reveals an intimate painful look, almost anthropological in its intuitions, of the 1988 quest of the Odessa-Permian football team to win a state championship. The huge sign before the school and stadium announces the four prior state 5A championships as a warning and challenge to every player on the team. The community expects this team to win the championship for the town and the book, and movie etch an unforgettable portrayal of football as a way of life that still resonates today

The movie pans over the dry flat arid plains surrounding Odessa,Texas. An oil town surrounded by brown plains and monotonously pumping rigs, it lies in the heart of the Permian basin, old oil country and in the shadow of Midland. This is East Texas where football grows from the soil and players, like the warriors of Thebes, grow from the dragon teeth planted by parents and culture. Forgotten and feeling forsaken, the town defiantly proclaims its identity and worth through its team.

 “You have played since you were 8 years old,” Coach Gary Gaines, played with superb understatement by Bill Bob Thornton, tells his team. Beleaguered, thoughtful and realistic, he reminds his players, “You have dreamed of this for 17 years.” The first day of practice he informs them they will win the championship; they have no options, and by the way, neither does he. The movie sweeps along with a track of ubiquitous overlapping radio announcers incessantly dissecting the team and especially the coach.

The movie engraves the deep-rooted relation between the town, forgotten and barren, and the team, its crowning glory. The coach challenges his team “can you accept the responsibility to protect this town.” In the final showdown, he demands, “show them who we are.” The team represents the towns avatar, and generations of people haunt the players from trophies to the sheriff with his state championship ring to the disturbed alcoholic father of Don Bllingsly who tortures his son over his own failures. The team offers redemption and purpose to a town simmering with resentment and little hope.

Rooted in the soil and town, the team must be carried by its players and above all by its coach. The first glimpse of Gary Gaines frames him sitting watching film with laser intensity. Behind him stands the totem of all coaches, the depth chart with 2 deep names attached. It provides the first glimpse of the names that will be so familiar by the end of the movie.

Mike Winchell plays quarterback. His leg pumps constantly as he sits across from his mother reciting plays and responses as she shoots football situations at him as unerringly as a linebacker breaking through. Her medicines lay on the table nearby. Some families might use flash cards for French; she uses them for plays. Mike never smiles and carries the weight of the team, town and caring alone for a very ill mother on his frail shoulders.  He feels cursed, and only trusts Coach Gaines who recognizes in Mike the courage and resilience to take control of his own life. Mike’s perplexed resignation leads a recruiter to ask him, “is it fun for you?” It is “supposed to be fun.” Football should be fun, but for the players of Odessa it feels like a burden. After one critical loss, Mike Winchell bangs his head against the concrete wall groaning, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

James “Boobie” Miles stands as the polar opposite. Arrogant, self-absorbed and abundantly talented Miles is destined for greatness. He is the star and the reason for the team’s high rating. Letters from schools such as USC and UCLA rain down on him offering scholarships, although he can barely read the letters they send him. Brian Chavez, linebacker, Harvard bound and the emotional center of the team, helps him read them. But Boobie does not believe he needs to know how to read since he proclaims he will be a star and all Winchell has to do is hand off the ball to him. Boobie skips on weight training and succeeds through sheer bravado and athleticism. He represents the ideal and temptation of sport. A young man raised by his beloved uncle and whose life depends upon the dream of getting to the professional ranks. After he is hurt in an utterly senseless play, the team falls apart and loses a game. Their offense and morale collapse. He and his uncle travel to Midland hospital where the doctor tries to inform him that he needs surgery and cannot play.

Boobie and his Uncle ignore the doctor; lie to the coach, and Boobie gets into the last regional game when Permian must win. In the game he destroys his knee and leaves in pain. The coach walks over to him and turns away expressionless, “he’s gone.” No room to mourn or miss, the coach has to send in a play, find a new back and somehow hold a shattered team together. They lose for the second time and only get into the playoffs on a coin toss.  Later Boobie, now diminished from the extravagant personality he had adopted, watches a garbage man pick up trash seeing his own future. After collecting his gear for the last time, he breaks down with his uncle “I can’t do nothing else but play football.”

The fragility of athletic glory lingers behind every play along with the fickleness of fans. When Boobie goes down, his third string understudy, Chris Comer, whom Boobie had named “the water boy,” emerges as a star. By the end of the movie, all the colleges have lost interest in an injured Boobie Miles, and the town has replaced him with Comer in their mind. For the coach, the losses lead to threats to be fired by the leading boosters. All their schmoozing with him hid the moral ignominy of boosters solely dedicated to winning, heartless and racist about using the kids for their own dreams, and ready to dump a coach on a dime. It reminds us why good high school coaches are quitting in droves and how the big time football boosters mirror a deep model of callous sycophants.

The movie does not flinch from nor romanticize the physical violence of football. The day-to-day brutality of practice, the tortured drills in 102-degree heat unfold as normal for these kids. They have played in the Odessa leagues since 8 years old, rising up through the ranks culled and groomed to participate on the team. The movie relentlessly reminds us how much sheer pain a football player must endure. Chris Comer remains on the sidelines from his fear of being hit. Even when Boobie Miles goes down, he must grapple with the reasonable fear of being hit by multiple G forces. Boobie Miles ends his career in pain and despair as two players on the side slap each other “job well done.” Players stumble out unable to figure out where they are.  Harried trainers send injured players back into the chaos of the field to plug holes. Don Billingsley has his dislocated shoulder popped into place on the sideline so he can play the last series in excruciating pain. Mike Winchell, the QB, faces dislocated fingers, punched faces, bleeding scars when someone kicks him and plays on with a scary resigned stoicism. Anyone who has played or been close to football knows the sheer physical assault and pain experienced by the players. A stoic courage drives the players to stay in when most of us would quit.

That courage plays out in another way. Not only must they overcome their fears like Chris Comer but also discipline their demons. Don Billingsley wrestles with his father’s endless abuse and periodically erupts on the field causing penalties or blown chances. Like so many young men who channel their barely controlled anger, he can lose it and in the final game gets a penalty for a late hit. Coach Gaines tells his team, “We are small” and the only way they will win is with “heart,” “mind,” and “discipline.” The movie makes clear how discipline, focus and courage must exist on the football field.

Part II examines the movie's insights on race, class and community.

As Friday Night Lights unfolds, we realize that for many of the players, football provides the only order in a chaotic life. Mike Winchell escapes his mentally ill mother who quizzes him on plays. Don Billingsley gets away from the mental and physical beatings of his father. Others do the same, and the coach becomes their surrogate father as much as coach. The coach also has to bench them, corral them, encourage or scream at them sometimes in the same game to move them beyond their fears and personal devils.   When it is over, the three seniors who have played together for a decade walk away. “I will miss the heat.” “I will miss the lights,” say Chavez and Billingsley. But Mike Winchell was never sure he liked the game and not sure he’ll miss the game, for him it comes as a relief.

In this the players join with the community which anchors so much of its identity with the team and the narrative of victory that the football team provides. But for the town and the players, each game, each season ends; the evanescence of glory only remains as a haunting memory. The town and the players forge their narrative from the team, but the narrative lingers as fragile as fleeting radiance of victory.

At the drive-in an old state champion quarterback prophetically tells Winchell, “Make memories.” Don Billingsley’s father, in a moment of lucidity, begs his son,  “you just ain’t getting it…you got one year, one stinkin’ year to make yourself some memories, son. That’s all. It’s gone after that.” For most of the kids who will never play football again, not only did the game give order but meaning and worth, these are their “glory days.” No wonder the town and the older players vest so much in it, because the life awaiting them on the streets of Odessa, forgotten by the American dream, offer little.

To portray football in America also is to portray class and race. The Permian team is working class or poor. The player’s homes have large signs with their names, but no one is wealthy and most barely get by. A few rely upon free meals from local businesses a sort of natural perk for members of the team. But the Permian Odessa team is integrated-white, black, Hispanic-reflecting the diverse groups that work the oil fields. They share a deep blue color ethic and resentment. They fear and distrust the big cities. When Boobie Miles hears from the Midland doctor that he cannot play, he almost assaults the doctor and accuses him of trying to hurt Boobie's team to help Midland.  The focus upon the dream and team enabled the players to deal with the racist tensions that bubble up.

Coach Gary Gaines has to deal with the casual racism of the “boosters” of the program. They carelessly throw out the N word referring to their stars and treat them as meat for the grinder. When the championship game is set up, a  startling meeting occurs where the Dallas-Carter representatives, all black, face off against the all white state and Permian representatives. They haggle over sites—neutral Astrodome and who will be the refs. The Dallas-Carter representatives want an equal race balanced crew, the state officials expect to use an experienced crew who have worked together. Race chafes the entire meeting.

During the game, one egregious call on a bounced pass reception comes from the sole black referee and goes in the favor of all black Carter. Permian knows it has been shafted but must keep discipline and go on. On the other side, the Dallas-Carter school epitomizes a street swagger and intensity, even arrogance, when they strut past the smaller Permian team. The usually unflappable “Preacher” Ivory Christian tells Gaines, “They’re fast, they’re big, they’re dirty…plus they’re fast.” The dirty play feels race based but it’s as much about urban versus rural and as another voice over announcer broadcasts “East Texas” versus “West Texas” which might as well be a civil war.  Remember the late eighties glorified the rogue Miami teams, and dirty play just fed intimidation. The race, geographic and class conflicts spill over into the game, but the rules and demands of the sport channel it and harness it as long as the refs keep it together.

The class pervades in another way. You sense it from the hanger-ons from Dallas-Carter, but Coach Gaines has to entertain or be entertained by the well off boosters of Odessa. They visit his office unannounced with ideas for formation and package sets and demands to play Boobie Miles both ways. Every compliment to the coach is tinged by “when we win the state championship.” In the end the boosters threaten his job, and his first loss produces a yard full of for sale signs placed there by thoughtful boosters.  The money speaks but only to victory, the rest, players and coaches, are expendable.

In the movie at half time, the Permian Panthers are been battered. They verge on losing their coherence and will. Suddenly the Preacher, strong and silent and aloof, explodes in outrage at how they are playing and being treated. He demands better of his team and himself and shocks everyone even himself out of their lethargy.

Before they return to the field, Coach Gary Gaines talks one last time. He reminds them that the vast majority of them will never play football again; this is it. He again reminds them to be “perfect.“ But this time it is different and he captures the essence of athletic competition:

“Being perfect is not about that scoreboard out there. It's not about winning. It's about you and your relationship with yourself, your family and your friends. Being perfect is about being able to look your friends in the eye and know that you didn’t let them down because you told them the truth. And that truth is you did everything you could. There wasn’t one more thing you could've done. Can you live in that moment as best you can, with clear eyes, and love in your heart, with joy in your heart? If you can do that gentleman - you're perfect! “

Gaines touches upon the fundamental moral moment for a competitor—being present to self, game, team and excellence. The rest is dross.

The movie ends with Mike Winchell saying goodbye to his friends and tossing a spiral to young kids playing football in the shadow of Odessa-Permian’s huge stadium. It feels like handing on the legacy to the next generation.

But the real end is less theatrical and more real. Coach Gary Gaines is in his office and gazing at the 2 deep chart. One by one he removes the names of the seniors from chart and drops them into a drawer. One by one the players we have come to know and watch fight through games and lives drop off. Coach Gaines places a new name at the top of the depth chart. At last he comes to Mike Winchell’s name. He pulls it off with ritual care, stares at it for a moment and gently drops it into the drawer.

The season is over. The memories made. The glory passed. The players departed. But the coach and town continue the narrative with a new cast and new dreams the next day.

Sports Ethics: Sportsmanship versus Taunting

A new NCAA rule this year continues the ongoing effort to assert the primacy of sportsmanship over moral ugliness of taunting that stains sport. The new rule makes taunting on a touchdown a live ball foul that will lead to the recall of the play and touchdown. It has ignited a firestorm of controversy over how it will lead to awful decisions and stolen losses, but the rule makes good sense and draws the line exactly where it should be.

As the football seasons start I think we should remember why sportsmanship matters and why taunting deserves this type of treatment.

Taunting is morally ugly. To taunt other human is in the same class of actions as sneering, jeering and tormenting them. All these actions demean and insult. They derive from a person asserting superiority and using strength to bully and inflict hurt on another. Taunting people deliberately seeks to provoke a fight. It focuses upon failure or weakness, real or imagined, and is the tool of bullies who taunt people weaker then they are.

The actions of taunting make it clear: simulating a fired gun, slashing a hand, pointing fingers, altering a stride all are designed to intimidate, demean and emphasize arrogant power. This is not about swagger or confidence, but insult and embarrassment. Taunting revels in weakness and assaulting the esteem and dignity of the other person.

Taunting grows from a fractured individual or collective ego that can only prove itself by dominating others in an oppressive and emotionally degrading manner. Sport teams can legitimately seek to break a team’ cohesion and focus, but this occurs through skilled success in play not emotionally dishonoring others. Taunting persons and teams take their pleasure not in achievement and victory but in putting down and subjection.

Sportsmanship is the sworn enemy of sportsmanship. Taunting defiles the game and opponents and sadly diminishes the players who must gain satisfaction by degrading others.

Sportsmanship begins with respect for oneself as a human being and as a player. It grows into respect for teammates and the game itself, for the excellence, rules and forms of the game. Finally, it plays out on the field as competition where players battle opponents, not enemies. Sportsmanship does not preclude dominating victory or asserting effective superiority, but it prohibits emotional flagellation of the person or teams that do not succeed on that day.

The essence of sportsmanship anchors one aspect of the moral defense of sport and games. It helps defend sports games as reflections of the many games of life and presents a way of being in competition that offers people a way to harness competition, drive, and skill in engagement with others. The collapse of sportsmanship not only lowers the quality of the game and people, but the quality of aspiration that athletic competition can convey to those who follow it.

The moral ugliness comes from both the harm and insult aimed at others but also the nasty sense of self that it carves out in the taunting players. Taunting is NOT CELEBRATION. More than a few commentators have complained that the rules against taunting get in the way of natural and high-spirited celebration. But taunting insults demeans and provokes the other side. It does not celebrate a success so much as celebrate an ego’s need for dominance. It transmutes success into humiliation and legitimate victory on the field into mean spirited denigration of the others.

Sportsmanship depends upon respect for the game, its rules and beauty and form and for the other team and players. Taunting disrespects the opponent and the game because it asserts a person’s need to shore up their own ego over respect for the game and the effort and skill of their opponents. Worse, taunting dares the other team to respond in kind. A culture of taunting and the inflated ego centric superiority it engenders slowly drives out the sportsmanship in the game and undermines teams that try to win right.

The new NCAA rules along with the NFL’s ongoing battle against taunting is the right thing. There will be controversies, but these are boundaries that need to be patrolled for the good of the game and the good of the players.