Plato would like Football

Plato believed the ultimate reality of life existed as perfect Platonic forms. In Plato's ideal world every person has a defined role. Each person is trained and placed in a position that he or she can perfect like in the diagram at the left. All the positions unite together to form the perfect political order. Each political order lives in a world of endless conflict with every other state. His utopian world is one of perfectly ordered societies where everyone has a role engaging in endless conflict with other states.

Welcome to the ideal world of football.

In all of athletics, no sport possesses such an array of defined specialities, and very few are interchangeable--linebackers do not become offensive linemen and linemen certainly do not become halfbacks. This specialization makes possible the elaborate plays and intellectual chess that occurs at each reset between plays. Each play resembles a Platonic ideal requiring perfect execution. Each player has intricate responsibilities with multiple options to engage on every play.

In Plato's utopia each person devoted their life to mastering their position. In football, all position players practice by themselves. The offense practices apart from the defense like two states in a confederation. All come together for scrimmages, but most of a football player's life is spent with their position coach and fellow position players. The specialization enables the incredible numbers of plays in a modern playbook as well as the infinite variations and reads that unfold with each play. Every player must recognize the multilayered patterns implied within each emerging play. No sport demands such intellectual and pattern recognition skills of each player. It is a game of head, discipline and violence. This generates possibilities that intrigue and infuriate avid followers.

The Platonic form of offense meets the Platonic form of defense. Each play unfolds as an ideal diagrammed in the coach's mind. Plato would be proud. And yet. And yet. The plays are run by humans, and the baroque diagrams of ideal play crash into the jostling reality of unpredictable improvising actions of humans. One side seeks offensive perfection, and an equally committed group of defenders strives to disrupt the perfection. The only time you see the ideal executed flawlessly occurs when football oligarchs bottom feed against hapless DII schools.

 Plato's utopia fell apart over conflict; football reaches its fulillment in that conflict.

Force, Violence & Football

On the first day of college football season at the end of a humiliating loss to Boise State, Oregon running back LeGarrette Blount, still in helmet and pads, punched a bare headed Bryon Hout. You can see it on U-Tube. Prior to that Blount had attacked his own players and later had to be restrained by police from attacking heckling fans.

All athletics requires controlled force. Football moves force into controlled violence. The sport demands athletes unleash physical force that can do significant harm to individuals. Players wear body armor and must follow exacting rules to minimize that harm. Football players must walk a fine line of disciplined violence. The force that all athletes require moves into violence when the force can cause damage to opponents, not just overcome them. Football players are warranted to hit, tackle, forearm, block, butt and physically engage other humans in ways that off the field would get them arrested for assault.

The violence of the game represents controlled force to move other players in directions or stop them from performing their assigned tasks. It requires immense strength of mind and character to develop and channel the coiled violence that lives in all good football players. If you have ever been on the sidelines of a football game you become aware of the speed, size and sophistication that accelerates the force and unleashes the violence of player to player collisions.

LaGarrette Blount's attack on Byron Hout exposed the violence that underlies the game. It felt naked. Blount still had his helmet on, but Hout was bareheaded.It felt unfair since the violence is controlled and designed to be force and the helmets are vital to protect players from the violence on each other. It's an incessant press upon everyone that can easily incite people to sheer violent actions out of the rules that prescribe limitations and intent to their actions. Two years ago a coach of the New York Giants literally stepped onto the field to trip a player while sideline incidents of coaches attacking players are not unheard of.

In his apology Blount got it right, "I lost my head." All athletics depends upon the head forging character and decision to control the physical forces and emotions required of the sport. Blount lost his head and discipline and attacked an unprepared opponent outside of the rules and without the protection of his helmet.

Blount losing it against his own teammates, Hout and the fans played into another reality and stereotype. A violent black man assaulted not only fellow black players but a white unprotected opponent. We know that the majority of high profile football players are recruited from harsh backgrounds where young minority males use football as their way out. Their discipline and commitment provide the means to claw out of environments most of the middle class white spectators cannot imagine. The young men are raised in an environment saturated in violence and must transcend it to get a college scholarship. The paradox is they get out by learning to master and deploy their own internal rage in a sport that depends upon that swirling vortex of energy.

Good coaches and team cultures figure out how to integrate this violence into a self discipline controlled deployment of force for an end. The control must be both modeled by the coaches, pervade the culture of the team and be internalized by the players to make it work. It is also critical for the players to understand how to accept and internally master their own anger and motives that can fuel the force but spill over into violence. A first year drafted player at his first camp was taken aback by the fights that broke out on the field during the intensity of practice. He commented upon how the intensity of the practice trained him to figure out how to master and deploy the force. "The game of football is violent. Some teams embrace it, and some teams don't. We're one of the teams that embrace it...we're always trying to be on that edge, pushing it as far as we can without being overboard...It's usually the intensity not the violence that leads to the fights during practice." 

Blount's breakdown strips naked not only the violent structure of the sport but also reminds us that the colleges and professional teams harness and exploit that internal explosive force inside the young men. They exploit it.

Blount has been justly suspended from playing for the rest of the season. But Oregon is letting him keep his scholarship and practice with the team. The team benefitted from the coiled violence within him, now they should help him deal with it.

(Photo courtesy ESPN)

Funny Color Time: Football Autumns

The characters who are "Waiting for the Interurban" in the Fremont area of Seattle are now wearing purple and gold jerseys in honor of the start of college football on Saturday. The Washington Huskies all wear purple and gold. All over the country college alumni, fans and students will be wearing their college colors. Whole stadiums will be monochromatic. At Florida State garnet and gold will dominate the stands. In Michigan maize and blue waveswill role and at Nebraska blood red will announce the fate of opposing teams.

The colors bind us together. They proclaim our allegiance. Just as warriors wore them to identify themselves to each other through the ages, they bind people in recognition and support of a common cause. Walking through downtown if I wear a University of Washington shirt, people will inevitably say "Go Purple" or "Go Huskies." If they are from Washington State, they will make rude gestures or worse.

The colors may be silly, I mean who would pick orange and blue for Virginia (it used to be grey and crimson to celebrate the blood shed by the grey confederacy, what can I say, it's Virginia!) No self respecting daughter would let their dad leave the house clothed in maize and blue or purple and gold or green and gold like the Ducks of Oregon. But we do and our fashion conscious daughters and sons join us.

The colors connect us to our own memories of college or youth. They often may be one of the few things students at mega-universities have in common. They let us identify as tribe and nations. They help us participate in the rituals of being connected to others, connecting to a team or a history. And they permit us to do silly things, it's easier to yell and shout when everyone else around you is dressed in the same silly colors and doing the same. This is not always a good thing since it can encourage irresponsible behavior. Have you ever sat next to a group "Red Sox nation" people at a baseball game?

The colors even have their own histories and are very persnickety. Florida State is garnet. Alabama is crimson. Mississippi State is maroon. Don't confuse them. Princeton's orange comes from the William of Orange of the House of Nassau after which Princeton's first building is name. Michigan's notoriously ugly maize and blue comes from the graduation seal on 1859 diploma. Despite college marketing departments best efforts to tone colors down or make them more palatable, they remain gloriously resistant to fashionistas. You can compare old college and pro baseball and football colors, to the more market driven color coordinated marketing schemes of recent teams.

The start of college football is a time to celebrate bad taste in colors, ritual, symbols and the chance to announce who we are by the colors we wear.

Caring Too Much

The premise I write from is that athletics and athletic excellence is worthy of care and connecting with. But as I reflect upon the scandals associated with pre-college and AAU basketball, I realize that like all of life, this virtue can be carried too far. We can care too much about athletics and the often this victimizes our children.

I remember the first time I coached T ball for my kids. Someone would hit the whiffle ball off the T and eight kids would run and squeal towards the ball. Of course no one was guarding first and kids squabbled over who got the ball. It was chaotic and fun mayhem-it had little relation to baseball or softball. You could see the joy in the kids just like you sensed the joy when they first ran the field in soccer, learned to jump and summersault in gymnastics or heave the ball towards an oversized basket and watch it roll in.

Our kids connect to sport first from joy. Many love the feel and energy of the activity. MNY love basking in a parent's satisfaction at watching them play. Many love learning to actually master something and do it well. Slowly a culling and separating occurs, but it occurs earlier and earlier. Parents get impatient with "playing" and want to see "winning." Kids take their cues from parents and want to win too. As the initial differences in talent first play out, parents want their kids to play with like to like and get more challenges.

Things start to change for parents and kids. Kids slowly feel their identity and esteem tied up with how they do in sport. In some cases, it may be the only thing they are good at or the only place they can escape to. It may be what they feel their parents judge them by. What starts as joy and play soon evolve into competition and joy. Then it evolves into pleasing others, competition and duty.

Parents preside over this in most cases. Sometimes it is to enjoy seeing their kids excel. Sometimes it is fun to be with their kids on the road and to enjoy the company of other similarly crazed parents standing in the pouring rain sinking in mud as soccer players slide around in a mud bath. Somewhere along the line, it gets a little different. Parents start to identity with the kids or the kids start to play for the parent's ambitions, not their own. They internalize their parents desire for them to get a scholarship or become a pro or redeem their own frustrated athletic ambitions.

When we care too much, children become athletes too early and parents change into managers. These are not good for the kids or parents.

(photo courtesy of Photosearch)

Is a Basketball Scholarship Worth This: Coach Abuse

Everybody knew Triple Threat could boost your daughter's basketball future. Several friends sent their daughters down to Portland to be exposed to Howard Avery's disciplined methods. Parents knew Avery had contacts among coaches, and his word in an ear could get their daughter noticed by all level of college basketball coaches who swarm around his program.

Avery embodied how the the infection that festers in the pre-college world of boy's basketball had arrived big time in girl/women's basketball. Young girls now play basketball from the age of eight. Their middle class and working class parents invest money in camps and club teams from the age of ten. The girls travel on teams, often without parents, after the age of 12. By 13 college coaches are watching these teams and picking up name for their computerized mailing lists. Scouting web sites hype names for the great mentioner's radar.

AAU travelling teams and related camps are the real breeding ground for the fallen world of basketball scholarship recruting. High school ball is a sideshow for most kids. College coaches, with the budgets, swoop on the summer or holiday tournaments to be seen and see. Now they often pay fees for the opportunity to watch 13 year olds play. AAU coaches charge high fees for team membership and provide subsidized "scholarships" for high quality athletes who can't afford them. Lots of the travel and practice is subsidized by shoe companies.

This nether world is totally unregulated. It falls between college and high school. No conferences or state high school associations have jurisdiction. It spawns entrepeneurs, fixers, dreams and nightmares. Too many parents now see sports as an investment in college and beyond. For many kids locked into hopeless cycles, sports and the AAU world of travel, regular food and clothes offers a way out.

It's unregulated, driven by unrealistic dreams and money to be made. It also is rife with abuse of so many kinds it is impossible to touch on all of them. But this month Howard Avery was convicted of sexual abuse of one of the young women he taught. He'd been shadowed by years of rumors, but his kids stayed silenced, their parents defended him, and the shoe companies supported him.

Avery swears other coaches are doing the same. Too much is at stake to let this world continue without scrutiny or regulation.

(picture courtesy Clackamas County Sheriff)

Pitino Should Resign-He Won't

Rick Pitino is the basketball coach at the University of Louisville. He should resign from his position. He won't. President Ramsey of the University of Louisville should fire him. The President won't. This is the dark side of how central sport becomes to our personal and institutional identies.

Rick Pitino makes more than the governor of Kentucky and the President of the University of Lousville combined. More people know his name than they know the governor or the senators and certainly not the president of Louisville. He is the public face of the University of Louisville and brought more visibility to the University than any other person or activity at the school As the head coach, he should represent the values of the university with its integrity dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and education students of knowledge and character.

As a coach Rick Pitino sits down in the living rooms of young college athletes and talks with their parents and guardians. He pledges they will get a chance to excel at their sport, and at Louisville, win a national championship. But he also promises them that he, as coach, will help them grow as human beings of integrity with an education and sense of commitment. Good coaches are role models. They serve as surrogate parents for many of their players who come from socially disorganized backgrounds. The uneasy case for college athletics depends heavily upon the claim that the coach and sport help develop character and vital attributes like teamwork, self-discipline and patterns recognition and judgement under stress.

Rick Pitino's actions destroy that fragile case. The story is a little mixed but as near as I can make out Pitino has admitted to having consensual sex with a woman on the table of a bar around six years ago. Later the woman married his friend and equipment managers. The story gets a little murky but it seems Pitino later paid her money to get medical insurance or an abortion or medical insurance to get an abortion. Prior to that it seems she and her husband, who are now getting divorced, demanded money from Pitino to keep silent about the tryst on the bar table. The story Pitino narratives to his President, the press and family changes a little each time.

It's all pretty sordid. But Pitino fails as a role model and representative of values of integrity character and commitment. I don't want to think of the cost of his family, but it gets absurd thinking of him promising to help young men develop as men of integrity when he meets with their parents. He should quit in shame. The university should fire him in embarrassment. Neither will happen. Pitino is standing firm that he is repentant and this "indiscretion" is all behind him. President Ramsey has called him "our guy" and wants to lay the whole sordid business behind him.

Pitino wins games. He brings visibility and fame to a midlevel university. The boosters would sooner dump the President or governor than the Coach. The President would be fired for similar actions. Pitino would kick kids off his team for similar actions.

This gives us a clear sad example of what happens to coaches when we value athletics too much. Winning trumps principle, winning trumps character and it certainly trumps education.

Photo courtesy athlonsports

Seasons of Sport

Football began all over the country this weekend. Not really, but on all the college campuses that have football teams, teams began practicing. Freshmen joined the teams and after a couple days of warming up, they graduate to wearing helmets and then after four or five days to full pads. That's it. College football has begun.

Actually this is the week for the beginning of college volleyball, men and women's soccer, and cross country. But for most fans and especially for TV stations, football begins the college sport season.

Not a game has been played, but that is a blessing, that is the point. My own school's team went 12-0 last year. So for one pristine moment, all the fans can hope and dream of a season where the players will win and the fans can enjoy the game and the extended sense of identity they draw from rooting for the team, even a 0-12 team.

Sports define their own seasons of mind and life. These seasons define the time line and weather for follows of a sport. It's not summer, it's not autumn, it's football season. The rhythm of their lives will be determined by the weekly play of their team on Saturday (or who knows what day now with ESPN stuffing college football into all its nightly TV windows). ESPN aside, time changes for a football fan.

The storms and sun of the weather of their lives will be determined by the Saturday game. Sunday is shaped by sunny elation or gloomy disappointment. Monday begins the rehashing what went wrong or right. The rankings come out which precipitates another set of arguments and discusions over who should be in the top ten and whether they should be a playoff. Tuesday they at look at the next opponent. Wednesday people drag up obscure facts about both teams and talk about game plans. Thursday and Friday simmer in anticipation of Saturday and then THE GAME.

The great thing is the cycle of expecations, discussion and play and reaction continues for fifteen weeks. It covers the end of summer, all of autumn and the beginning of winter!!! It has its own rhythm and space/time. It provides a consuming focus for talk, interest and a focal point for weathering real weather or real life. Sports create their own seasons where people can live and die and live their own lives through and with their teams. Who needs weather when we have sports?