Tag: nfl

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The Game’s Up

Fantasy football draft weekends have certain rituals that cannot be avoided. Keep the sports magazines close at hand. Test the connection to the draft website. Make sure the caffeine is well-charged.

And this year, there’s one added  detail. Cross Andrew Luck off the quarterback list.

If you’ve paid even one scintilla of attention to the sports world lately, you know what I’m talking about. Luck, the highly-talented and often-battered 29-year-old quarterback of the Indianapolis Colts finally decided that he had taken one injury too many and retired.

“It’s taken the joy out of the game,” he acknowledged in a hasty press conference about a week ago.

The decision drew boos from the fans in the stands. No surprise. Fans are notorious for calling on players to tough it out and earn their paycheck. Players with a history of frequent injuries often get wisecracks rather than sympathy (I still remember Chris Chandler becoming “Crystal Chandelier”) and musings on how the old school would have kept going with one leg and no arms, uphill, through a snowstorm, both ways.

Players know better. They should. They’re the ones who take the shots, who have to decide how much pain is enough.

All for the game. You know, that thing that’s supposed to be fun?

If there’s no joy in a game, why are you playing it? Whatever the score, you yourself are bound to lose.

Oddly, that’s when my mind went back to the 1980s. No, not to the horrific Joe Theismann injury. To Matthew Broderick.

Some of you may remember the film War Games, about a teenager who accidentally hacks into NORAD’s supercomputer and nearly triggers World War III. The final scenes are well known, where the computer runs scenario after scenario of global thermonuclear war – from the most predictable strategies to the least likely incidents – and comes up with the same result every time: No winner.

“A strange game,” the computer concludes. “The only winning move is not to play.”

In short, the computer had to be taught the concept of futility. That some games cannot be won. That some battles have to be walked away from rather than fought.

It doesn’t take a silicon genius to learn that. Or an NFL superstar.

In fact, if you have any kind of chronic illness – physical or mental – you likely have learned that constantly.

Regular readers may remember that my wife Heather has a number of chronic illnesses. The list includes Crohn’s disease, MS, and ankylosing spondylitis (the last of which is guaranteed to crash any spell-checker on the planet). She’s accomplished a lot despite all that, including being a wonderful mom to our disabled ward Missy.

But she has to pick her battles.

It took me a while to learn that as a young husband. Like a lot of people – including a few football fans – I thought that if you pushed hard enough, you could make anything happen. That disappointment would only make matters worse.

I know better. A lot better.

Sometimes all the effort does is leave you in the same situation, but with less energy and more pain.

You have to know when the game is worth playing.

This isn’t a recipe for despair. For me, hope is one of the most powerful virtues there is, and hope requires work and commitment to be more than just vague optimism. But hope needs to be paired with judgment.

And if the judgment is that you’re starting a chess game with just three pawns, one king, and a knight, then you’re better off leaving the board and looking for a deck of cards.

So you have my best wishes, Mr. Luck. May you find joy in the path ahead.

And since you’re free – have you got any good fantasy football tips?

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Right Out of Their ‘Skins

I’ve thought about a dozen cute openings for this column. I’m not using any of them. The way I see it, if I’m just going to tick everyone off anyway, I may as well not waste any time.

Yes, I think the Washington Redskins should change their name.

And no, it’s probably not for the reasons you’re thinking.

By now, it seems like everyone’s weighed in on the ‘Skins, from President Obama on down to the Friday night pizza guy. (“So that’ll be a two-liter, extra cheese and hold the epithets?”) Now the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has added to the pile-on, declaring Washington’s trademark invalid. Well, once it goes through the appeals process anyway, which at the current pace of the American legal system, should resolve everything by the time Chelsea Clinton’s grandchild is holding office. But it’s the thought that counts.

Now, this is the part where you’re expecting to hear the back-and-forth you’ve heard dozens of times before. And that’s the trouble. You’ve heard it.

You’ve heard the charge that “Redskins” is a racist epithet, that a team name shouldn’t be a word you’d be embarrassed to use in casual conversation.

You’ve heard the counter-charge that “Redskins” doesn’t mean anything but a football team to most people these days.

You’ve heard the famous names opposing it and defending it, the reports that say Native Americans are deeply offended by it, the reports that say they don’t really care.

And after hearing all of it, most folks haven’t really changed their minds. If anything, they’ve fortified their positions.

So I’m going to take a different tack.

“Redskins” needs to go because it’s dumb marketing.

Let me take you back to the last time there was a controversy over the Denver Broncos’ name. Do you remember the people marching in the streets, the impassioned speeches, the critical commentary on regional and national TV?

Of course you don’t. And there’s a reason. It didn’t happen“Broncos” is not the sort of name that inspires controversy. (For that, you want something like “Sports Authority Field at Mile High” … but I digress.)

I know the rule that any kind of publicity is good publicity. But let’s think for a second. An NFL team is an expensive proposition, a multi-million dollar business that’s constantly in the public eye. What kind of conversations do you want people to be having about you?

Do you want them to talk about your players, your trades, your wins and losses, your old coach, your new stars?

Or do you want them getting into flame wars over your name once or twice a decade?

In most other industries, this wouldn’t be an issue. A name that gets in the way of marketing a product is a bad name. If enough customers are turned off by a logo, a color, a product line, out it goes. (New Coke, anyone?) It doesn’t even have to be a majority – just enough to give your company a bad rep.

And from that perspective, the current name of Washington’s football team is one that’s run its course. Yes, ditching it will cause grumbles, but those will eventually die down. (Right, Tennessee Oilers … I mean, Titans?) Keeping it means everyone gets to go through this cycle again and again and again.

At some point, it’s just not worth it.

Of course, if the owners agree, that does leave us with the issue of what the new name should be. This could be a fantastic marketing opportunity by itself, getting fans new and old to come together and find an identity that sums up the essence, the core, the heart of what Washington, D.C. means to people today.

Is “the Gridlocks” taken?

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Looking Forward

I wish I could be more surprised about what happened to RG3.

If football news isn’t usually your thing, let me explain. RG3 is the headline writer’s favorite nickname for Robert Griffin III of the Washington Redskins.(We all love a cute abbreviation in this business, especially one that rhymes). Griffin’s been maybe the best rookie quarterback of the season, and a big reason why Washington made the NFL playoffs at all.

And now he’s broken. Maybe badly enough to miss next year entirely.

Why? Because he played hurt in the team’s only playoff game. And got hurt even worse.

There’s been a lot of recriminations by fans. Not aimed at Griffin himself, of course; he’s a young man with the judgment and inexperience of many young men, and given a chance to play, he’ll play. No, the growling’s been saved for the team’s coach, for its doctor, for anyone who actually let him. “Sacrifice your future for the chance to win one game? Sure!”

But again, why is anyone surprised?

If Washington, D.C. has shown a gift for anything, it’s burning long-term needs for short-term gain.

Too cynical? Consider this.

We just went through a stunningly negative election with enough bad feeling to go around. Why? Because it works. Never mind if it further deepens distrust of the nation’s leaders (in 2011, 89 percent of Americans said they didn’t trust government to do the right thing), so long as it gains your candidate or party an edge now. Right?

Heck, you don’t even have to wait for an election. Just watch the fiscal cliff debates. Or maybe the budget ceiling talks. Or any of the key long-term decisions that get turned into an excuse for political games of “chicken.” So long as you look good to the folks back home, a solution doesn’t matter much, right? Especially if, deep down, you don’t believe one is possible in the first place.

And that’s the saddest thing of all, whether you’re talking football or politics. At a base level, these are decisions of despair. In a real sense, it’s giving up on the future to say that tomorrow’s consequences don’t matter if you don’t win today.

No wonder zombie apocalypses and “The Hunger Games” are so popular now.

Now, I’m not arguing to obsessively worry about the future, either. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” the old verse goes; don’t worry too much about tomorrow because today has enough trouble of its own. I understand that. I even try to remember that.

But there’s a balance. If you’re smart, you don’t blow the kids’ college savings on a trip to Hawaii. You plan, to the limits of your resources and ability. You think about consequences because otherwise consequences think about you.

It’s something both coaches and congressmen would do well to remember.

The sad thing is, there’s an excellent example of how to do it right – and it’s also out of Washington. Last season, the Washington Nationals had a hot young pitcher, Stephen Strasburg, come back to them after surgery and a year of rehabilitation. When he came back in 2012, the team set an innings limit for Strasburg to protect his recovery. This far and no further.

It meant Strasburg sat down in September in the middle of a hot pennant race. It meant he couldn’t help his team in the playoffs.

But it also meant he may be around to help his team for a long time to come.

We could use some more of that thinking. Starting at ground level. If fans or voters want a longer view in the arenas they care about, there are ways to reflect that. Few enough votes, few enough ticket sales, can drive home the point that ignoring the future has consequences now.

And if we stick to our guns, the ones who think otherwise may not have much future at all.