Standards of Success
Sal Palantonio has a column up on ESPN.com saying that Eagles coach Andy Reid needs to change his ways and relinquish some of his decision-making authority within the organization. He says, “the team needs an independent advocate, somebody separated from the management structure that has run the Eagles franchise with very mixed results.”
OK. The Eagles made the playoffs for five straight years before this season, when everything went to heck. They made the Super Bowl last year and only lost by three points. The franchise is much loved in the city, sells tons of merchandise, has been an attractive target for free agents for the last several years, has an impressive new stadium, and generates ungodly amounts of cash. This is “very mixed results”? I would love to have results that mixed in any of my personal projects. “Dave Thomer and his colleagues led Not News to very mixed results, with only 20 million readers, a book deal, and the first Pulitzer ever given to a blog-based philosophical treatise.”
That’s the crazy thing about sports. If you are not THE BEST, you are somehow failing. Imagine if every profession were like that? If there were only one sports journalist who could be successful at any given time, and the rest considered losers? Heck, even politics isn’t that much of a zero-sum game.
Ah well. Wait ’til next year.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.
Thursday, January 5th 2006 at 6:49 pm |
This reminds me of the years I spent in Green Bay, where you could walk out of your door on Monday morning and, if you hadn’t kept up with the Packers’ performance on Sunday, you’d instantly know how they did just by people’s moods. I can only assume that everybody, and I mean everybody, had money riding on the previous day’s game, because surely a mere loss could make the entire city so…surly. People acted different. People drove different. As if somehow, the entire populace’s collective Post Toasties had been peed in overnight. And it does seem to be a distinctly sports-related mindset for some reason (if only it did apply to elected officials!). I remember when Coach Mike Holmgren, who had just gotten the Packers to the Superbowl the year before, decided to make the jump to Seattle. At the very next game, there was a huge ruckus when a fan heckled him as he was coming out of the lockerroom doors onto the field, and Holmgren turned around and flipped him off. Conduct unbecoming? Well, yeah. There was a lot of complaining about the bird there…but at the same time, I could only imagine how Holmgren felt. Former Super Bowl champion coach, now a pariah to the fans. I bet he didn’t look back even once when he started driving west.
I believe a Mr. Charles Brown once summed this phenomenon up most succinctly: one moment you’re a hero. The next moment, you’re the goat.
Thursday, January 5th 2006 at 11:12 pm |
While I don’t think it’s quite at the level of Green Bay, I definitely see the same effects around here. Heck, I know I’m usually in a sour mood for hours after an Eagles loss, although in my case the effect is more pronounced in cases of electoral contests, not less. But even with that feeling, I can look at what a team does and say, “OK, they weren’t the best, but they were pretty damn good.”
I mean, I remember George Steinbrenner, the NY media, and many fans getting bent out of shape when the Yankees lost Game 7 of the 2001 World Series, after winning the series 4 out of the last five years. That’s just absurd.