Culture and Politics vs. Excellence

Former NFL Quarterback Kurt Warner writes of a few current out-of-favor counterparts that past coaches have let them down:

As we can see when we look at [Colin] Kaepernick and [Robert Griffin III], they never had to worry about not being the best athlete on the field. Where many of us lose that tag in high school or college, these guys have been able to sustain it all the way to the NFL.

Sounds like an incredible blessing, and of course to some degree it is, but it has delayed their overall growth and remains the main reason they are continually struggling at the NFL level.

Many of these guys have never been taught how to play the position the way it has to be played against the best athletes in the world. They have always been taught the basics, but then been encouraged when things didn't look right to "Do what you do."

But it has finally caught up to them, just as it did the rest of us.

My first impulse is to blame this short-sighted "coaching" on the insidious influence of the philosophy of Pragmatism, and this is correct, but...

I have to admit that in the current, largely state-controlled system of athletic development, which is grafted onto our educational system, there is no inherent long-range incentive for a coach at a lower level to think beyond the next few seasons. In that context, "Do what you do," makes some sense, and drills like the one Warner extolls are arguably a waste of time. Only a more capitalistic system, such as the academy system used by some professional soccer clubs or perhaps a farm club system, as in baseball, would better lend itself to coaches having a vested interest in player development. This would be no guarantee -- some coaches would still see winning games in the short term as what "works" -- but it is clear from this mundane example that bad culture and improper government can and do affect every aspect of our lives. In this case, most of us merely lose out on some entertainment, but a few very talented athletes out there are really getting shafted.

-- CAV