SILVER LINING IN SAN FRANCISCO
stratiawire.com
Wednesday, January 08, 2003
SILVER LINING IN SAN FRANCISCO
JANUARY 8. I don’t know, I probably have very few football fans reading the WIRE. But think of this as a metaphor. It works, I promise.
Last Sunday, in one of the wildest games ever played in the NFL, the San Francisco 49ers overcame a 38-14 deficit in the second half to defeat the NY Giants in a playoff game. The Giants went home to brood and scream.
The 49ers live to play another week.
Mooch, as people like to call the 49er’s coach, had to drop the reins and let his quarterback, Jeff Garcia, go into a hurry-up no-huddle offense in the third quarter.
In other words, Jeff, a warrior of the first order, was free to call his own plays, something that is way out of bounds in the current Pentagon atmosphere that hovers over the NFL.
No central headquarters, no messages coming in from the bench. Just get down and improvise, scramble, duck the careening defensive beasts, throw passes to the receivers all over the field.
Boom.
That’s what Jeff did. He became the ultimate entrepreneur in a corporate climate. He shed his chains and he brought his team back to win.
He reminded fans of the days when football was crazy and wild and fun and wide, wide open.
If names like Van Brocklin, Waterfield, Baugh, Tarkenton, Fouts, Layne, Walker mean anything to you, you remember those old days. Footballs flying in the air to all corners of the field. Thrills and chills.
Instead of defensive tightly controlled struggles. Instead of three yards and a cloud of dust.
Face it, NFL coaches are a very conservative lot. They think with probabilities and charts and computers and past performances and hundreds of pre-ordained plays. They get their kicks from systems. This goes here and that goes there, and this links up with that, and this variation on that produces this.
NFL coaches would make good administrators at the IMF. For nasty wars of attrition against developing nations.
NFL coaches would make good war game planners at the Pentagon. Five million scenarios. Each one worked out in obsessive detail.
NFL coaches are like Tom Ridge.
“Control the field of operation.”
Like Tommy Thompson. He designates a vial of smallpox vaccine for every American, and then, when the chips are down, he chickens out and says, “Hey, I’M not getting this vaccine. You’re on your own.”
Good quarterbacks are like pioneers heading into mountain passes filled with snow. They don’t know what’s there, but they do know they have the smarts and the scrambling ability to make things happen.
Good quarterbacks can live off the cuff. They know that life is unpredictable and they like it that way. They have the devil-may-care attitude of science fiction writers who start a book with a single sentence and make it all up from there.
Good quarterbacks are Americans the way we like to imagine Americans can be.
For years, Miami Dolphin quarterback Dan Marino dreamed of being let loose by his coach, Don Shula, just like a desperate Mooch let loose Garcia last Sunday. It never happened for Dan, and he’s still not over it. I don’t blame him. He was a semi-genius with the football in his hand and a piece of dirt on which he could scratch out a play to fit the situation at hand.
NFL coaches are the Big Eye on the dollar bill. Thinking they can watch All and control it. Pathetic.
America, in case you’ve missed it, has been going down that road for a long time.
We need more quarterbacks who can sizzle and scramble and throw on the run.
My other passion, besides sports, is jazz, and ALL the good ones were fantastic quarterbacks. Jazz is all about improvisation, of course. Charlie Parker, the greatest of the great, would go out on the road and play gigs with local rhythm sections picked up at the last minute. These guys were often the very worst. Parker would listen to them for three seconds on the first tune, and he would play his solos as a scintillating weave around and through that terrible back-up. He incorporated that lousy back-up into his work of the moment, and the result was brilliant, to say the least.
Monolithic social and political and corporate and religious structures suck the life out of America. On Sunday, we got a glimpse of what happens when a guy with real juice and talent and ADVENTURE goes out there and throws caution to the winds.
Hopefully, it reminds us of our own buried talent for doing something that POWS like a football in the night.
No hope. Then maybe a little hope. Then a lot of hope. And then, victory.
Very sweet.
=================
I can really identify with Jon's spirit. I was a quarterback throughout highschool and was invited to walk on Northwestern's football team in 1976. The closest I came to claiming anything during that brief 2 months was to have been standing on the opposite sideline wearing the same number 13 as second string quarterback Joe Montana - who was also standing on the sidelines - was wearing for Notre Dame.
Peace and God Bless!
119293!! |
