Stupid Ball

There’s a new game being played. It’s played on a standard sized football field. I think the game is still football. But there is a version of it that makes me think it’s a foreign sport. This version is a game that sometimes makes no sense. The actions of its participants have sometimes left the casual viewer dumbstruck.

It’s a game where players don’t understand the rules. They don’t understand the simplest understanding of the tactics of their sport. It’s a game where the basics of logic go out the window. It’s a game where the lapses of everyday, thinking can somehow allow failure to occur and the impossible to happen.

I call it Stupid Ball.

Here’s the game situation.

A team has punted the ball to their opponents 25 yard line with 23 seconds left. They are leading by two points and their opponents do not have any time outs left. They should win, right? But, not with players who play Stupid Ball. Their opponents are allowed to complete a pass of 31 yards to their 46 yard line with seven seconds left. The ball is spiked, the clock is stopped. Now there are only two ways the team can lose. Allow their opponents to catch a pass for enough yards, go out of bounds and then kick a last second field goal. Or they can throw up a Hail Mary pass. Both highly unlikely to succeed. They go deep. But there is only ONE WAY a Hail Mary pass can work. That is if the defensive players do not go up at the high point of the pass reception area and knock the ball to the ground. One thing your team does NOT need is an interception, as an incomplete pass wins the game for you. Three defensive players stand flatfooted near the goal line, waiting for the pass to come to their arms so they can intercept the pass. Only the offensive player goes up above the waiting arms and snatches the ball away from them. Touchdown! The defense should have gone up and done the intelligent thing and knocked the ball down, but they instead waited for the interception (that wasn’t needed) to come down into their arms (that never came). And they lost. Only one thing could have happened to have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Stupid Ball.

Another game situation.

The defensive team has the lead and there’s only time for one final play. They only need stop the other team from scoring on THAT play. The team throws up a desperation pass that the defensive player intercepts in the end zpne. That should end the game, right? Only the defensive player tries to run the interception out of the end zone the other way (even though the game should be over). He gets tackled and the ball pops up into the hands of the other team, who proceeds to run it into the end zone for a touchdown. If the defensive guy had batted the ball down, they would have won. If he fell down in the end zone with the ball, they would have won. If he had fallen to the ground after he had started running out, they would have won. But he didn’t do any of the above. And they lost. How do you lose a game you literally have “won”?

Stupid Ball.

Another one.

It’s late in the game. Fourth and Six. The team with the ball, trailing by one, is just far enough out of field goal range to need a few more yards and the opportunity to manage the clock to likely set them up to be able to kick a game winning field goal. They’re close. They desperately need this first down, which would likely put them inside of field goal range and their one final time out could be used to get the field goal team out there and kick a routine game winner. The wide receiver catches the ball on a crossing pattern and heads towards out of bounds, which will not only have picked up eight yards and the first down, it will also stop the clock and save the time out. Only he circles back with the ball, giving ground, trying to add some extra moves to maybe turn this reception into a touchdown. Only they don’t need this touchdown, they need this first down first. He gets tackled at a spot behind the chains, meaning no first down. His going backwards has cost his team the first down AND the game. What was he thinking?

Stupid Ball.

There are other plays that would be classified as minor infractions that would also go in this category. The kickoff return guy that takes the ball nine yards deep in the end zone and would have a guaranteed placement of the ball on the 25, decides to run it out and gets to about the 10, thus ruining his team’s field position. Or the lineman that has to punch the guy who was blocking him, thus nullifying a positive play and earning a 15 yard penalty against his team. Or the guy who has to taunt his opponent after catching a long pass, thus penalizing his team when it should have been building upon the momentum of the great play. There are others, trust me.

The thing that all of these plays have in common is that the player is making the decision to try to do things and make plays that create glory or satisfaction for themselves instead of success for their teams. It’s about them, not about the team. Each of the plays could have been done a different way, a way that would have won or helped their team win the game, but instead they chose a course that seriously hurt or maybe even cost their team the game. In close games, people wonder what is the difference between winning and losing.

Stupid Ball.

The point of all this is to not necessarily “blame” the players, so much as to lay this on the coaches who should have taught their players better. It is the function of the coaches to cover the details and contingencies of various situations and have the players ready to make the smart decisions on the field. You do not see these types of plays from a well coached team. Only from the poorly coached teams. There are a lot of highly publicized plays that show up on the ESPN highlight reel and there are players that want to imitate them. Sometimes those are high risk plays that aren’t necessarily the “correct play” for a lot of particular game situations.

It is the coach’s job to teach his players what to do and how to handle these situations, not to “let dreams of being on ESPN” coach his players. Right there, alongside of the X’s and the O’s should be an equal amount of time spent teaching his players the difference between good decision making and bad decision making. If a coach does not teach his players the difference between right and wrong, he has just allowed “wrong” into the equation. A point could be made that the most important thing a coach can do is to teach his team to avoid playing the wrong kind of football.

Stupid Ball.