There is still a short relatively quiet moment to permit reflection before the NFL game schedule begins, so it’s a great time to kick around some big ideas about what the NFL teaches us regarding human beings, life, and politics.
Watching NFL games just as a game is fun, but, as critical thinkers, we might try to extract something more. [1] In some ways, the NFL is a microcosm of life; or, at least the art that imitates life. So here goes…
1. Salary Caps.
It has been said that, “the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer” by lack of proper governmental constraint and management of the free economy. [*4] The common response is often the rhetorical, “What? Who should say how much money any person can make in America?“ [*4]
In The Republic of Plato, Socrates suggested to look at something smaller to gain insight into the thing that is larger. Thus, in managing the posed question, we might ask if the person likes NFL football.
Such as it is with laissez-faire economies, any suggestion of laissez-faire with lawless NFL games would contradict perhaps the first rule of human nature:
Human beings tend not to control themselves by self-limitation or discipline, but, rather, power tends to resolve to its own advantage and justification.
[7, 8] “If men were angels,” says football commentator by implication, Founding Father James Madison, “laws [and game rules] would not be necessary.” [9] Stated another way, the “anti-clothesline” rule exists, and it must exist, and it has evolved to exist, for the very reason that it actually exists. [10, 11.1, 11.2]
The American economic framework—a game of sorts in a capitalist economy— is not a natural construct. [*4] America and its eco-structure is a social contrivance—just like a football game—that must be managed and controlled. Take away a managed set of wise rules for the game, and the game will implode by lawlessness. One apex team will rule by power, sooner or later. [12]
The NFL has prospered, because it has constrained—by contrived reconciliation—the NFL system by balancing strong to weak. Yes, the NFL helps the weak and constrains the strong, in a balanced systemic harmony.
Salary caps and the draft rotation prove the point.
If you do not understand this point by experience, basically, the NFL limits spending (influence of money) by the most powerful markets, like New York, so that the weaker markets, like Green Bay, stay competitive. By constraining the money system, the game focuses on the game; otherwise, teams would win by the external power and influence of unequal monetary advantage.
Because the NFL, by wise and careful regulation, causes control of monetary influence, the game stays focused, competitive, and prosperous.
Moreover, the NFL gives the first draft picks of the perceived best new players to teams with the worst records in the prior year, which provides the opportunity for teams to re-invigorate with quality players, keeping the game competitive. Laissez-faire doesn’t work for the NFL or capitalist economies. It takes control, with wise economic manipulation and constraint.
Against this framework of hard constraints is a dynamic free market of twists, turns, used and missed opportunities, and gaming the game. [13] Rules of the game do not contradict the game, but rather make the game competitive.
Case in point: Major League Baseball. The MLB was “America’s Game.” But the MLB refuses to constrain the system by managed contrivance, which has allowed the MLB to be overtaken by the NFL. The MLB is losing the bigger game to the NFL by loss of market share and entertainment influence. Indeed, 53% now consider the NFL to be “America’s Game” versus 27% for MLB baseball.
The evolution of major media has provided new advantages to big markets, like New York, who naturally refuse to concede power. Thusly, to MLB’s own trending demise, the MLB lets the strong markets run wild over weak markets.
The Pittsburgh Pirates are not in the same league as the New York Yankees. This financial inequality leads to the loss of synergistic national momentum. It degrades the natural competitive animosity that we love in sports—that is, if it ain’t competitive, it ain’t fun, except for a few, for a time. [14]
The NFL has been playing the long game, and, by trends, it is working. The MLB is playing the selfish short game, which, by trends, is not working. The NFL’s common weal, as a collective group, is becoming ever-increasingly wealthy by the long game strategy; that is, the long game is paying off, big time.
The NFL encourages the weak to be competitively productive and constrains the strong from the advantage of money that corrupts the relative test of skill in the larger game. This is not altruism, but self-advantage and self-interest. It is a systemic managed framework within which human skill is tested.
The NFL has gained increasing national momentum, with prosperity, as an effect of contriving the salaries with caps from the top and equalizing the draft process from the bottom, maintaining competitiveness, which sustains the game. Moreover, the wisdom of the NFL’s long term play is that national momentum synergistically builds upon itself, with filled stadiums, merchandise, concessions, television eyes, local restaurant support, etc. The entire eco-system prospers, no less than for Taylor Swiftynomics.
Behold, the AFC North Baltimore, Cincinnati, Cleveland and Pittsburgh teams love to “hate” each other, exactly because it’s so competitive. Pittsburgh and Baltimore have “hated” each other for a long time, exactly because they have been so competitive, but now all four teams are so recently competitive that they all “hate” each other. It’s a fantastic brutal competition of enemies…that sells a lot of tickets and gets a lot of eyes…by which the NFL and its players prosper.
Indeed, the NFL is where everyone gets to “hate” guilt-free, unregrettably and unjudged, without needing to explain or go to confession.
This friendly competitive animosity is commercial drive, being momentum, being money. If it ain’t competitive, it ain’t fun. No fun, no interest, no money. The NFL constrains the evolution of the apex predator to keep the game fun.
Alas, back to the MLB, the Pirates fans are not emotionally driven by guilt-free “hate” for the Yankees, because the Yankees have a budget of $306M and Pirates have a budget of $83M. It’s not generally systemically competitive. The Yankees have an extra couple hundred million dollars. This tests the power of money instead of the power of human game mechanics and strategy.
Enter Moneyball. The Pirates must pray for a miracle because of game-systemic intrusion and influence of money. Monetary power corrupts the test of relative athletic team excellence. It might be said that the MLB is a plutocracy (rule by money) rather than aristocracy (rule by the best).
Give everyone “the same” car, says NASCAR, so that we isolate human skill.
The MLB should take a lesson from the NFL. The MLB is just like a Wall Street. It works great for the stronger who partake selfishly on a short-term game, not so great for everyone else. The body is defeated by its own part, but the part selfishly does not care. Indeed, it will work, but only for a time. [15, *14]
2. Tendency to Safety.
The NFL still has to be careful. Human nature has not evolved as quickly as civil society, and there are a lot of people (consciously or unconsciously) who still love brutality as a psychologic release from the otherwise ever-increasing florescent light sterile office civil existence. [16]
Such as for guiltless competitive “hate,” we now have guiltless “brutality,” which teaches us about ourselves and the psychological necessity of sports.
The sports condition persists, because hate (tribal animosity) and brutality (implemented domination) are part of the natural human construct. All of history proves that human beings tend to be conquerors by brutal devices. We can pray, and hope, trust, and believe otherwise, but it will remain so. [*10]
Psychologists, physiologists and sociologists can try to pigeonhole it with XX or XY genetics, and the parson can try to repress it, but the condition will persist by volume of the experiential historical actual numbers. Mother Nature does not care if you understand her, she does what she does, irrespectively, and there’s no evidence that she’s going to change any time soon. [*11.1, *11.2]
For those introduced to it, who can forget the indelible Wide World of Sports, “The thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat“? These thrills and agonies keep people engaged in the essential emotional human touch of life. Sports expose human nature. The manifestation of human duality. Sports are socially contrived adversity, testing human excellence. But, to have the test, we need the adversity, the more adversity, the harder the test. [17.1] Enter Rollerball. [35]
So says Seneca:
God does not pet the good man: He tries him, hardens him, and fits him for Himself. We see athletes, who study their bodily strength, engage in contests with the strongest of men, and insist that those who train them for the arena should put out their whole strength when practicing with them: they endure blows and maltreatment, and, if they cannot find any single person who is their match, they engage with several at once. Without an antagonist, skill fades away.
[40] People will gravitate, sooner or later, cycling and recycling, back to that state of natural, raw, mean, joyous, chanting, tribal, competitiveness. There are academically brilliant people who will dispute the point, and whether such people are wise or fools is determined by the market. Just ask Budweiser. [18, 19]
Now, of course, we all disdain sports-induced long-term brain trauma, broken necks, broken fingers and blindness. But that effect does not contradict the point of causation, but rather supports it.
On the one hand, some people tend to love the brutality, but, on the other hand, only up to a point. No one expects to die on the field, but it does not follow that dying on the field should cancel a game. [*16, 18, 19] If it doesn’t hurt, then it’s not adversity. And therein lies the issue perhaps by a paradox: to wit:
Animalistic brutality…but with civilistic safety.
New safety NFL rules do not exist in a vacuum, but they have NFL-systemic implications. For example, the advent of quarterback protection rules does not just make it safer for quarterbacks, but actually changes the entire dynamic of the game fabric. Such as it is for economics and football, sometimes the effect is subtle, but each safety increment evolves or devolves the game, as the case may be, by perspective.
For example, a less stout quarterback might only “unnaturally” survive play by contrivance of civility rules, just like in civil society, where certain persons might not survive without civil protections. [*10] Nietzsche would likely abhor NFL safety rules, as contradictions to the potential excellence of the super-man.
Without the increase of artificial “civil” protections, the relatively physically weak quarterback is not drafted or does not survive, as in the state of the game’s original nature. Therefore, the rule changes evolve to a different type of draft and game strategy, adducing the age-old question of whether comparative historical statistics are even meaningful, since perhaps a Tom Brady or Dan Marino would not survive game play in a Johnny Unitas era, or with J.J. Watt or Ray Lewis being permitted to pile drive the quarterback. But “necessity being the mother of invention,” arise the majestic nuevo neck-thick-as-a-tree “No, I’ll pile-drive you,” QB Gronkowski (if not the value of the depth chart). [*11.2, 41]
The contrivance of rules can make the game better incrementally, maybe, until civil safety makes the game so safe that it loses its value proposition as the necessary psychological escape-valve for guilt-free legal “hate” and brutality. [*16] Behold it, the answer to “roughing the passer” might just be to run, or “pass at your own risk” (or to change the dynamic to the elite QB Gronk).
As the game gets “safer” and less humanly “terrible,” it may also concomitantly get less interesting, or fun. “It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it,” said Robert E. Lee exposing a point of human nature. [19a]
As to the contention between gladiatorial brutality and blushing safety, the stronger social interest and influence will tend to win. In a civil society, particularly in light of trends and blushing influence sources, the stronger civil interest is safety over brutality, with each civil increment killing the raw beauty and essence that made the thing what the thing was at its inception. [20, 21, 22] Alas, a thing’s quixotic noble evolution to its own demise and destruction. [*20]
No less than with political systems, too close to nature is too brutal, too far from nature is too civil. [*10]
3. The Quest for Perfect Field Justice.
In the old days, “bad calls” were a part of the game, just like a really bad bounce. It’s still there, of course, but less so. In the old days, the margin of error was greater, so the stakes seemed greater.
Strange though it is, behold it, injustice by bad calls and unlucky bounces is part of the painful brutality. Indeed, the luck of war. The pain that we hate to love, or love to hate, and, yet, the pain that lets us know we are alive. The psychological release by way of sports.
We are civilly indoctrinated, perhaps rightly so, that anything less than perfect judging is an injustice and requires systemic constraint by contrivance to a correction.
But, the quest for civility degrades the raw unfairness of nature. [42] Sports is a micro-encapsultation of nature, and nature does not recognize the civil concept of justice.
In the quest for justice, bad calls by the “judges” in the field of play adduces justice by the technological evidence of filmography replays, screen boxes over home plates, and other justice-oriented review mechanisms. Such as it is for the tendency to safety, there is also a tendency to perfect justice. Each side clamors for it, but like the Lion in Love, not seeing the demise of the raw animal that the audience fell in love with in the first place. [*21, 22, 20]
This tendency to resolve perfectly, through all available means, any game injustice adduces calling a “field court by evidentiary presentation.” The tendency for safety and field justice are perhaps corollaries derived from the indoctrination of Western Civility. In the old days, “we took the hit,” now we effectively whine and sue in “field court.” [23]
Alas, civility is undone by civility. [*20]
Justice does not exist in the state of nature. Justice is good, but too much justice (if we can grasp the concept) causes self-implosion by complexity, analysis, and hesitation. That is, the failure to sustain, albeit by means of justice. Just ask Col. Jessup [*20] or Abraham Lincoln. [24] Life is unfair and bad calls are part of the game. The goal is to dominate the other team thereby avoiding the risks of close calls and bad bounces.
Survival is not necessarily just, and the hated and painfully brutal quest for survival is part of the game.
Raw and unjust, but natural.
So sorry, Little Lamb, but the Wolf needs to eat. [25, 10, 8]
4. Goal Posts Don’t Move
This is a great rule to observe, particularly when considering the flaws of the educational system, if not all business itself.
Why? A goal post is brutally unforgiving, as it should be.
Complicated excuses are subsumed into binary simplicity. In or out?
It’s achieved or it is not achieved. “It’s that simple,” said Col. Jessup. [*10]
There is a grave disease condition in the educational system, coined as, “The Disease of Excused Partial Credit.“
[26] We can leave it to the new-math clinical psychology industry to judge cause and effect, but my own experience suggests that this disease starts with the “everyone gets an award” psychology, other than by special needs exception. [*26] Fortitude is the virtue, not adult college students being encouraged and enabled to go home shivering and to curl into the fetal position to get in touch with their feelings, by election results. There are no attendance trophies in this life reality. [26a]
Goal lines and goal posts (nets, hoops, and similar game objectives), teach the hard and brutal concept of primary objectives, “on time-on budget,” an age-old standard of military and business character and integrity. [27, 28]
The Disease of Excused Partial Credit is exposed when a student expects “partial credit” for not meeting a deadline or almost following deal rules. [29]
Teaching a child that “almost is okay, just a little bit less” is an educational catastrophe in character and integrity building, and character and integrity are the “meta-education” of education.
Goal posts teach the sublime rule that “almost is not okay.”
Lest we get confused by academic and new-math phycologist defenders, the Disease of Excused Partial Credit is a different issue than “encouragement.”
Encouragement is inspiration to achieve a stated objective. The Disease of Excused Partial Credit is the delusion of conflating the stated objective with an “almost objective.“
The former is the how, the latter is the what and where.
Moreover, what is exponentially worse and catastrophic, is any academic teacher, professor, or god-forbid a “Doctor of Education,” who nurtures and coddles the Disease of Excused Partial Credit and makes “almost” part of a coddled curriculum that deludes the reality of success to a stated primary objective, the goal. [*28]
The ironic destruction by educators of the human virtue of fortitude should require the purported academician to self-millstone into the sea of destruction. [17.2]
A teacher’s own personal failure in self to have clarity that “almost” achieving the stated objective is not the same as achieving the objective, is one thing, but to cloud the mind of a student by teaching it is something else. Every college provost should issue a directive to faculty generally to teach old-school, “on-time, on-budget,” with a zero no-credit grade consequence for failure. This is the meta-education of teaching the virtue of fortitude, a type of excellence and related discipline.
Indeed, the disease of “almost is okay, just a little less” must be eradicated if a culture intends to instill the virtue of fortitude and discipline into its intended beneficiaries. [17.3, 17.4]
Late assignments, or not on-time or on-budget, expecting “a mere deduction” from the grade is bad-thinking, bad character, and bad integrity. Time is objective, not subjective. The goal posts are objective, not subjective.
Asking for mercy is luck, and living on luck is neither good life strategy nor good game strategy. Goal posts do not show mercy, which is excellent teaching. [*3, 34]
Character and integrity are forged the hard way. [*29] Proper training is for the hardest part, training for the easiest part is not training. Achieving primary objectives, goals, is “educational meta-training” in character and integrity. [*15]
Courts are filled with “almost” wiggly excuses, and society is diseased by it.
Do what we say and say what we do. Perform more than promised. [30, *17.3] It is not that complicated. Do our job [*31], on-time, on-budget. [*17.3]
Goal posts do not move. Goal posts are beautifully merciless. They don’t talk, they don’t listen, and they don’t care about excuses. Goal posts don’t care about fatigue or bad days. They are expressly brutal, just by silently sitting there, and not moving. And that is the sublime, natural, and raw beauty of it.
Goals do not have to achieve us. We have to achieve goals.
5. You Can’t Legislate Love or Respect.
There was a moment, and perhaps it still exists, as to whether the NFL could force players to show a particular representation of respect for the National Anthem. [32, *30]
Never in all the history of the human existence has a more foolish concept perhaps existed than the concept of trying to legislate love and respect. [*32]
It is a foolish concept. It cannot be done, perhaps by definition. It is impossible by every form of non-delusive human psychology. Love and respect are free, by their inherent nature.
You love or you do not. You respect or you do not.
Time and experience have proved, over and over and over, that the mind cannot be forced against its will. We cannot be forced to love our parents, we cannot be forced to love our children, and we cannot be forced to love our spouse. We cannot be forced to love our compatriots, we cannot be forced to love a god or any gods, and we cannot be forced to love our country.
Such as it is, after trying our best, we cannot even be forced to love ourselves. [33]
What can occur, however, for those who have raw power and force, is to compel the façade of love and respect. [*34] That is, to game it, being to game love, by forcing façade.
Yes, we can force the body, but, no, we cannot force the mind.
But, really, to what end is facade for the substance of all that love is and means? Is there anything more ugly than to game love by forcing a facade?
So says football commentator by implication, Founding Father Thomas Jefferson:
[Let then be] the stigma on him. Constraint may make him worse by making him a hypocrite, but it will never make him a truer man.
[*33] In America, love of country exists or it does not. But, not only do we not force love or respect, or the facade of it, but our systemic value is even more perfect, being to allow peaceful legal hate for it. [*35, 17.5, 17.6]
Yes, America is systemically that good, that noble, that virtuous. [*17.6]
We recognize the antithesis of America’s political philosophy of allowing freedom of thought and freedom to love. And where does this free political philosophy not occur?
China and North Korea. [*32] In China and North Korea, the facade of patriotism rules by force. Some people think it’s patriotic to force, by power, football players to stand for the National Anthem, but that is what China and North Korea do: Force façade.
But that is not where we are or who we are. That is not our value proposition. America gives a choice, being freedom. China and North Korea impose facade by force.
No choice, no freedom. America forcing façade flatters China and North Korea, imitation being the sincerest form of flattery. [*25] It is a charade. It is un-American to force façade where substance is free.
The beauty of America is that it permits peaceful hate of the very thing that provides the benefit, whether or not thought ungrateful, because patriotic loyalty is a free spirit, by its inherent nature. [36]
Children should be educated critically to think about protests, complex free-thought issues, and to empathize with others, without vilification of diverse unconformed ideas. [37, 38, 39, 33, 34, *36] Of course, taking the high road is more complex and difficult, having the narrow gate that few can see or appreciate. [17.7]
An employment contract can force the body, for the ugly charade of it, if that should make anyone feel better about it, by a false flattery. But, in America, when we see it, it should not be the game of facade. To the weak and insecure, all the bushes rustle. But America is strong and secure, not weak and insecure.
America can take the peaceful protest, and take the hit, and take the hate if it be such, without systemic compelled contrivance, and still survive and prosper.
Such as a forgiveness best practice, the strong can love the thing without reciprocation. That’s the true, substantive, non-delusional beauty of it. [*17.6]
Moreover, with all the protests by violence, death, and destruction occurring throughout the world, it seems overly knee-jerk sensitive to be threatened by someone taking a peaceful bowing silent knee.
“Indeed, the person who peacefully and respectfully protests is like a blessing from God. To effect change in a peaceful way. A respectful protest is not to be disdained, it is to be worshiped.”
[1] I Am Not Brainwashed, And Neither Are You. Maybe. But I Might be Wrong. [#GRZ_165]
[-2] Shakespeare, English Language, and Other Such Items [#GRZ_62]
[-3] On Wisdom and Luck; Or, Getting Lucky is not the Same as Being Wise [#GRZ_155]
[4] The History of the Decline and Fall of the American Hegemony—Chapter 6 Excerpt—Responsibility [#GRZ_180]
[5] Donald Trump; Or, The Mean Insult v. The Tactical Insult [#GRZ_108]
[6] Whom the Gods Would Destroy, They First Tease with Political Incorrectness [#GRZ_74]
[9] James Madison, Federalist Papers, No. 51
[10] The Reason Why Political and Economic Systems Fail; The Executive Summary [#GRZ_145]
[13] The Warrior Mindset – Stand for America® [#GRZ_80]
[14] The Three Noble Cardinal Rules of Wisdom [#GRZ_189]
[15] The History of the Decline and Fall of the American Hegemony—Chapter 7 Excerpt—Wall Street [#GRZ_181]
[16] Athlete’s Game Directive; Or, “Thank you, but don’t stop for me. Be strong, play on, and move forever forward.” [#GRZ_131_2]
[17] ONE®: The LinkedIn Reference Set [#GRZ_183] 17.1 ONE: 963 [T10:16] (“Duality, Serpents and Doves“); 17.2 ONE: 1661 [T18:6, R9:42, L17:2] (“Millstone); 17.3 ONE: 520 [T5:33] (“Let Yes Mean Yes”); 17.4 ONE: 1734 [L17:7] (“Exceed Expectation; Unprofitable Servant”); 17.5 ONE: 537 [L6:32] (“Love Enemies“); 17.6 ONE: 1707 [T18:21-22; L17:3-4] (“Forgiveness”); 17.7 ONE: 621 [T7:13] (“Narrow Gate“)
[18] The Recipe to Make Bud Wiser [Branding, Part I] [#GRZ_142]
[19] Marlboro Man; You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby. [Branding, Part II] [#GRZ_143]
[20] The Truth. Hard to Handle, Even Harder to Swallow. [#GRZ_178]
[21] Loving the Deal – Business of Aesop™ No. 85 – The Lion in Love [#GRZ_5]
[22] The Folly of Love – No. 85. The Lion in Love – The Essential Aesop™-Back to Basics [#GRZ_98_85]
[23] Shut Up and Die Like an Aviator. Or, Quit Crying Like a Baby and Do Your Job [#GRZ_150]
[25] Epilogue: On the Wisdom of Aesop [#GRZ_24]
[26] The History of the Decline and Fall of the American Hegemony—Chapter 4 Excerpt—Education [#GRZ_182]
[27] Critical Thinking and the Conflation of Character, Integrity, Goodness and Virtue [#GRZ_148]
[28] The Lincoln Leadership Dilemma; Or, The Primary Objective [#GRZ_176]
[29] Jesus and the (Other) Greatest Commandment [#GRZ_16]
[30] Oliver Wendell Holmes and His Imbeciles – Stand for America® [#GRZ_71]
[31] The Relentless Pursuit of Victory – Stand for America® [#GRZ_87]
[32] Mind Control, Protests and the Goal – Stand for America® [#GRZ_64]
[33] Freedom of Religion, by Thomas Jefferson – Abridgment Series [#GRZ_61]
[34] On Empathy: To Give Empathy Is a Blessing; To Need Empathy Is a Curse [#GRZ_106]
[37] Good v. Evil; Or, Thoughtlessness by Simplistic Vilification [#GRZ_126]
[38] John Stuart Mill – Leadership is Thinking Independently [#GRZ_46]
[39] John Stuart Mill – Leadership and Being Unique from the Crowd [#GRZ_47]
[40] Seneca. On the Misfortune of Good Men. Abridgment Series [#GRZ_18]
“Civilitas per modum civilitatis destruitur.” (“Civility is undone by civility.”); “Iustitia non est in statu naturae.” (“Justice does not exist in the state of nature.”); “Metam postes ne moventur ad pila.” (“The goal posts don’t move to the ball.”) ~ grz
© 2024 Gregg Zegarelli, Esq. Gregg can be contacted through LinkedIn.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/kicking-around-big-ideas-nfl-lessons-human-nature-zegarelli-esq–8ktce
The statements or opinions made in this article are solely the author’s own and not representative of any institution regarding which the author is affiliated.
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