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I think “why” is very important.
Companies that incorporate a strong why-message into their marketing schemes are much more effective. Take for example Apple’s latest string of commercials. These commercials show clips of people from around the world using their iPhones to communicate love, loss, and a wide range of other human emotions.
Nowhere in their commercials do you hear about the specifics of their technology, e.g. what type of camera, how many gigs, etc. On the other hand, there are a multitude of other companies’ commercials that explain exactly what type of technology they are producing. With that being said, we all know which company’s marketing ploy has been more effective over the last ten years.
So what does this have to do with football?
I think we should ask ourselves “why football?” Why do we spend so much money, so much energy, so much time on a game? Before I decided to become a coach I asked myself this question many times. The best answer I could find came from Chuck Palahniuk’s best-selling book Fight Club. In the book a group of men are lost amidst the pseudo-American world of the 21st century. They form a fighting group, find a meaning in their life, and then go to their cubicle jobs on Monday feeling like men. Here is the quote that sums it up:
“I see all this potential, and I see squandering. An entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy stuff we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war; our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact.”
So what does this have to do with football?
I think we are still very much within the generation that Palahniuk describes. We live in a pampered world: a world with no common enemy, a world with no sense of team, a world that actively seeks unworthy affirmation (Facebook “friends” and Twitter followers”), a world that desperately needs something to root for.
Football is that thing.
In football, there are no gray areas. At the end of the game, there is a winner and a loser. To the winner, there is pure joy. To the loser, complete desolation and determination. The team revels in their emotion together because they fought together. There is no closer thing to the battlefield than football. No greater maker of men. When you’re asked to perform under the eyes of your peers, perform mentally as well as physically, you are preparing yourself for the real world. The team is truly deserving of the praise or the ridicule they receive after the game. In a world where people can hide behind a computer screen and wreak havoc in ways previously unimaginable, football remains authentic with good guys and bad guys clearly labeled and defined.
I owe the greater part of my life to football. It has provided me with an education, a livelihood, and now, years later, ample writing material. The answer to the question of “why football?” is a simple one: football is one of the last true developers of men in a world where more and more boys are raised by single mothers or grandparents. The next generation has fewer and fewer father figures.
Football is black and white in a world of grays. There are winners and losers. It is the job of a football coach to develop young men into winners, even if the scoreboard doesn’t always agree.
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Photo credit: Pixabay