Last week I had occasion to watch a tremendous amount of college and professional football. As a result, I detected a pattern that wasn’t apparent when casually watching football on a week to week basis. There is a marked difference between winners and losers. As I considered that proposition, it occurred to me that in America our whole culture has changed into such a risk adverse society that winning in a competitive activity is being trained out of our younger generations.
What I saw that peaked my interest is how football players have been taught to give up before the play is over. Those that gave up the soonest and the most were inevitably on the losing team. What do I mean by giving up before the play is over? The most obvious is the “quarterback slide.” When a quarterback was unable to find a pass receiver available and was forced to run with the ball, before a defensive player makes contact, the quarterback surrenders himself with a feet first slide. I can’t count the times I saw that happen last week. More often than not, the quarterback surrendered short of the line to gain for a first down resulting in his team having to punt the ball away. Had he just dived forward instead of “surrendering” he would have achieved a first down. Yes, you won’t get roughed up with this strategy, but you won’t win football games either.
“Life is tough. It is tougher if you’re stupid”
On the other hand, the quarterbacks that didn’t surrender themselves, made first downs and kept their team moving toward the goal line. These teams won football games. I also noted that other ball carriers on losing teams were also surrendering before being touched by defensive players by stepping out of bounds or simply falling down before contact was made. Of course this didn’t happen on every play, but it was done often enough that I noticed and connected the dots on the difference between winning teams and losing teams. Winners fought until they were stopped by their opponents on every play, losing teams not so much. My assessment: If you are unwilling to get roughed up in order to help your team win, football probably isn’t the game for you.
I don’t want to suggest I’m totally against players minimizing the opportunity to get injured. After a quarterback, or any player, has crossed the first down line to gain, there is nothing much to be gained by taking excessive punishment, but getting roughed up some is part of the game.
But Wait! There’s More!
Interestingly, as I contemplated this missive, it occurred to me that what I saw on the football field had a wider application. Our American culture has become so risk adverse as to turn our whole society into a fear based way of life. Our helicopter moms and dads have been hovering over their offspring to the extent that they hardly ever have the opportunity to experience pain and disappointment. There are participation trophies, knee pads, elbow pads, and helmets for everything. What is wrong with this picture? How does a young human being learn the lessons of life without a few skinned knees and elbows? How does a young human being become a useful part of society without learning the difference between winning and losing? How does a young person learn to be a functioning human being in a cruel world without knowing disappointment? John Wayne once said, as Sgt. Stryker, in Sands of Iwo Jima, “Life is tough. It is tougher if you’re stupid.” Life is even tougher if you weren’t allowed to learn how to deal with pain, disappointment, and the competition of the real world.
America has turned too many of its young people into snowflakes
America has turned too many of its young people into snowflakes that melt if they don’t have their “safe space” who or aren’t allowed to hear viewpoints other than those their controllers allow. Their helicopter parents have been replaced by the helicopter government controller hovering over them as their parents did. So many of these young human beings in America will never figure out that without risk there is no reward. They will simply become drones driven by fear because of the nullification of their brain, first at home and then in the government run public school system. I almost said education system, but education is no longer a value in the public schools of America; indoctrination is the primary goal in the 21st century.
So that’s what I learned from football last week. Don’t risk yourself to get the extra two yards you need to get a first down. I’m so much more important than my team’s goal of winning the game.
This demonstrates how fear has been instilled in college and professional football players and the rest of the population as well. That also explains why it has been so easy for the socialist elitists, the Deep State, and our communist government to use fear to stampede America and the world into “taking the jab” repeatedly in fear of something that has less than a one percent chance of killing us.
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Voluntary sacrifice of individual liberties to achieve some imaginary level of safety
American and the world have been conditioned to fear the fraud of human caused global climate change and the fraudulent pandemic that never was. This unwarranted fear has gotten otherwise rational human beings to voluntarily participate in the largest ever human testing of an experimental treatment with hardly a thought. And the jabs go on in spite of the climbing death toll of hundreds of thousands of people and the injuries to millions more.
The worst part of all is the voluntary sacrifice of individual liberties to achieve some imaginary level of safety.
"Trade liberty for safety or money and you'll end up with neither. Liberty, like a grain of salt, easily dissolves. The power of questioning - not simply believing - has no friends. Yet liberty depends on it." ~ Thomas Jefferson
After a 55 year career as a professional pilot in the military, in law enforcement, in the private sector, and in federal civil service, I am now retired.
In many of these positions I repeatedly took an oath to defend the United States Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.
