Mindlessness and Luck

I can still see him at the podium.  The Coach of the Year Clinic was always held in San Francisco and most of the high school football staffs in Northern California attended.   Like most adult males in San Francisco, we also attended our share of bars.  So, the crowd that day had bloodshot eyes and were renowned for not paying much attention to speakers at the convention.  In short, we were rude.

The Stanford head coach was on the podium, he was gradually having success at a school not known for football.  But he too had sat where we sat, he had been a high school coach in the bay area and a longtime assistant.

So, nobody really paid much attention when he started tossing a football in the air and waited patiently for the crowd to quiet down.  

Bill Walsh then did the unexpected.  Partly in desperation to get the crowd to quiet down, he slammed the football point down into the floor in front of the podium.  Predictably the ball caroomed off at a weird angle and bounced into the crowd.

A hung over peer grapped it and lobbed it back to Walsh, who quickly slammed the ball into the floor again.  Once more it bounced into the crowd.  Once more it was retrieved and lobbed back to the speaker.

The crowd was beginning to pay attention when once more Walsh flung the ball down.  This time it bounded back to him.  

Now there was silence.

Coach Walsh then explained that many probably were wondering what in the hell he was doing?  He replied to his own question, that the ball was, unlike soccer balls, baseballs, basketballs; etc the only ball in competitive sports that was one, not round, and two had points on either end.

He then lauched into an hour long lesson of how to build "chance" into your game plan.  Incredibly he planned for chance, for the errant bounce, the crazy catch, the call that for some reason the opponent could be lucky enough to guess.

And his advice was as old as the game itself:  take calculated risks.  And when needed, go with the odds...especially near the goal line.  So don't pass coming out of the endzone.  Don't pass going in either unless you have to, in a strange way the defense has the advantage.  

Throwing the ball near the endzone is risky.  Why you might ask?  The answer is rather simple, the defense has far less territory to defend.  The throwing lanes can be risky, because the defense isn't worrying about getting beat deep.  And throwing coming out of the endzone is risky as well, the defense itsn't worried about getting beat deep because long passes take longer to develop, and the quarterback is standing in his own endzone; a likely target for a sack and a safety.  

Pete Carroll is known as a gambler.  He calls the unexpected play.  He also doesn't much believe in luck, as Bill Walsh did.  He is known for taking uncalculated gambles.  

So the call Sunday makes sense.  It was not a calculated gamble, it was an uncalculated gamble plain and simple.  And it backfired.  

And Seattle went home without a championship that was one yard away. And Bill Walsh is in the hall of fame and Carroll has a way to go.  

The ball is not round.  There is a huge element in chance in the game for that reason.

That is why we are all so obsessed by it.