In our fractious times, in a world where we ally with the echo chambers and conflict entrepreneurs of our preference, there are but a few remaining institutions that have a diverse loyalty, if only regional ones. Sports loyalties often generate shared pride, a commonality of interest that overrides race, religion, wealth, car preference, or preferred candidates. Usually this centers around a metropolitan area, but in some parts of America the college football or basketball coach is the highest paid public employee in the state, in part because everyone who can attends the college stadium or arena. But mostly we deal with cities, as the majority of Americans now live within a half day's drive of a place that has a major league affiliate. My metro area supports Phillies Baseball, Flyer's Hockey, Sixers Basketball, Union Soccer, and the greatest magnet of them all, our Eagles of the NFL. I looked at what a seat at the Linc for a game would cost. Above budget. College football, which has several options including my own alma mater, within budget. But for big screen TV, the Eagles game always appears. I have a cable subscription, but with few exceptions anyone with a TV can watch and anyone driving their car can listen on the radio. I mostly watch, especially when they are doing well or for key games. For lesser occasions, online access allows updates on scores and visual play by play summaries. When they do well, as they have in recent years, they are civic heroes. When they don't, which is recent weeks, they are more like pets who scratched furniture or grabbed scraps off the table when they shouldn't have. They get berated for a minute or two, but they are still part of our household.
Our Iggles ended their season on a down note. After winning their first ten of eleven, each noted on my FB feed with a WooHoo and smiling emoji 😀, they faltered big time. Their victory cushion got them past playoff threshold, though not the expected first seed. And their season ended with a drubbing in the first post-season game.
Response of the citizens to our communal disappointment takes many forms. As a physician, I am thoroughly socialized to the medical response to adverse outcomes. We can and do get sued periodically, but within the medical community the approach is not punitive. It is analytical and introspective. What might have given a better outcome, and what changes in process will bring that about? Most of the modern world, though, seeks a demon to blame. We see that in our politics, which now targets selected people for impeachment not because of criminality but as a back door to something the voters would not let them have. CEOs get fired. Coaches get dismissed. There is a mostly wrong assumption that the person at the helm lacks the capacity to fix the shortfall. And that might be true. Coaches have a lot of absolute authority and are not always receptive to changing what brought them enough success in the past to get them hired to their current team. They certainly have no shortage of advice. Any FB post on an Iggles loss, or any other team's loss, will have a hundred comments, mostly from ignoramuses, on what the coach should have done instead. Of course, this is a lot easier to figure out once the outcome has been declared. The coaches' crystal balls are not very good at predicting outcomes that are not known.
And then we have underperforming professionals, whether doctors who got a poor result, police officers whose undesired results vary from bad luck to good faith misjudgment to professional misconduct, and athletes who drop the pass they should have caught or fail to tackle the runner before he gets another first down. Everyone has some snafus. Sometimes a change in process or additional rehearsal will get a better outcome. And sometimes the talent just doesn't exist.
And in football, injuries often create outcome. While football is great for spectators to watch because so much strategy and judgment is required for executing optimal team play, the reality is a lot of people get injured in the ordinary course of a game. Forward advancement of the ball is halted by knocking somebody to the ground. Helmets are mandatory because they are needed, and still don't prevent chronic traumatic encephalopathy over the course of a career. Teams engage the best orthopedic experts from their city's most prestigious medical centers. And before every game, there is a mandatory injury report issued to the public to help gamblers and fans revise their expectations. There's something a little degenerate about the tolerance of injury as necessary to the final score and final standings, and even the functional longevity of the players. But it is an accepted component of the sport. The leagues, college and professional, have taken some measures to enhance the safety of their players, though injury rosters often predict score outcomes.
So our Iggles started 10-1, finished 1-6. They will mostly watch the rest of the playoffs on their Big Screen TV's, many larger and with more pixels than mine, as their annual income and discretionary spending exceeds mine. And personnel will shuffle, mostly involuntary. And the FB pundits of really no skill will opine how their plan would have been better. And we'll all resume cheering when the preseason commences next summer.
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