The time between individual plays is much longer than the time of the plays themselves. Add timeouts, breaks between quarters, and so-called tv-timeouts, and it becomes clear that planning (play-calling) in American football is extraordinarily short-term.
sports
Celebrity Endorsements
Celebrity endorsements help in the sale of many products in the United States. A famous person links themself personally to a specific product or service in an advertisement, explicitly or indirectly saying:
“I use this product. It is good. I like it. You will like it, too.” The hope is that potential customers will respond with “I like, respect, admire that celebrity. If it is good enough for them, it must be good enough for me. I‘ll buy.”
Golf champion Tiger Woods signed endorsement deals with General Motors, General Mills, American Express, Accenture and Nike. In 2000, Woods signed with Nike a 5-year, $105 million contract, which became the largest endorsement deal ever signed by an athlete at the time. Woods is frequently seen wearing Nike apparel during tournaments and has a building named after him at Nike headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon.
A coach’s yes
In 2015, following the Penn State University wrestling team’s duel with the University of Minnesota, coach Cael Sanderson answered yes when asked if Jimmy Lawson instead of Jon Gingrich would be the Penn State heavyweight in the critical time nearing the end of the season.
When asked to comment on this, Lawson clearly took his coach’s yes as conditional, and responded: “In my mind it’s not really over. We’re both seniors, we both want to be the guy out there, we both want to do well at nationals, so I’ve just got to keep competing.”
As it turned out, Sanderson’s yes was conditional, and he later qualified his yes, saying “It can never be done . . . (the wrestlers) are always pushing and trying to get to the top. You want to help the team by being the best you can be and if that’s pushing the guy ahead of you or even taking the spot, that’s what you need.”
Six minutes late
In 2013, Denver Broncos football player Elvis Dumervil signed a three-year contract with a pay-cut and then had trouble sending in the paperwork. It arrived at the team headquarters six minutes late.
In those six minutes, his team managers, thinking that Dumervil would not accept the pay-cut, decided to remove him from the team rather than keep him at the higher salary rate. If he had just followed up with his managers, and let them know that he had signed the documents and was in the process of sending them, he would probably still have his job.
Follow up (verb): to follow with something similar, related, or supplementary; to maintain contact with (a person) so as to monitor the effects of earlier activities or treatments; to pursue in an effort to take further action. First known use was in 1767.
American Football play-calling
Calling a play in American football is a complex process. During any one given play each of the players on a team has a different, specific, scripted role to play.
Who calls the plays? Either the head coach or the offensive coordinator. In some situations the quarterback.
How is the play communicated to the players? The quarterback may have a speaker in his helmet connecting him with the coaches. A substitute player can be sent in with the play. The play can be communicated from the sidelines via hand signals.
More and more teams are using a no-huddle offense to speed the game up. Players take their positions as quickly as possible, and get their assignments from the quarterback or from the coaches on the sideline.
Team Sports
How a society fundamentally defines the everyday working relationship between leader and led, is imbedded in how that society teaches its young people to compete in athletics. In its most popular sports. If that working relationship does not function well, the team loses.
It is no coincidence that the terms common to American teams sports are used time and again in the American business context. For the overwhelming majority of Americans have experience neither in the military nor in politics.
Other than being a member of a family, participating in team sports is the most common experience Americans, especially youths, have in a team context. And for those whose days of playing in a team are past, most remain fans of those sports. Teams sports in America form how Americans work in teams. The relationship between coaches and players is very much the model, or the mold, for the relationship between team lead and team.
The American sports tradition involves a close working relationship between leader and led, between the coaching staff and the players.
The coach and coaching staff in American football are the dominant actors during the game without stepping onto the field. They determine not only the strategy, but also the tactics. Both they can change quickly.
The rules of the game limit in no way when, how often, which and how many players they can substitute. Nor are there any restrictions on team formations on the field.
The coaching staff in almost all circumstances calls the individual offensive and defensive plays via direct communication with designated players: the quarterback on offense, the middle linebacker or safety on defense.
Playbooks are extensive descriptions of what each player does in a given play. They are detailed and prescriptive in nature. Depending on the position there is no to little room for variation.
During breaks in play, as well as changes in ball possession, the coaching staffs instruct directly their players on the details of execution. In other words, teaching occurs during the game.
American football is a very tightly managed and scripted sport, in many ways a sophisticated chess match between opposing coaching staffs. The television and radio commentators refer time and again to what decisions the coaches are making during the game: strategy, tactics, player substitutions, play-calling, time management.
Basketball – invented in 1891 by James Naismith, a Canadian-American, while teaching physical education in Springfield, Massachusetts – is also a sport dominated by the coaches. It has all of the characteristics of American football.
The teams of five players are smaller. The lines of communication between coaches and players are shorter and more direct. Although there are fewer set plays memorized from a playbook, the coaches can determine more directly how their team plays.
The chess match character is particularly evident during the final minutes of close games with coaches standing on the side of the court directing their players in real time, substituting players rapidly based on ball possession, and calling timeouts in order to give them explicit instructions.
Although baseball is in many ways a different kind of sport than American football and basketball, its rules and how the sport is played very much echoes the coach-player relationships in football and basketball.
It is the coaching staff who decides who pitches the ball, what pitches are chosen, when they are pitched. The coaching staff also instructs to a certain degree the batter on when to swing at which pitches. When players are on base as runners, they too are given instructions on when or when not to attempt to steal a base.
American colleges recruit their athletes from high schools across the nation. The athletes are often offered full tuition scholarships to play a sport at a university. Top basketball players are identified as early as in their 8th or 9th grade. The best players will be recruited during their junior year of high school.
This is a very personal process which consists of a dialogue between the university‘s head coach and player during his or her lasts one pr two years. Although there are many deciding factors in where a player decides which school to attend, the personal relationship with the coach is one of the most important.
Inspirational Coaches
Herb Brooks – coached the American men’s ice hockey team in the1980 Olympic Games when they won against the Soviet Union, who had won almost every world championship and Olympic hockey tournament since 1954. Inspirational quote: “You were born to be a player. You were meant to be here. This moment is yours.”
Tommy Lasorda – managed four All-Star games, and led the Los Angeles Dodgers to 8 National League West titles, 4 National League pennants, and 2 World Series championships. Inspirational quote: “The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a man’s determination.”
Vince Lombardi – head coach and general manager of the Green Bay Packers. He led the team to 3 NFL championships and victories at the first two Super Bowls. Inspirational quote: “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.”
John Madden – became the youngest head coach in the American Football League in 1969 at age 33, and led Oakland to 7 AFC Western Division titles and a victory over Minnesota in Super Bowl XI. Inspirational quote: “When the going goes tough, you don’t quit. And you don’t fold up. And you don’t go in the other direction.”
Bill Russell – first as a player, then later as a player-coach, he led the Celtics to 11 championships. Inspirational quote: “The most important part of winning is joy. You can win without joy, but winning that’s joyless is like eating in a four-star restaurant when you’re not hungry. Joy is a current of energy in your body, like chlorophyll or sunlight, that fills you up and makes you naturally want to do your best.”
Bill Walsh – nicknamed “The Genius,” coached the 49ers to 3 Super Bowl wins and was named coach of the year twice. Inspirational quote: “Failure is part of success, an integral part. Everybody gets knocked down. Knowing it will happen and what you must do when it does is the first step back.”
Football Audibles
In Football for Dummies Howie Long (a former professional player) and John Czarnecki (Fox Sports commentator) write:
„In American football, the quarterback relays to his teammates in the huddle what play the coach has called. The play is a mental blueprint or diagram for every player on the field.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKVteUGl-dE[/embedyt]Quarterbacks are also allowed to audibilize, or change the play at the line of scrimmage. A changed play is called an audible. Quarterbacks usually audibilize when they discover that the defense has guessed correctly and is properly aligned to stop the play.
Everything the quarterback says in the huddle refers specifically to the assignments of his receivers, running backs, offensive linemen, and center.“
audible: heard or able to be heard.
Everyone Gets a Ribbon
Often in children’s sports and other contests (spelling bees, science fairs, etc.) in America, all of the contestants receive ribbons and trophies, no matter how poorly they perform at the events.
Kay Wyma, an American mother who writes articles for a parenting blog, once discussed volunteering to write ribbons during her child’s swim meet. At the event, every child and teenager (the meet was for children up to 16 years old) received a ribbon for every race in which they competed, no matter what place they received.
In an article from NPR (National Public Radio) American Jorge Perez, vice president of youth development and social responsibility for the YMCA, talked about former youth who had participated in sports at his YMCA, and how years later they still had the trophies and clearly valued them. Perez argued that these trophies were an important part of their lives – a way to say “I did this.”
Off-line
Discretion: The quality of having or showing good judgment; ability to make responsible decisions; individual choice or judgment; power of free decision or latitude of choice within certain legal bounds; the result of separating or distinguishing.
Off-line: Americans prefer to discuss sensitive matters „off-line“, meaning to do so privately, one-to-one, separate from the other team members. A capable team lead knows how to practice this kind of discretion while signaling to the other team members that the sensitive issues are being addressed and not „swept under the rug.“
humiliate: To reduce to a lower position in one’s own eyes or others’ eyes. From late Latin humiliate – ‘made humble,’ from the verb humiliare.
Cohesion: The act of forming a united whole. Mid 17th century from Latin cohaes – ‘cleaved together,’ from the verb cohaerere, on the pattern of adhesion.
During World War II, on August 3, 1943, General George Patton slapped a soldier who was hospitalized for psychoneurosis, accusing him of cowardice. The incident nearly ended Patton’s career. A week later, in a far less publicized incident, Patton slapped another soldier, who had been hospitalized for his “nerves.” Many members of Congress and the press called for Patton’s removal from command.
Bobby Knight, one of America‘s most innovative and successful college basketball coaches, was known for his straight-talking, open, honest and impatient, combative personality. After almost thirty years of extraordinary success at the University of Indiana, Knight was fired for very minor indiscretions involving players and students. Mr. Knight once said: “When my time on earth is gone, and my activities here are past, I want them to bury me upside down, so that my critics can kiss my ass.”
Wayne “Woody” Hayes (1913-1987) was the football coach at Ohio State University for over twenty-five years, with a career record of 238 wins 72 losses and 10 ties, winning five national championships. Hayes challenged his players to be the best, often becoming impatient and angry, at times physically rough with them during practices. His career was ended after a 1978-game in which he physically attacked a player on the opposing team.