Sunday, November 11, 2007

A Football Mensch

I'm listening to Bill Belichick's biography. Bill, for folks like myself who haven't heard the name before was (is?) is an NFL coach. His story has been a fun one, and I'm growing more and more impressed with football as I listen to the book.

One story really caught my ear. The narrator was talking about one of Bill's teams that he coached and mentioned one of his players: Harry Carson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Carson)

Apparently, one week Harry was so disappointed with his performance, he tried to *give back* his salary for that week. He claimed he hadn't earned it.

Wow, integrity in pro sports. I'm impressed.

I'll probably have more comments on football as I really start to appreciate it. I can tell you one thing - it's way more nuanced than I ever imagined. Unlike baseball, soccer, tennis and a host of other sports which are single threaded, football appears to be a massively parallel system. Perhaps that's why it's always looked like chaos to me. I'm beginning to appreciate, that at the very least, it's controlled chaos.

--Ben

Update: Thanks to my brother David for the quick information - not only is Bill Belichick still a coach, but he's the coach that was involved in the latest spying controversy. What a coincidence.

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