Still No Bo

We established some time ago that I know nothing about sports. That's not changed. But I do know people, and there is something about people involved with American football in the UK that I find really interesting.

Let me start this off by saying that I consider myself as included in my argument. I know that I don't do anything close to the amount of work that is required to achieve anything more than serendipitous excellence in coaching. Please do not assume when reading this that as I point my finger at 'you', I am unaware of the four pointing back at me. I am aware that I am included.

As for interesting things - actually, there are at least two things, possibly more. The first is that, by and large, people in this country don't seem to want to do the things necessary to become seriously competitive at this sport. Most people (I can hear the cry of a thousand string-vested muscle shirts being torn in a Hogan-esque outrage) - don't want to get up crazy early every day, lift weights, watch film, or even practice at least five days a week. And the thing is, because it's the majority that seem to this pathological aversion the discipline of Becoming Great (and yes, I do include myself in the Mediocre Majority), they actually get away with it.

They don't have to work hard to compete because their competition is just as institutionally lazy, inept or both. By genetic disposition and an endemic geographical disparity of resources, most people languish in the misty twilight between (very) local notoriety and national obscurity. Those who DO excel, do so often in spite of the support systems they have at their disposal, and their achievements are often difficult to evaluate objectively due to the overall paucity of real competition in the British amateur game. That unfortunate situation creates a real challenge for those players and coaches who have true and quantifiable talent: they tend to congregate around well-established successful programs, and they tend to have to leave the UK to develop their talents to a truly elite standard. There have been previous few who have actually been able to make the transition between 'great UK player' to 'great player', and most of them are only British by birthright - often they have spent more of their developmental years in the US than at home.

The other thing I find interesting is that many of those same people who do not recognize or choose to ignore what it takes to become truly great at this sport are the same people who are the most self-congratulatory when their efforts, however minor, result in some success, however small. I have never known - in the US or in the UK - a group of participants of a minority sport that was quicker or more vocal to celebrate transitory or coincidental success than the British American football community as a whole. Facebook is swarming about this club or that, claiming to be champions of this or that. Twitter chirps constantly with boastful proclamations about a team's dominance. If Social Media is to be believed, there seems to be no limit to the pain and suffering that every team could inflict on every other. Which I find odd, and unique (in my experience) to the UK gridiron. You don't see it in British basketball, baseball, lacrosse, ultimate freaking frisbee or mother-fucking quidditch (there is an International Quidditch League, I shit you not. 300 teams, 1500 registered players and a truly international World Cup).

The reality is that coaches and players involved with the consistently best programs, the ones that truly understand what it takes to be objectively competitive; they are the ones you never hear from. Leaders and athletes - not simply participants - working at the most elite levels that the sport can offer in the UK are too busy doing the hard work to spend any real time tweeting about it. John Wooden reminds us that “Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.”

I wish more American football coaches and players in the UK were humble, grateful and careful. Until we reconsider what it truly means to excel, we cannot truly appreciate the magnitude of our achievements (or lack thereof). It simply should not enough to be 'good for the UK'; we need to seriously think about growing the fish AND the pond. And, in the meantime, mostly keeping our mouths shut while we get to work.