The mud bath doesn’t solve the problem
There’s something about the business model of pro sports teams that eludes me. The press goes to great lengths to reveal the absurdities of the contractual rewards reaped by the players, and that same press takes great pleasure in letting us know every time a general manager or a coach is “sacked”. Not the football quarterback sack (hype for the Superbowl) but the kind that says that a rich man who did something or other will now have to find another city to do something or other. Maybe it’s akin to a lunch sack; the wrong one from a countertop, on a busy morning.
I ask you to picture two groups of men, grasping their respective ends of a long, heavy rope. The classic tug-of-war, with a rewarding mud pit for the team that doesn’t quite win. Now, after the effort has ended, throw the guy who was yelling at everybody from the sidelines into the wallow. A good picture, and one that fits with the model used by sports teams. A group, an effort, and someone with absolutely nothing to do with that effort gets spackled.
I haven’t taken my Coaching 101, nor have I ever worn a “manager hat”. It would probably look bad on me, and my face would be all distorted. I still don’t get what the role of the coach and the GM “is”. Therefore, when a team (let’s say, the Leafs for example) doesn’t win the Cup for most of a lifetime, why should the GM (let’s say, John Ferguson) get fired?
He didn’t ice the puck, he didn’t even warm the bench well. He’s not one of the mediocre hockey players who wears the jersey (we’ll forget his earlier work history). Why, then, should he be sent off with his CV to find someplace else to do little or nothing? Why not leave things as they are, and start sending players to places that are less interesting in January. The Leafs, for example, still have a farm club in Toronto. Make the big guys ride the subway over to where the little guys play. Make them swap sweaty jerseys for the ride home. There are many ways to motivate people who wear helmets and jockstraps for a living.
Like in the case of the tug-of-war team, throwing the guy who hollers a lot from the sidelines into the mud doesn’t accomplish anything. Neither does participating in a tug-of-war, but that’s a discussion for another time.
