Big on Little

I am one of the worst former junior high basketball coaches in North America.  Granted, that is a bold statement, but I believe it is one that can be backed up with stats.  For example, during my mercifully brief, two-year career, my overall record was 2 wins, 47 losses, and one tie-by-boredom.  (At half time no one had scored so everyone went out for popcorn and never came back.)

A few things kept me from coaching glory.  For starters, I am not a good pep talk giver.  Successful coaches often inspire their teams with enthusiastic affirmations and winning strategies.  My players would have been better off just listening to Metallica during half time.  Also, I was not a very good basketball player myself. While it is not always necessary for a winning coach to be able to physically demonstrate his or her directive, a bit gets lost in translation when you repeatedly dribble off of your foot.

The one thing that earned me that set of wins, though, was I understood enough about the game to have a conversation about it.   My father knew the game and took the time and effort to make certain I knew about the game. Also, like hundreds of men in this area from my generation, I had the privilege of learning from the late Charles Finfrock.

Finfrock was a star basketball player for the Altamont Indians during the late 1950s.  He also played basketball at Greenville College before beginning his career in education.   Mr. Finfrock knew a tremendous amount about basketball and, like most good coaches, he seemed to organize his practices and game strategies around a philosophy, so to speak, crafted by decades of experience.

Philosophy has its limits, of course.  A coach may believe in the value of balanced scoring, for example, but when you’re given the gift of a tremendous athlete, who wouldn’t design offenses and press breaks around that talent?  A coach might also prefer playing a man-to-man defense.  However, when your starting line-up is mostly sick or ineligible and you’re competing against a school blessed with a set of all-conference forwards, a good coach would probably consider the merits of a zone.

The point of all of this is that a good basketball coach has both the ability and, perhaps more importantly, the willingness, to make decisions based on the “facts on the ground.”  In other words, effective coaches won’t allow philosophical preferences to keep them from competing.  In fact, faced with nearly any obstacle in life, a successful person will generally figure out a way around it, regardless of philosophy.

Why is it, then, that we seem to have elected a government full of philosophers?  Why does ideology keep getting in the way of our ability to compete against the increasing odds stacked against us?  Why do our representatives in both Springfield and Washington continue to toe party lines that are so clearly fractured, and why in the world do we keep hiring these ideologues in the first place?

We have very real problems that require very real and urgent solutions.  They require pragmatic and bipartisan cooperation.   Ideology won’t pay off a sixteen- trillion dollar debt, and political philosophy isn’t going to stop crazy people from shooting kindergartners.

Before continuing, I think I need to make it clear that I have no idea what Mr. Finfrock’s political leanings were.  My point is that he was a good coach, and one thing that made him effective was that he could adjust his game plan based on the competition.  One thing I do remember, though, was that he rarely suffered fools.  One evening back in grade school, a buddy and I were throwing balls back and forth like clowns before practice.  Instead of working on layups or dribbling, we were being idiots.  Unimpressed, Mr. Finfrock explained to us rather curtly that if he ever needed a half time show, he knew where to look.

Unfortunately, as a nation, we also know where to look.   In Springfield, in Washington, we have elected philosopher kings and clowns, and month by month, the score gets worse.