Toward a philosophy of competition

Sportswriter Alex Marvez wrote what I think is a fascinating column about the upcoming football game between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots. Not being a fan of either team, I don't have an emtional investment in the outcome of the game. But as anyone following pro football knows, both teams are already in the playoffs, and one of them has a chance for an undefeated season.

What made the Marvez column interesting is that the hook on which he hangs it is a divergence of views between two football players and friends on the same team. Both are defensive ends. One thinks the Giants should go after the Patriots with everything they have, even though the outcome of the game will not affect either team's playoff position. The other thinks the Giants should roll over for the Patriots to keep starting players healthy for the playoff game one week afterward, on the theory that the Giants have a better chance at making it past playoff opponents and to the Super Bowl if their best players are rested.

Reading the article and the comments of the two players whom Marvez used to pose his questions, I couldn't help but think of my CrossFit buddies. They do not play football for a living, but they understand competition, and know what it feels like to push yourself to your physical and mental limits.

No CrossFit devotee I know would phone in a workout. We can and do vary the workout mix, so that metabolic conditioning, for example, is followed by strength or skill work the next day. Any analogy between that regimen and a professional football game is imperfect at best, but it seems to me that the tie-breaking argument is a variation on "the more you sweat in practice, the less you bleed in battle."

I don't remember whether I heard the story from Coach Martin (CrossFit and Krav Maga guru) or his lovely wife (ditto), but some years back, a law enforcement officer died in a shootout with several robbers. He might well have lived, except for a mistake that he made based on the way he had trained at the police firing range, because he was fatally shot while bending down to collect the cartridge casings ejected by expended rounds.

Understand that the officer was not an especially fastidious person. If you asked him over a beer whether it's good policy to tidy up during a gun battle, he might well have wondered what you were smoking. But in the stress of combat, he did as he'd been trained to do on the range, and it cost him his life. Other police officers learned from that, and many departments changed their training accordingly. Now it might be raining brass, but an officer in a gun battle won't care-- and shouldn't. As Kenny Rodgers sang in what you might call a related context, "you never count your money when you're sitting at the table."

And what does a tragic tale recycled by fitness coaches have to do with football, you ask? I offer it to illustrate the point that the Giants should play to win rather than play to make it into a first-round playoff game with fewer bruises. You can't roll over for one opponent and bring your "A" game to another one, because muscle memory and mental attitude matter. The so-called "prevent defense" often doesn't. Remember the maxim about "use it or lose it"?

I'm not advocating stupidity here. Health is important. My friend Cyndi didn't reclaim her kipping pullup form until three weeks after shoulder surgery, because she and her trainer both knew better than to stress her shoulders before then. But Cyndi didn't go to the gym to eat M&Ms while rehabilitating over those three weeks-- she put in the time and effort she needed to speed her recovery along at what her doctors called an extremely impressive rate.

In football terms, it's legitimate for a quarterback to take a knee while time runs out, and legitimate for a coach to summon the kicker rather than the running back on fourth and three in the red zone. But those are tactical issues, not symptoms of disdain for fan and foe alike, as pulling starters after one quarter would be. By rolling over, you drop whatever your "A game" is into "B plus" territory. Roll over often enough, and you can't bring performance up a notch any more.

In short, I'm not one of those who thinks the Giants-Patriots match is a meaningless game, because I don't think the playoff games are more important, or that the Super Bowl is most important. When you play for pay, you need to do more than just go through the motions.