Aristotle/Football

[sd'sker]

Thought this was something interesting to think about before the Mizzou game.

Maybe better posted under the '90s dominance thread, but I thought it deserved it's own.

 

For the last few years I've heard a lot of the talking-heads of college football talking about 'parity.' Parity is allegedly what makes Appalachian State beat Michigan, Houston rise to national prominence for beating Texas Tech and Oklahoma State (and subsequently disappear from national prominence after losing to UTEP), and parity makes Tim Tebow give impassioned speeches full of promises. I don't think parity is the correct word however. Parity is defined as the state or quality of being equal, i.e. as the media sees it, schools are becoming more equal. This is not how I see it.

 

23-odd centuries ago, Aristotle outlined three approaches an argument can take in convincing its audience. They were, in no particular order ethos (ethical), pathos (passion), and logos (logical). I think the reason for all of the 'parity' in college football has a lot to do with how teams frame their 'arguments' going into games.

 

Take, for instance, Miami. A team known for its 'swagger.' This is a team that can truly get fired up for a game. They seem to be driven by pathos. When passion is working in their favor, they have beat the ranked teams of Georgia Tech, Florida State, and Oklahoma, but they get a rainy day in Blacksburg and lay an egg against Virginia Tech.

 

Another example of a pathos-driven team could be USC. The fun-loving surfers blow out most of the teams they play with unmatched confidence, but every year, for whatever reason, they don't show up for one of their games and lose to one of Oregon State, Stanford, Washington, etc. (bad teams they 'pathetically' don't care about)

 

If I had to name Osborne's drive, it may have been ethos. We may have not had the best players, but we worked harder than any other team, and we had some decidedly Christian under-tones to our program. Also, you can't tell me Matt Davison's heroics, a la 'the Catch,' didn't have anything to do with Providence...Just kidding?

 

I see Coach Pelini doing something very different from all of these programs. When asked what he thought might have gone wrong last year against Missouri he thought our players might have been too fired up, and when they had a bad break or two early in the game, their drive disappeared. This year there is a decidedly different rhetoric to our football team. Pelini's new philosophy is to leave the pathos to the fans (which we do a mighty fine job of I might add). When asked questions about why Thursday's game may be setting up for a grudge match against Missouri, the team has roundly dismissed the questions, saying they will just focus on fundamentals and execution. I ask you, what does that sound like if not logos?

 

If Nebraska is going to again rise to the status of powerhouse, I think it is exactly this logical drive that we will have to maintain. If we have seen one thing thus far of the Huskers' performances this year, I think it is probably consistency. We haven't laid an egg yet. When the Huskers lost to Virginia Tech, they didn't blame a lack of passion, they blamed a breakdown in fundamentals. With a logos-driven team, this is easy to fix. They went back to practice that Monday and said, "let's get to work," and we saw it pay off with their best game of x's and o's against Lou-La.

 

Chase Daniel came at Nebraska with pathos. Two years in a row after games against Nebraska he tried to create himself a rivalry by saying things like we have a high school defense or alleging that we are the dirtiest team he has ever played or one of our players spit in his face. Luckily, Chase Daniel's mouth and arm have left Columbia, and now the Huskers can easily return to focusing on taking down the Tigers with the part of their game they can control. Their heads. We'll see if our logos can out-match the pathos-driven crowd at Columbia this Thursday.

 

Aristotle made it very clear that none of these three modes of argument were necessarily more or less affective. They were simply different, but for what Pelini is trying to accomplish at Nebraska, I think he has chosen the right one. He doesn't want a mediocre football team that every now and then will beat a team it shouldn't. He wants a team that will consistently play well no matter the occasion, no matter the competition; something more teams should think about in the era of 'parity' in which we live.

[captain obvious]

:pulsating brain emoticon:

[hack]

Aristotle like to have sex with young boys. not to detract from the greater post, but i thought i'd just throw that one out there.

[mattbri17]

I have got to say that I really enjoyed reading that. Well done

[sd'sker]

Aristotle like to have sex with young boys. not to detract from the greater post, but i thought i'd just throw that one out there.

Well you did detract, you did.

[HuskerfaninOkieland]

I have got to say that I really enjoyed reading that. Well done

I have to agree. That was a rather different perspective. Interesting read!

[Husker_x]

They were talking about this a little bit on 1620 the other day, minus the Greek spin. It has to do with the role of emotion in football. Emotion is something long studied in every sport from football to martial arts. It is useful, and it seems at the college level momentum is a huge advantage in the game (the rich get richer). It's shown in this series between MU and NU recently.

 

But Bo is a passionate guy, no question. And he demands passion out of his players. What's interesting about his defenses, especially in his final year at LSU, is that they had a characteristic of being aggressive and opportunistic. They hit hard and created turnovers. Emotion can cause the breakdown of a play just as easily as it can cause a huge one. The fire Miami plays with can cause them to sack the quarterback or give up fifty on a bubble screen. Bo's defenses didn't get burned nearly as often as they made big plays.

 

What you hope your team has is a steady mixture of all three things in your post. They work hard. They play with passion. They play intelligent ball. Osborne's 90s teams had three meters and all were blasting in the red for each category. Our offensive line had something like three false start penalties in the entire '95 season. They also outworked and outperformed their opponent, as well as played with swagger.

 

Bo's right, though––emotion doesn't mean squat if you're out of position.

[Incandenza]

You could break that down by position too.

For example the QB position is generally more logos-driven than other positions. You don't really want to let your team see you get too high or low but always confidently in charge. A level head is also essential for reading the defense and it is so sweet to see a quarterback methodically "pick apart" a defense.

While there is certainly a great deal of science involved in defensive play you want your line to play with plenty of passion and emotional intensity or they will get pushed around.

It's a coach's job to utilize each of his player's skill set and personality. Not to say an entire team can't take on a unified attitude, but you can always break it down by position as well.