Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 10, 1992 TAG: 9201100436
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TED GRIMM
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
POLITICAL FOOTBALL
WHILE watching the many football games over the past few weeks, I began to see a pattern in the game. Most of the winners had one thing in common not usually seen. The winners usually had the better coach, and the better game plan.You see, it's not just the team that counts. Sure, the players need a great deal of skill and determination and all that, but the team plays according to a game plan.
The coach puts his skill and ability to work to build the best game plan he can. It's the game plan that makes the game work, and the best game plan produces the best team. You can believe that the better team wins, but I say the better game plan wins.
Since this seems to be the rule, then I have a great idea. Rather than let the players run their butts off while the fans freeze theirs, let's just publish the two teams' game plans and let the fans pick the better of the two to be the winner.
That way, nobody would freeze or run their backsides off, and the players could go out and get real jobs. Meanwhile, the fans would feel they were a real part of the game and not just onlookers.
What do fans know about football? Plenty enough, I am sure, to pick the better plan. After all, the coach could give speeches about his plan - and we can all tell the best coach from his public-speaking skills, can't we?
After all, it's just a game and no real harm is done if we, the fans, make an error on occasion. No real need to ensure that errors are not made then. Who really cares who wins? It's the play, the game, the skill that counts.
If this sounds farfetched, why? We do the same thing with our political system all the time.
We listen to the politicians' "game plan," pick the best-sounding one and vote accordingly. Nobody ever worries whether the "coach" can actually perform according to the plan, only that he has one that sounds good to us.
We go by how well he can speak about his plan, without any real concern about whether it will work. It's almost as if playing the game is what counts and not whether we win or lose.
After all is said and done, the politicians do as they see fit, anyway, not what they promise to do. It's all part of the game they play.
The only problem is that, in this game, we're the football.
Ted Grimm, is a former broadcast engineer, now unemployed, and lives in Goodview.