The Patriot Post® · Politics, Like Football, Is LIFE
Texas Monthly in a 1985 feature narrates the story of “Professor of Football” by Peter Elkind. The side caption succinctly describes Coach Yeoman:
“Every coach’s cliché is that football is like life. But for Bill Yeoman of the University of Houston, football is life.” Elkind recalls Coach Bill Yeoman who gave a pregame sermon-type pep talk to his players saying, “In football you need a play book to know what to do. Well, God has a playbook also and His playbook is the Holy Scripture… I’ll tell you what, the only friends you got are the guys standing next to you… I tell you what; Everyone of you guys have got to grow up. We’re all in this together gang. Everybody’s got a part to play and everybody’s got to play it absolutely out of his skull… Gotta play hard, gang, harder than we’ve done before, because what we’ve done before hasn’t been enough… Alright, let’s go.”
And so it was “Game On.”
Elkind precedes the above with the following introduction.
“The football coach is one of the great masculine figures in our culture – a role model for youth and the notion that football is more than a game… He is the quintessential coach. Yeoman regards football as a metaphor for life, his athletes as surrogate children. He speaks in the clichés of sports, believes in God and rigid discipline, and addresses everybody as ‘Coach. 'He has preached the same offensive gospel for two decades. He does not cheat to get his players. In a day of justified cynicism about big-time college athletics, Yeoman is refreshingly old-fashioned. He has also been remarkably successful. Yeoman has coached at the University of Houston for 24 seasons – longer at one institution than any other head football coach in the country. Through the 1984 season Yeoman had won 155 games – more than three other active coaches"… In the face of criticism Yeoman spoke directly and plainly, "When they drove nails through the most perfect man on earth, I quit worrying about what they do to me… Ultimately, like all who claim the title of Coach, Yeoman must depend on his ability to impart wisdom to a collection of youths in the five days before each Saturday’s game. He survives by keeping his eye squarely on the ball; Every week is a new ball game.”
Coaching and governing have much in common, and the above can apply to coaches that govern this country but ignore the basic rule of keeping the eye on the ball. Every day is a new game and presents a new set of challenges that cannot be handled by the undisciplined knee-jerk reaction to every real or imagined crisis, too little, too late, as there is no discipline, no preparation, no guiding principles, and no immutable values.
The most costly-educated American generations in the history of mankind have fallen woefully short as to the value and meaning of life. Humanity represents the highest known form of life on earth, and perhaps in the entire universe excepting life abiding with the Eternal. Human expenditure to find life everywhere but on earth has probably exceeded trillions of dollars, but the fixation is on whether life exists or could have existed on Mars or other yet-to-be discovered heavenly bodies.
Hyperactivity of Attention Deficit Syndrome is the order of the day, driven by the in-hand pacifier of the ubiquitous Smart iPhone that communicates the incommunicable, undecipherable clutter that shuts out the meaning of life, as the here and now is ignored for the possibility that cannot possibly be reached during human lifetime explorations and meaningless unchoreographed “Trip The Light Fantastic.” Bouncing and head-bobbing to discordant beat of empty drum RAP without the preceding “C” rhythms are distractions and disorders marking the culture of noise, as something, someone, everyone, must be tuned in, and turned on, to obliterate important issues.
Math makes the world go 'round, but the current rage of diversity leads to DIVISION, MULTIPLIES problems, SUBTRACTS freedoms, ADDS complexity to life by burying solutions beneath quantum layers of bureaucracies, rules, mandates, EQUALING nightmares for all but happy legal professionals that see enormously profitable Class-Action lawsuits everywhere.
Math makes the world go 'round and lawyers are proficient at quantum-leaping by multiplying one egregious fee into often multi-thousands of fees in which suitors might be left with pennies on the dollar. No product, service, company, organization, or personal slight is immune from distrust, and everything is fair game if only to get a humongous payout for the lawyers to just go away.
Figures don’t lie but liars figure. The most significant government labor statistical lie commits a mathematical travesty in that the last four-week unemployment percentage rate is calculated by the numerator, which is the current number of unemployed, divided by the denominator that is the total number of workers and potential employees in the workforce, equals the published unemployment percentage rate. Disregarding those unemployed who did not seek work that was either unavailable or unachievable reduces the numerator and results in deceptionally lower unemployment percentage rates, making government look better than it actually is.
Another mathematical lie results from Quantitative Easing, which is the arbitrary printing of money not backed by assets, officially reduced from $850 billion monthly to $750 billion monthly, a trillion dollar infusion of Monopoly Money into the financial system annually. FED dollars go through major too-big-to-fail banks that use cheap dollars to artificially bloat Wall Street. Since the bank share is virtually interest free, it allows banks to lend the dollars back to government at profitable no-risk interest, enhancing bank earnings for having done nothing.
Figures don’t lie and some of the most carved-in-stone figures appear throughout nature. Consider elements that have fixed properties that separate them, making them distinct from all other elements. The Periodic Table Chart provides details of all the known chemical elements arranged in rows and columns that provide information about their properties. The rows in the Periodic Table chart are in order of atomic number that reflects the number of protons in the nucleus of an atom. The higher the atomic number, the greater the number of protons in the nucleus.
Rules of Mathematics are fixed. Some of the more common being 16 ounces = 1 pound; 2,000 pounds = 1 ton; 1 Quart = 2 Pints, 4 Quarts = 1 Gallon; 12 Inches = 1 Foot; 1 Yard = 3 Feet ; 1 Dozen= 12 items. These are just a few of the most common units of measure used without thought and taken for granted.
Commerce cannot function without Numbers and Fixed Units Of Measure. Numbers are distorted as in cartoons with the butcher weighing the meat but putting pressure on the scale with his thumb to increase the weight and correspondingly the price charged for said meat. Short weight or topping the product with worthless water or liquid are common methods of putting the lie to figures. Consider the fact that water that is 100 times the weight of air.
Symmetry is what keeps nature functioning like a Rolex Watch or exotic Rolls Royce. Rules empower nature and its immutable concepts that otherwise would be chaotic. Life is disordered when Intelligentsia fixates on elevating unnatural AIDS producing homosexuality above that of traditional monogamous relationships, making disorder something to be achieved, sought, and striven for. When Journeyman-In-Chief learned one thing, community organizing and assumed he can solve all problems of the country and world, what could possibly, or did go wrong?
Executives are granted millions in undeserved bonus compensation when their main contributions might be to reduce the size of standard packages while keeping the price the same. That increases the bottom line but the instigating executive did nothing but legally cheat. The shrinking candy bar is prima facie example of this pricing philosophy, as the candy bar price went from nickel, to dime, to quarter, and lately to $1 and more.
Albert Einstein published more than 300 scientific papers and 150 non-scientific works. His intellectual achievements and originality made the word “Einstein” synonymous with genius. BUT, there is always a but, Einstein did finalize creation of the greatest known weapon of mass destruction to date used only by U.S. President Harry Truman who dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end WWII. Unforeseen consequences are the pits.
Human scientific progress may have value only for war, and. maybe Coach Bill Yeoman had the better answer. Coach said God has a playbook also, and His playbook is the Holy Scripture, to be ignored at one’s own peril. As to 20th Century Yeoman and football, every week was a new ball game, but in 21st Century life there seem to be multiple games at every moment while unrestrained combatants are everywhere in the worldwide barroom brawl. “No harm, No foul” is a fiction of the imagination.
Yeoman spoke directly and plainly: “When they drove nails through the most perfect man on earth, I quit worrying about what they do to me.” Where is Coach Bill Yeoman when he is most needed?