Monday, February 8, 2010

Monday Musings on Sports - From Yisro With Love

As regular readers of this blog are aware, the Monday post was usually devoted to sports with highlights and analysis of the Max Kellerman show which formerly aired on 1050 ESPN Radio. As Max has resigned from 1050 and has not yet resurfaced on the NY area radio waves, I have decided to continue the tradition of linking sports to Torah which I believe was an undercurrent of the Max Kellerman show.

A wise man named Mike (I can't remember whether it was Golic or Greenberg) once said - the football season never truly ends. While the public may perceive that the football season ends with the Super Bowl, the coaches and player personnel administrators are already hard at work the day after the Super Bowl. OK - maybe not the staff of the team that won the Super Bowl, but the other thirty one teams are already at work.

So what goes on behind the scenes after the season ends? Teams ramp up their scouting of the players who will enter the NFL draft. Last week's paper was filled with information from the Senior Bowl, including no so flattering reviews of Tim Tebow's performance. Then comes the NFL combine (for a link to the combine schedule click here http://www.nflcombine.net/players/schedule ) and various player's pro days.

Meanwhile, teams look to fill out their coaching staffs by plucking coordinators and assistant coaches off of the Super Bowl teams. (It is an unwritten rule that you don't hire a coach to fill a vacancy from a team which is still alive in the playoffs). Unlike most other sports, football has many assistant coaches per team. While baseball has a bench coach, pitching coach, bullpen coach and strength/conditioning coach, an NFL team has many many more coaches. Each team has a defensive coordinator and an offensive coordinator. The team will also have a position coach for each position - linebackers, secondary, d-line, o-line, wide receivers, running backs, special teams, etc...

Why do the teams have so many assistant coaches? Because the head coach (while ultimately responsible for the team's performance) simply does not have the time to each every player the nuances of his position. Instead, the head coach has to be involved in making the decisions on the playing field and dealing with the media and ownership.

The concept of the head coach dealing with the major issues while leaving minutiae to his sergeants at arms can be seen in Torah thought, more specifically in last week's parsha - Parshas Yisro.

Parshas Yisro begins with Yisro coming to Moshe after having heard about the Jews' exodus from Egypt. Moshe's father in law then observes Moshe's daily life and sees that he is sitting and judging the people from morning until evening. Yisro comments to Moshe - this is not a good thing for you or the Jewish people. Instead , you should appoint magistrate judges to assist you in judging - they should judge the minor cases and the larger controversies should come to you.

I'm not saying that Yisro invented the forward pass (or the onside kick), but the concept of delegation of duty so as to improve performance and productivity can certainly be found in the parsha.

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