By David Rutter
I constantly write myself notes. These notes are just me mumbling to myself. I am measuring what I think as opposed to what everyone else seems to know.
They tend to be radically different.
As opposed to metrics, I always watch body language and hardly ever pay much attention to what somebody says. The body seldom lies.
So I constantly rethink curiosities, filter them through my sensibilities and one of these days I might figure out how to demonstrate that:
1. Theo Epstein and Joe Maddon were both so competent and self-controlled that they overcame their intense, visceral dislike for each other. We’ll have to wait for the inevitable end-of-career memoirs to prove it, but their body language screamed discomfort and tightly controlled dislike.
2. What if the Bulls are so badly run that they can’t even “tank’ for better draft spots efficiently? That’s Super Max Incompetent.
3. What if sports franchises who see “tanking” as a path to improvement fundamentally do not understand how losing and defeat damage the deeper parts of consciousness? How the psychological mechanics of losing by professional athletes can’t be switched off after the technique of “losing is OK” becomes a deliberate technique?
4. I wish there were a local “Sports Talk Accuracy” utility to check how often talk sports chat folks develop memes and then reverse their unassailable points of view within a month by using the exact opposite argument. I think local talkers (WSCR 670, for example) are more angry about the Bears because they were so wrong about how good the team would be. You can’t be thoughtfully dubious about your own prejudiced assessments on talk radio. That might imply you were the idiot, not the team’s general manager. So everyone is perpetually sure.
But the same Trubisky who started the season is the one playing now. Same team with no NFL-level tight ends or complete running backs. Same team with a less-than-mediocre offensive line. They do have a different waiting-to-doink kicker waiting to fail and be run out of town, but that seems preordained.
What exactly is the self-delusional mental construction that allows everyone – actually demands – to be wrong about the same question?
5. Is there any real proof the White Sox are not “rebuilding” a terrible team into a different kind of equally terrible team?
6. Is everyone at Halas Hall ABSOLUTELY SURE that trading for Cam Newton is a terrible idea? Is it a worse idea than bringing in Colin OH MY GAWD! Kaepernick? After all, desperate times require desperate solutions, and Mitchell Trubisky’s 9 yards in offense in one half last week seemed like a “break-the-glass-in-case of-emergency” moment. Trubisky gained 324 inches.
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David Rutter is the former publisher/editor of the Lake County News-Sun, and more importantly, the former author of the Beachwood’s late, great “The Week In WTF” column. He welcomes your comments.
Posted on November 7, 2019