Coaching, Malcolm Butler, and the New England Victory in the Super Bowl

New England Patriots 28 Seattle Seahawks 24!

Although he was broadcasting from the shores of Galilee in Israel, Dennis Prager went NFL football for a time or two during his today’s talk show. Why not? Yesterday was Super Bowl Sunday, and the NFL produced sport viewing entertainment hard to beat. Dennis joined the “aware, but after-the-fact” crowd that someone on the Seattle Seahawk coaching staff committed the coach-goof of the century by calling a second down pass play at the opponent Patriot’s one and a half yard line which would have sealed the highest prized victory throughout American professional sports world. Everyone seems to be making the same noise…..after all, that one pass play turned a Seattle victory to classic defeat not to be soon forgotten.

The problem with this hype lies in the fact the ball was not thrown to a Seattle opponent, but devoured by voracious Patriot, a Malcolm Butler, as if a shark had come out of the water to feast on a seal for lunch. It was the first interception of Butler’s professional football career, I believe.

Pete Carroll, the Seahawk’s head coach has accepted full responsibility for calling the play. He is a first rate, far above average coach. He has been put to the stake by all Seahawk fans with national football pundits joining in. Seahawk Marshawn Lynch, they remind, is a super powerhouse runner, a champion bulldog gaining a yard or twenty especially when needed. He should have been given the ball for the ‘easy’ score.

What if Lynch had been given the ball, fumbled it, with Malcolm Butler recovering it? Just two plays earlier Butler made a terrific effort blocking Seattle star receiver, Jermaine Kearse from a reception six yards from a touchdown, which by some quirk of gravity bounced off a helmet, shoulder, thigh and into the belly of the grabbing receiver to secure a legal catch….as if by magic, securing death at New England’s door in three plays or less.

I coached at the amateur ranks of boys sports for ten years, mostly hockey and team tennis…players of a variety of abilities and training. Our goal was to win games. Even at this level coaches then had to make quick decisions to pull out a team victory…..What players could be relied on to give their best with the skills and spirit they had developed, and knew that they were a part of a team working together to win fair and honest. More often than not, knowing the opponent’s coach, his style, attitude, decisions, habits, discipline, pride, and acceptance of competition, revealed much about his team and its play even before competitions started. In other words, a successful coach of any team of players beyond their suckling stage of life has a lot of homework to do before practice and competition. I have followed football with keen spectator interest since the University of Minnesota defeated Nebraska, 61-7 in 1945.

My son and I have been Viking season ticket holders for twenty years, years in which the Vikings haven’t won a single Super Bowl game. Pete Carroll once coached in Vikingland. I’d swap our Super Bowl record for his any day, loss and all.

I think Patriot’s Head Coach, Bill Belichick, is the most skilled professional football coach in the history of the NFL. He seems to be the star of stars building a team as a team physically, psychologically, and professionally to win together as if solving a picture puzzle of thousands of pieces. Year after year, he and/or his assistants wait at or near the end of the line in selecting new players off the annual players’ draft….because they are superior winners….a rule of great wisdom by the NFL to benefit its football entertainment from coast to coast.

Whoever would have expected Malcolm Butler’s goal line attack on that football last evening? The play was designed for the killing touchdown. But…..as the headline on today’s St. Paul Pioneer Press stated, the BUTLER DID IT.

Scott Rasmussen…..Obama’s Federal Budget Offering a FRAUD

FEDERAL BUDGET DECEIT

by Scott Rasmussen at realclearpolitics:

“On Monday, President Obama will unveil his proposed federal budget for 2016. Voters should be warned that virtually all the numbers reported in news coverage of the federal budget will be misleading at best.

That’s because the budget reporting will be written primarily in the language of official Washington rather than the language of everyday Americans. In Washington, if government spending goes up less than expected, the politicians have declared it to be a “cut.” Normal people don’t consider something a spending cut unless spending actually goes down.

Congress even passed a law in 1974 to make this abuse of the English language official. At the time, federal spending was starting to spiral out of control and voters wanted something done about it. Rather than deal with the substance of what voters wanted, Congress simply changed the definition of a word so that it meant one thing in Washington and another in America.”

Please read further to absorb more clearly the degree of deceit reeking from this, the most foul of all presidencies throughout American history:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/02/02/federal_budget_deceit_125464.html