tedseay
Sophomore Member
Posts: 164
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Post by tedseay on May 14, 2014 6:51:32 GMT -6
Gents: Please have a look at my new blog, which in addition to conflict theory and arms control in general, will discuss in great detail the most advanced and complex athletic war game on earth: North American (American & Canadian) football. Where the CAART Was Built: The Wild Bunch Football Offense
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Post by brophy on May 14, 2014 7:04:12 GMT -6
this should be interesting. Ted Seay is an active mind and his previous works can stimulate a lot of deeper reflection.
I know the whole war analogy with football is common and convenient for most. I wonder whether or not its valid,though, because after you take more than a passing glance at the two and dig just a bit deeper, in my mind, the similarities fall apart because other than the classical military doctrine of engage/avoid, they don't share much in common, particularly in this day in age.
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Post by mdub1one84 on May 14, 2014 7:57:23 GMT -6
this type of stuff is the most overlooked part of the most complex game in existence. Cant wait
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tedseay
Sophomore Member
Posts: 164
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Post by tedseay on May 14, 2014 12:39:30 GMT -6
I know the whole war analogy with football is common and convenient for most. I wonder whether or not its valid,though, because after you take more than a passing glance at the two and dig just a bit deeper, in my mind, the similarities fall apart because other than the classical military doctrine of engage/avoid, they don't share much in common, particularly in this day in age. Brophy: Here's something to stimulate debate: Sound like any games you know of? Seriously, I say North American football is a strategic war game because it reflects, better than any other game or athletic contest, the "paradoxical logic" Luttwak mentions above. Discuss amongst yourselves -- I'll be posting on this shortly.
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Post by wingtol on May 14, 2014 13:16:33 GMT -6
Not even sure I should post this put...
Anytime I see war and football mentioned together I tune out almost immediately. Maybe your just talking strategy or out maneuvering people or whatever but there is no comparison between the two. Football is a game. War is war. Maybe I did when I was younger but after knowing guys who went to real war I haven't compared the two since. I think sometimes we over think football way to much and trying to make it into military strategy or whatever is one of those times.
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Post by powerfootball71 on May 14, 2014 13:47:32 GMT -6
For what it's worth every off season I end up studying some abstract concept and trying to relate it to football.
This year it happened to be chess legend Bobby Fisher. Who often compared chess to war. Who also many people considered border line insane and not a very good person at the time of his death. Can football be more liked to war then chess?
The thing I got off studying the guy and sort of the concept of this thread is certain kinds of coaches don't deal with the off season very well. I'm talking about myself but the need to constantly research plays schemes and techniques and find parallels between anything and football. Each off season I think you take a risk of slipping closer into insanity and one off season you might not make it back. So yea I'm about ready for spring ball.
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tedseay
Sophomore Member
Posts: 164
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Post by tedseay on May 14, 2014 15:04:29 GMT -6
Not even sure I should post this put... Anytime I see war and football mentioned together I tune out almost immediately. Maybe your just talking strategy or out maneuvering people or whatever but there is no comparison between the two. Football is a game. War is war. Maybe I did when I was younger but after knowing guys who went to real war I haven't compared the two since. I think sometimes we over think football way to much and trying to make it into military strategy or whatever is one of those times. Coach: Fair enough, and I understand the distinction between war and games -- having served the U.S. government overseas for 26 years, shoulder to shoulder with many members of our armed services (and other government agencies best not named), believe me, I "get it". But how can we claim to understand this great game of ours if we don't understand, for example, Luttwak's "paradoxical logic"? Do yourself a big favor and read this: Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace
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Post by larrymoe on May 14, 2014 15:49:28 GMT -6
But how can we claim to understand this great game of ours if we don't understand, for example, Luttwak's "paradoxical logic"? It's a game. No more, no less. Ultimately, there's not much more to it than any other sport- beat the guy across from you. I think attempting to attach anymore significance to football than what it is, a game meant to be played for fun, is just trying to justify something in your own mind.
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tedseay
Sophomore Member
Posts: 164
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Post by tedseay on May 14, 2014 16:08:51 GMT -6
It's a game. No more, no less. Ultimately, there's not much more to it than any other sport- beat the guy across from you. I think attempting to attach anymore significance to football than what it is, a game meant to be played for fun, is just trying to justify something in your own mind. Whatever works for you, coach. I believe other coaches out there are looking for more from football; however, there will always be a large contingent of "just hit someone" philosophers on the far sideline to keep things interesting.
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tedseay
Sophomore Member
Posts: 164
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Post by tedseay on May 14, 2014 16:11:04 GMT -6
For what it's worth every off season I end up studying some abstract concept and trying to relate it to football. Coach: If Edward Luttwak's "paradoxical logic" were only an abstract concept unrelated to football, then believe me, I wouldn't waste my time studying it...but I'd say some others on this board could benefit from it.
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Post by coachb0 on May 14, 2014 16:12:49 GMT -6
of course there are substantial differences between football and war, as the one is a game while the other is not. but that doesn't mean that there are no shared essential properties. to find these can lead to learning something about football (or war).
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Post by powerfootball71 on May 14, 2014 16:53:44 GMT -6
I have no doubt it could benefit many. At one point I spent significant time studying clauswitz and sun tsu trying to immerse myself in strategy in a attempt to relate it to football. I spent equal time at another point studying manufacturing principles specifically Japanese manufacturing to find a mythical edge.
My point being I think it's a off season endeavor which again speaking for myself can get way out of control. Does it serve benefit? Is it healthy? Can a 15 to 18 year old even grasp the attempted interpretation of such concepts buy a hs football coach? I'm shure I'll continue to do it as long as I'm coaching I just question it's value.
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tedseay
Sophomore Member
Posts: 164
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Post by tedseay on May 14, 2014 17:06:17 GMT -6
I have no doubt it could benefit many. At one point I spent significant time studying clauswitz and sun tsu trying to immerse myself in strategy in a attempt to relate it to football. I spent equal time at another point studying manufacturing principles specifically Japanese manufacturing to find a mythical edge. My point being I think it's a off season endeavor which again speaking for myself can get way out of control. Does it serve benefit? Is it healthy? Can a 15 to 18 year old even grasp the attempted interpretation of such concepts buy a hs football coach? I'm shure I'll continue to do it as long as I'm coaching I just question it's value. And I think you should continue to go for it every off-season, coach -- you may be doing those kids a lot more good in the long run than you realize, just by pointing them down the road less traveled...
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 14, 2014 17:55:47 GMT -6
Personally, "football is war" metaphors creep me out. Football is a hard hitting, physical, awesome sport. War is hell where people die by the thousands and frequently for no good reason.
That said, there have always been people making parallels. It's no coincidence that football's rise from an obscure, barbaric bastardization of rugby to become our true national past time coincided with 2 World Wars and then the Cold War's "permanent warfare" tension. It's no coincidence that the Army/Navy game is still a big ceremonial deal even when both teams are awful. It's also no coincidence that so many old school coaches had military backgrounds or ran their training camps like boot camps. Football used to be seen an early test of a boy's mettle to prepare him for the rigors of adult life (read: probable military service).
Culturally, football is now the closest thing that most teenage boys will ever get to being warriors (complete with ceremonial suits of armor) and it's one of the last vestiges of primal warrior culture left in our 21st century society. The culture of a football team resembles the culture of an army, primarily because coaches have engineered it to be that way.
However, I think the application of military strategy to the football field can be overblown. In a very general way, the basics overlap: football is and always will be about "get there the firstest with the mostest," which was the US Military's philosophy from D-Day onwards. It's an interesting coincidence that, when the U.S. Military's core strategy from 1941-2003 was "attack with overwhelming force," the game was primarily about lining up and just trying to run the other guys over. When the strategy changed to "use stealth and speed to attack opponents with precision, rather than overwhelming force," the spread offense was also coming into vogue and displacing those old ground chewing attacks.
However, that's where it really ends. As much as we like to pretend there are such things, there are no rules in war. There are no neat lines that mark "out of bounds" and no referees to enforce the weak attempts at limiting the scope of warfare that have been devised. Football is carefully regulated, structured, and officiated. War is none of those things.
There are just as many parallels between football and war as there are between football and theater, religion, literature, and human sacrifice.
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Post by larrymoe on May 14, 2014 17:58:42 GMT -6
It's a game. No more, no less. Ultimately, there's not much more to it than any other sport- beat the guy across from you. I think attempting to attach anymore significance to football than what it is, a game meant to be played for fun, is just trying to justify something in your own mind. Whatever works for you, coach. I believe other coaches out there are looking for more from football; however, there will always be a large contingent of "just hit someone" philosophers on the far sideline to keep things interesting. Yep. Cause that's me. Since I don't see some metaphysical meaning or equate a child's game to a life and death struggle I must just be some nose breathing Neanderthal.
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Post by fantom on May 14, 2014 18:23:29 GMT -6
I have no doubt it could benefit many. At one point I spent significant time studying clauswitz and sun tsu trying to immerse myself in strategy in a attempt to relate it to football. I spent equal time at another point studying manufacturing principles specifically Japanese manufacturing to find a mythical edge. My point being I think it's a off season endeavor which again speaking for myself can get way out of control. Does it serve benefit? Is it healthy? Can a 15 to 18 year old even grasp the attempted interpretation of such concepts buy a hs football coach? I'm shure I'll continue to do it as long as I'm coaching I just question it's value. Why would you question it's value? You're learning principles of strategy and leadership. The kids don't have to read the book do they?
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Post by powerfootball71 on May 14, 2014 18:55:04 GMT -6
I have no doubt it could benefit many. At one point I spent significant time studying clauswitz and sun tsu trying to immerse myself in strategy in a attempt to relate it to football. I spent equal time at another point studying manufacturing principles specifically Japanese manufacturing to find a mythical edge. My point being I think it's a off season endeavor which again speaking for myself can get way out of control. Does it serve benefit? Is it healthy? Can a 15 to 18 year old even grasp the attempted interpretation of such concepts buy a hs football coach? I'm shure I'll continue to do it as long as I'm coaching I just question it's value. Why would you question it's value? You're learning principles of strategy and leadership. The kids don't have to read the book do they? I think it's just a time management what are off season priorities type thing. Personally the game of football has had military principles like bomb blitz screen ext... I think these principles have firmly been ingrained into the game for a long time. It's just accepted football strategy go where they are not do what's unexpected. For myself to spend TO MUCH time getting into how this came about is what i would question.
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Post by powerfootball71 on May 14, 2014 19:16:48 GMT -6
After reading coach Arnolds post one thought comes to mind do the same lessons you would learn from studying military strategy not get discovered buy studying football history?
I think the ideas and themes you would discover are the same from the great coachs as they would be from great leaders and military generals. Even controversial aspects gorilla warfare, propaganda ,psychological warfare , intimidation and us against them theory, could be just as easily be found in football history.
Great victory and horrible defeats can be analyzed in the same way.thats why I question the value if you where a complete football junkie and had zero concept of strategy or history as far as warfare is concerned I'd venture you could have a decent comprehension level of the same concepts you would get from study. Does knowing what the name or theory or where the idea came from or historical examples of its use outside of football help you apply them to coaching?
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tedseay
Sophomore Member
Posts: 164
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Post by tedseay on May 15, 2014 4:20:17 GMT -6
Whatever works for you, coach. I believe other coaches out there are looking for more from football; however, there will always be a large contingent of "just hit someone" philosophers on the far sideline to keep things interesting. Yep. Cause that's me. Since I don't see some metaphysical meaning or equate a child's game to a life and death struggle I must just be some nose breathing Neanderthal. If you feel yourself part of the contingent I mentioned, coach, good for you. And I'm happy to accept "metaphysics" in the sense of first principles, as I argue below; in the sense of abstract theory with no basis in reality, OTOH, that would be an ignorant misusage in this context:
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Post by wingtol on May 15, 2014 6:27:30 GMT -6
I said my peace on the whole football/war comparisons so with that being said I really do think we tend to over complicate things way to much. And I will be honest I am not smart enough to even understand half of what is being discussed here LOL But just this week I was at a local college for the day talking defense with their staff. The one coach was talking about how they evaluated this off season and realized they were getting way to complicated with stuff and even how they were teaching their positions. He said he had a player really struggling on the DL with reactions to the OL and got fired up one day and yelled "he can go right, left, or forward!" That's it!" Said the light bulb went off for the kid and coach after that. So sometimes maybe we do get to crazy with stuff when it's as simple as right, left, or right at you.
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Post by fantom on May 15, 2014 8:41:51 GMT -6
I think that a lot of us are reading too much into this. There are grunting fools who try to compare games to actual combat. Ted's not one of them. He's applying military strategic thinking to football. If anybody is implying that Ted is some kind of war monger you couldn't be more wrong. Note that his career involves nuclear disarmament (before anybody reacts to that in the opposite way, I'l add that I've seen enough of his stuff to know that he's also no knee-jerk peacenik either).
Studying war theory and military history is not the same thing as glorifying war. There are lessons from military theory for leaders in any endeavor: strategic thinking, tactics, handling subordinates and superiors, unit dynamics, logistics (forgetting the footballs for an away game didn't have the same disastrous consequences as Burnside forgetting the boats at Fredericksburg, but it sure didn't feel good.), dealing with subordinates and superiors, and handling victory and defeat.
Ted isn't the first coach to use military strategic theory in writing about football. In his book on the Wing T Tubby Raymond quoted B. H. Liddell Hart extensively. If that's not your thing, fine. Don't read it. Don't discount it of hand, though.
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Post by coachphillip on May 15, 2014 9:26:54 GMT -6
I was going to say the same thing. I don't think he is trying to say football is war. I just think he's saying that there are a lot of similarities between the two. I wouldn't disagree.
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Post by larrymoe on May 15, 2014 10:55:23 GMT -6
There's a lot of similarities between running a successful beauty pageant too. Management of people, personalities, getting people to accept and strive in a certain role, etc. I don't see a lot of football coaches falling all over themselves to compare themselves to beauty pageant directors.
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Post by brophy on May 15, 2014 11:08:00 GMT -6
to Ted's point, he's specifically talking about Edward Luttwak's "paradoxical logic" I suppose, this Sun Tzu-esque framework, is what he's trying to apply to football (not necessarily the war analogy). That being said, I can't make heads or tails of the content (Luttwak).....sounds like a lot of general ideas that are the result of what we're already doing. I struggle to see how we'd read it, then find some maxim to apply that changes how we do things.... but I suppose that is what Ted is going to explain in future posts?
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Post by fantom on May 15, 2014 11:14:44 GMT -6
There's a lot of similarities between running a successful beauty pageant too. Management of people, personalities, getting people to accept and strive in a certain role, etc. I don't see a lot of football coaches falling all over themselves to compare themselves to beauty pageant directors. So, if you want to write a book about beauty pageants go ahead.
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Post by larrymoe on May 15, 2014 11:20:28 GMT -6
So, if you want to write a book about beauty pageants go ahead. I don't want to write a book about anything. But at the same time my point was that there are correlations between running a successful football program and running any group or organization. You don't see people comparing themselves to them because they don't want to diminish their own self image as "a leader of men" or whatever they want to use to justify their awesomeness.
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Post by coachphillip on May 15, 2014 11:56:47 GMT -6
I don't think this has anything to do with guys trying to build themselves up in their own minds. I never lead a team out to a field against a state champ and think "This was what Normandy must've felt like!" I compare what we do to war because I'm a huge history buff. War history fascinates me. Do we get to romanticize it a bit? Sure. But, that doesn't mean that I think I'm some kind of five star general. I'm leading a bunch of teenagers into a field where they can strap plastic to their bodies and get a ball across a line.
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tedseay
Sophomore Member
Posts: 164
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Post by tedseay on May 15, 2014 13:56:08 GMT -6
Personally, "football is war" metaphors creep me out. Football is a hard hitting, physical, awesome sport. War is hell where people die by the thousands and frequently for no good reason. There are just as many parallels between football and war as there are between football and theater, religion, literature, and human sacrifice. 1. "Football is a strategic war game" ≠ "football is war". 2. Football is an organized clash between opposing forces, where every step taken by either side is confronted by "a live enemy opposite, who is reacting to undo everything being attempted, with his own mind and his own strength." This is not true of theater, nor of religion, literature, or human sacrifice. It is true, however, of chess, diplomacy, propaganda, and geo-economics, as well as, of course, war. There are analogies made all the time to football as "a game of chess" on some level or another. In other words, two strategic war games are being compared to each other -- but without the kind of objections this thread has already generated. Why is this, do you think? How can the comparison be made if football is not, as chess so clearly is, a strategic war game? Or do you believe, as some here seem to imply by analogy, that chess is a simple matter of each piece "beating the guy across from" it? This board talks about strategy all the time -- Chris Brown's "constraint plays", for example, or Malcolm Gladwell's "David" and "Goliath" strategies. All I am attempting to do in referring to football as a strategic war game, and in referencing Professor Luttwak's "paradoxical logic" of strategy, is to fill in some of the WHY behind the strategic WHATs which are discussed here every day. Period.
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tedseay
Sophomore Member
Posts: 164
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Post by tedseay on May 15, 2014 14:07:26 GMT -6
to Ted's point, he's specifically talking about Edward Luttwak's "paradoxical logic" I suppose, this Sun Tzu-esque framework, is what he's trying to apply to football (not necessarily the war analogy). That being said, I can't make heads or tails of the content (Luttwak).....sounds like a lot of general ideas that are the result of what we're already doing. I struggle to see how we'd read it, then find some maxim to apply that changes how we do things.... but I suppose that is what Ted is going to explain in future posts?Brophy: Thanks for the focus! Luttwak's book gets a lot better after that passage, believe me. The next line in his book is: Think about it -- if linear logic applied to football, the bigger, stronger team could line up every down in a Power I and run Iso every play -- and win every game. The fact that this never happens should clue us in to the presence of something else, the paradox in logic caused by by an active, intelligent opponent who stands ready to counter our every move. And that, in turn, is why we see counters, play action, five-wide spreads, etc. -- none of which would be necessary if linear logic applied.
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Post by dubber on May 15, 2014 14:29:27 GMT -6
I think that a lot of us are reading too much into this. There are grunting fools who try to compare games to actual combat. Ted's not one of them. He's applying military strategic thinking to football. If anybody is implying that Ted is some kind of war monger you couldn't be more wrong. Note that his career involves nuclear disarmament (before anybody reacts to that in the opposite way, I'l add that I've seen enough of his stuff to know that he's also no knee-jerk peacenik either). Studying war theory and military history is not the same thing as glorifying war. There are lessons from military theory for leaders in any endeavor: strategic thinking, tactics, handling subordinates and superiors, unit dynamics, logistics (forgetting the footballs for an away game didn't have the same disastrous consequences as Burnside forgetting the boats at Fredericksburg, but it sure didn't feel good.), dealing with subordinates and superiors, and handling victory and defeat. Ted isn't the first coach to use military strategic theory in writing about football. In his book on the Wing T Tubby Raymond quoted B. H. Liddell Hart extensively. If that's not your thing, fine. Don't read it. Don't discount it of hand, though. this. Notice how Ted's original post said football was a "war game", not war. In order to enthralled or insulted by such an anology, we must first know what is meant by "war game". For those who dislike the notion of football and war in the same sentence, you should be adamently opposed to the use of "war" and "game" in the same sentence, but you're not because you know what is intended. As a matter of fact, the military itself uses the words "war game" all the time. The study of how battles are won (which is multifaceted and extremely varied) is good, because those principles can be applied to business, football, etc. The reason I have a link to Ted's ebook in my signature line is not for the actual plays......it is for the analysis on how to bend and break a defense. The philosophical underpinnings that move a coach from "guess we'll run this play with these compliments" to actually PLANNING how their offense pieces together and why. And, I know some mountains cannot be moved, so here is the most appropriate clip I could find:
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