Nature, Nurture, & Gestalt Psych in Football

The Pouncey Twins of UF

For some reason today I was thinking about the advantages of having a sort of "sixth sense" for your teammates in football and just being aware of one another and how that can make such a huge difference - between mediocre and pretty darn good and between good and great. Then for some reason I connected this to the advantages that siblings have in tennis when they play as doubles partners. Siblings that grew up together, have known each other their entire lives, that have practiced together more than apart... they just seem to "get" each other and have a sense of chemistry that's nearly impossible to develop without the nature and nurture ties. I'm thinking of the Williams sisters and the Bryan brothers in tennis.

But then I started to think about how this might translate to football and if there were any examples in football and I thought of Pouncey twins at Florida and then the Williams brothers for the Minnesota Vikings (both defensive tackles). There aren't that many other prominent examples right now, and unfortunately, it's not that easy to narrow down searches to brothers who have played football together (at least not without letting myself spend five hours looking). It's funny how that doesn't seem to be something anyone's really considered, yet so many broadcasters talk about guys who have a sixth sense for teammates and the position of the ball and yet we've ignored the obvious advantage of these blood connections and how valuable they can... and perhaps more importantly (or at least fascinatingly), what happens if we split these pairings? I think you'd lose a tremendous amount... at least for the brothers in football. You'd lose the symbiotic relationship, the whole as more than the sum of its parts-phenomena. Not that the Pouncey twins or the Williams brothers wouldn't be good without each other, but I don't think they'd come up with some of the plays they do without the other one. Just look at the Horton brothers at USC (Southern Cal, the other USC) - one switched positions AND transferred to play with the other!

It's interesting to think about what will happen with the Pouncey twins, as it's difficult to imagine that they could be drafted together, that one would last an entire round and you would have to make a trade pretty early to get two picks together to get them (otherwise you'd have one twin and everyone else would know you have the other and be able to squeeze you for a lot to get the other one... well, "a lot" being relative to what draft round the twins go in).

Just something interesting to think about, a new thought on nature and nurture combined with some Gestalt psychology for this autumn Saturday full of college football!

Two Notes

Two notes and thoughts from tonight -

Even though Clemson lost by 3 points tonight, the rush of that comeback reminded me why I love football and why I spend months pining away for it to begin again. The incredible high of watching one of your guy come down with the ball when height, weight, and physics say he'll be overmatched, the thrill of an inconceivable comeback. Even in defeat, the highs were pretty darn high. And I didn't even have to get off the couch (well, technically I did go over and watch with a bunch of friends, but I didn't personally have to face multiple 300+ pound linebackers trying to crush me for more than 3 hours).

I keep reading random stuff about sleep patterns, night owls and early birds, etc. because I seem to have the weirdest sleep schedule ever. I used to be able to nap and be a normal person and now I end up with weird insomnia at times and then occasionally survive quite happily for 2 weeks with an average of 3 hours a night. So, anyways, I saw this Scientific American article that claims that night owls actually get a nice performance/alertness boost 10ish hours after waking up, while early birds do NOT get a boost! Ha! Awesomeness. Obviously this doesn't explain my sleep patterns and who knows how much to trust it, but it's exciting, if only for the placebo effect it provides.

Athletes Behaving Badly (...or just broadcasting badly)

"I didn't kill nobody, I didn't rape nobody, so that's it." -Manny Ramirez, while explaining why he thought the media should move on from the fact that he was suspended for violation of anti-doping laws

I lied with the title... sort of. I'm actually just frustrated with the announcers for the College World Series. They fawn over various characters on the big stage in Omaha and completely ignore facts and reality. I feel like I blog a bit too much about sports, but I do watch a lot of them and one of the benefits of watching ESPN a lot, for a lot of years at this point, is that I can remember these past indiscretions that these pathetic excuses for journalists somehow forget to mention...

First, Robin Ventura is one of the commentators and has been for years. His colleagues help him re-live the glory days, when he played for Oklahoma State and set records that didn't even have all that much to do with skill (consecutive games with a hit... as opposed to batting titles and RBIs). However, they ignore what Ventura SHOULD be most famous for, which is taking a serious ASS KICKING from Nolan Ryan. Seriously, Nolan Ryan just punches him the head while he has Ventura in a headlock. It's amazing and you should REALLY watch it here on YouTube. And it's the only thing Ventura really did in the majors, but somehow his colleagues spend inning after inning, game after game, year after year, re-living the same minor accomplishments. Honestly, it's not really amoral or anything, it's just part of how I feel like allowing former athletes with borderline narcisstic personality disorders to simply talk for hours at a time is a bad idea.

Second, the bigger problem with athletes today, as spotlighted in the College World Series, is how journalists and commentators ignore enormous indiscretions on supposed role models. Augie Garrido, the coach of the Texas team, currently playing in the finals, is constantly revered for his wins and being a living legend in college baseball. This would be fine if old Augie didn't get a DUI this year. Yeah, he's not the only one to get a DUI - not the first or last famous, infamous, or regular Joe to get one. But the problem is that Augie is a supposed role model. He recruits high school boys and tells their parents that he has a whole program and turns them into model young men. If he's anything like any other college coach, he tells moms and dads everywhere that his program is about more than just the sport, but about learning life lessons and molding these sons into the men they will become. And Augie gets a DUI and a few months later we're all pretending that he's still this great role model for young men, that his actions didn't invalidate the words he's been spewing for years now... shouldn't the people struggling for something to talk about for three or four hours, who are supposed to be journalists, mention this rather than sweeping it under the rug? I thought maybe I'd been wrong about when Augie had this incident, but it was this year, the end of January, as the article is still on ESPN.com here.

I know hypocrisy runs rampant and these aren't really injustices - particularly given that Manny Ramirez gets to go back towards the majors by making a minor league start earlier tonight OR that the governor of South Carolina disappeared, probably to a nudist weekend despite his conservative stance on everything - but it's just frustrating and it's something that annoys me on a regular basis because I just think ESPN should screen and test these people a bit better before giving them three to four hours a night to talk to the nation. But maybe it's just me...

Super-Regionals by the Numbers

It's the baseball equivalent of the Sweet Sixteen, the Super-Regionals! ...And I feel super-lucky to have both my undergrad alma mater and current graduate school in the mix and get to cheer them on! But I noticed some things about this year's teams that I thought I'd share...

The Sweet 16: Louisville, Cal State-Fullerton, Arkansas, Florida State, Virginia, Mississippi, Rice, LSU, TCU, Texas, Southern Miss, Florida, Clemson, Arizona State, East Carolina, & North Carolina

Of the 16 teams...

• 4 ACC teams: ECU, UNC, Clemson, & Florida State
• 4 SEC teams: Ole Miss, LSU, Florida, & Arkansas
• 3 Conference-USA teams: Southern Miss, Rice, & East Carolina
• 3 teams are in Texas: Rice, Texas, and Texas Christian (TCU)
• 3 post season match-ups: Clemson is one of only a few teams that has had post-season games for all 3 major sports this year (a bowl game in football, the NCAA tournament in basketball, and the current berth in baseball)
• 2 in state-rivalries match-up: North Carolina (UNC and East Carolina) and Texas (TCU and Texas)
• 2 Tigers: Clemson & LSU (are the tigers, though only one has a live tiger mascot)
• 0: previous trips to the super-regionals for UVA
  
• 0: teams from last year's championship series (UGA and Fresno State, the runner-up and winner, respectively)
• 1996: last time that Rice didn't win the regular season title for its conference