IRON COACH #1

“Five minutes ago, a man’s fantasy became a reality in a form never seen before: Stadium Kitchen, a giant breakroom devoted solely to college football. The motivation for spending his $10 in monthly bandwidth to create Stadium Kitchen was to encounter new theories of playcalling which could be called true artistic creations. To realize his dream, he secretly started choosing the top coaches of various personality disorders, and he named his men the Iron Coaches: the invincible men of coaching skills. Iron Coach Weird is Mike Leach. Iron Coach Boring is Lloyd Carr. Iron Coach Persecuted is Dennis Franchione. And Steve Spurrier is Iron Coach Evil. Stadium Kitchen is the arena where Iron Coaches await the challenges of master coaches from around college football. Both the Iron Coaches and the challenger have one paragraph to tackle the situation of the day. Using all their senses, skill, creativity, they are to call plays calculated to overcome difficult problems. And if ever a challenger wins over the Iron Coaches, he or she will gain the people’s ovation and fame forever. Every battle, reputations are on the line in Stadium Kitchen, where master coaches pit their crib sheets against each other. What inspiration does today’s challenger bring? And how will the Iron Coaches fight back? The heat will be on!”

(cue inspirational-sounding music, picture of little boats on a placid Japanese lake)

CHAIRMAN TAKESHI MUSBERGER: “If memory serves me, college football games used to end in ties on a routine basis. As the old proverb states, ‘There is no dishonor in failing to lose, only in failing to win.’ Our modern times have brought us the overtime game. Now, when the season of the third overtime has arrived, the two-point conversion is not an option after a touchdown; it must be attempted. Such a situation faced the noble Rockets of Toledo this past Thursday night. Mere moments after their quarterback was shaken up on a late hit by an Iowa State defender, they found themselves attempting the two-point conversion to tie the game at 45. Succeed, and they would live to fight for one more round. Fail, and they must hang their heads in shame, knowing that they lost a season opener.

“What would my Iron Coaches do in such a situation? When faced with that question, the men of coaching excellence provided me with a wide variety of responses.”

IRON COACH WEIRD (Mike Leach): “The problem with two-point conversions is the lack of field space available in which to make anything happen. There are only a few places on the field where the ball can go, and everyone knows where those are. I would take an intentional delay-of-game penalty to open up more field space, then line up three wide before hitting the fullback coming underneath on a circle route. Nobody will expect the ball in the middle of the field.”

IRON COACH BORING (Lloyd Carr):“I’d call a draw play to the right.”

IRON COACH PERSECUTED (Dennis Franchione): “The great thing about triple overtime is that nobody can question you for going for two. That’s a nice luxury when your fan base is as restive as ours is. But this is no time for trickeration. You don’t want to make a decision which they’ll be second-guess on the talk shwos come Monday morning. You send in your ‘jumbo’ package, running your big fullback into the line just ahead of the strongest running back you have, and you just pray that he’ll have enough second effort to cross the line. Then you hope that the defense can make a stop. It’s a lot easier to just line up for a field goal, and if the kicker misses, they can’t really blame you.”

IRON COACH EVIL (Steve Spurrier): “Heck, they tried to knock out your quarterback, you just gotta take it right back to ‘em. QB keeper, ‘less your center is as soft as your grandma’s shortcake.”

What did the challenger, Toledo coach Tom Amstutz, do? He threw a quick out to the right flat . . . exactly where everybody knew the ball would be going. As the ball fluttered to the turf, Ames was momentarily ablaze with a rare moment of excitement.

CHAIRMAN MUSBERGER: “This battle must go to Iron Coach Weird. His brilliant effort at putting the defense on its heels, which was no doubt inspired by something the Vikings did in the 13th century, probably would have discombobulated the Cyclone defense enough to allow for success. My men of coaching genius may all hold their heads high.”

(Disclaimer: The preceding is a work of satire. No actual coaches were consulted in the preparation of this article, nor is any commentary on the coaches themselves intended or implied; i.e., Mike Leach is not weird, Lloyd Carr is not boring, Dennis Franchione is not persecuted, and Steve Spurrier is not . . . look, there’s a walrus on a pogo stick!)

BRAIN-ZAP ME, JESUS

“So why doesn’t God just zap people’s brains, anyway?” asked an old friend seeking advice on how to deal with a stubborn spouse. She’d prayed and prayed that God would zap her husband’s brain so he would be easier to deal with. Now she couldn’t figure out why her prayers for this instantaneous personality transplant were going unanswered. She’d asked politely, and repeatedly, as the Bible tells us to do. So why wasn’t her husband suddenly attentive and considerate?

You can figure out why, right? What if God ever answered such a prayer, even once, for anybody? What if we could change other people’s personalities just by asking God nicely to do so? That would lead to a much more entertaining world to say the least. Most of us—okay, all of us—would probably change personalities two or three times before breakfast every day. Who would want to live in a world like that? Asking for an immediate change in someone else’s nature is one of those prayers which is best left unanswered, because chaos would result from any of us humans thinking we had that sort of power to change others on a whim.

Not that there aren’t times when such personality transplants would be useful, of course. But hidden behind my friend’s request is the reality of why we would ever ask for such a thing in the first place. Recall that she wanted him to change so that he would be easier to deal with. I’m sure she was sincere in her desire. But her concern was not for him—it was for herself.

So it’s even easier to see why God kept saying “no” to her request. It was selfish. Married people are supposed to want what’s best for each other, not for themselves. Marriage turns the ‘m’ in ‘me’ upside down and makes it ‘we.’ Or at least that’s what is supposed to happen.

Of course, it isn’t only married couples who seek to zap each other’s brains. If you had the power to warp somebody’s mind, who would you go after? Your boss? Your neighbor? Elected officials? Talk-radio hosts? Hollywood moguls?

Listen: it’s the easiest thing in the world to think that all your problems will go away and the world will be a better place if God just mind-blasts somebody else. It takes far more courage and humility to admit that you’re the one who needs to be washed clean. But whose prayer is more likely to be answered: the one who asks, “Lord, change them and make them more like me” or the one who asks, “Lord, change me and make me more like you”?

Do you really need me to answer that?