Steve the Owl's Blog

Hi, everyone. It has been a while since we have talked. I thank you for coming back to read my latest thoughts. Anyway, I have been thinking earlier about something that my professor said in class. He asked the students in the class how many had read either “The Grand Inquisitor,” or the novel that the story came from, The Brothers Karamazov. Only one hand was raised. Then, he asked how many people owned a copy of The Brothers Karamazov, and several more hands were raised, mine included. (Full disclosure: I bought the book about a week before the class, thinking that we would need the whole book for class. I found out later that there is actually a book form of this chapter, but I decided later that I had done the right thing because I figured that I would like to read it in its entirety one day.)

Knowingly, the professor talked about books like these being on our shelves as a way to impress our friends. I do not know the extent to which that is true for me, but I do know that I have several books on my bookshelves that I have not yet read (that I plan on reading some day, probably this summer when I am not taking classes and can focus on teaching and other intellectual pursuits for my personal betterment), including: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, and On the Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin.

I think that this is something that a lot of us in the academic profession (and even some people who are not in the academic profession) can easily be tempted by: the desire to prove one’s self well read, even if that means owning a lot of books that one has never read. I looked on my bookshelves, and not counting the books that my wife owns that just aren’t really my thing (textbooks and true crime novels, although I used to read a little bit more of the latter when I was younger), I own over one hundred books that I have never read. A lot of those books, I have not even opened. (In a similar vein, I also own a few video games that I have never actually played. They seemed interesting at the time, but the plot line seemed quite long, and I just never got around to playing them, preferring to play games that have a much more episodic format, such as sports games. None of those games are first person shooters, by the way, because I knew that I had no interest in them at all.)

So, this leads me to a bigger question: why do we feel a need to prove ourselves to other people? Would it not be better to have a more authentic life and actually have read these books, even if it meant going to the library and checking them out so you could read them there, even if your friends could not see them on your shelf (almost as, in Jerry Seinfeld’s word, trophies) as evidence of your intellectual prowess? I guess this is a big reminder that there are times that it is better to do good than to look good to others.

How do you make sure to do good rather than look good (and yes, I do appreciate the irony of this question)?

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Hi, everyone. Today is Super Bowl Sunday, where the New York Giants and New England Patriots will battle it out for the right to be known as the best football team in all the land. These teams will be led by their star quarterbacks Eli Manning and Tom Brady. However, I’ve been thinking about two other quarterbacks, and what they can teach about success.

Not Your Typical NFL Quarterbacks

Over the last few years, the NFL has evolved more and more into a passing game. For example, in the year Joe Namath set the record for passing yards in a season (4,007 yards in 1967) to become the first NFL quarterback to throw for 4000 yards in a season, even 3000-yard seasons were relatively rare. (No one broke Namath’s record until pro football went to a 16-game season, but Namath’s 14-game record wasn’t snapped until Dan Marino did it in 1984.) However, today, it is very common for top quarterbacks to throw for more than 4000 yards, and this year, three quarterbacks threw for over 5000 yards, and one just missed it.

However, there are two teams in the NFL that have made an effort to buck the trend of pass heavy offenses: the New York Jets, led by Mark Sanchez; and the Denver Broncos, led by Tim Tebow. Each quarterback has admitted limits as a passer, although Tebow’s shortcomings are far more visible, even to the untrained eye, than those of Sanchez. However, each team has had a good running game, and as a result, the Jets made the playoffs two of the last three years, making it all the way to the AFC Championship Game each time. The Broncos, after starting the season with Kyle Orton, finally decided that the season was lost, and decided to give Tebow a chance. To everyone’s surprise, he won seven of his first eight games and the Broncos won the AFC West Division and won the first round of the playoffs against the vaunted Pittsburgh Steelers, throwing for 316 yards, and an 80-yard touchdown pass in the first play of overtime to get the win.

Messing with the Formula

However, there were (and are) a lot of complaints that Sanchez and Tebow were horrible quarterbacks, and that someone needs to be a great passer in order to succeed in today’s NFL. (The last team to win a Super Bowl without an elite quarterback at the helm was the Tampa Bay Buccaneers nine years ago.) In his first season, Sanchez threw 12 touchdowns against 20 interceptions. As a starter, Tebow only completed 46.5% of his passes. However, each of these quarterbacks succeeded when he had a great running game and a defense that gave him a chance, and each has had a tendency to perform well in the clutch. The fourth quarter became known as “Tebow Time” in Denver, where the Broncos have seven wins in the fourth quarter or overtime in only 13 games as an NFL starter for Tebow. In his first two seasons, Sanchez had a 6-2 record on or after December 1st in his rookie season, and a 4-4 record on or after December 1st in his second season (each including the playoffs), and he tied the NFL record for most wins by a starting quarterback in road playoff games, with four.

However, what led to disaster for each team and each quarterback was when the formula changed. For the Jets, Sanchez threw a lot more than he did in either of his previous two seasons, with 543 attempts, or 33.9 per game, compared to 364 in 2009 and 507 in 2010. His high in passing attempts was 59 in a game against the New York Giants. For the Broncos, it came when the Patriots jumped out to a big lead, and were able to stop the run, forcing Tebow to pass far too often. This is not to say that they are terrible quarterbacks, but that they need a good running game in order to make their passing game to work.

This made me think about what it means to fit into your role in life. Sometimes, we try to be flashy, and we try to do things that we are not as good at, and it harms us in the end. In the end, I think that this is not a strike against reaching out to do something new, but an understanding of what our abilities are, and where we work our best.

How do you know what your role is in life?

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