By Charles Moncrief
”Colorado has the ball, it’s fourth and goal on the one yard line, and
McCartney’s got a critical decision to make.”
(Well, it sells air time when you grab for
someone’s emotions.)
When Bill McCartney was Colorado’s head coach,
this was the sort of sensationalism that polluted the airways. While I have
great respect for McCartney as a coach and as a man, I'm disappointed that he
would later introduce one of his radio commentaries with that excerpt.
Less dazzling, less colorful, is the reality
of what takes place on the field. For the most part, the decision was made
quite some time ago, when the quarterback was huddling the team at
midfield. There’s enough pressure in the
heat of the moment, at play execution, that such decisions need to be made
earlier in the drive. Consider these two questions:
1. It’s fourth and goal, do we kick the field
goal or do we try for the touchdown?
2. Knowing what we know while we’re 50 yards
from the end zone, should we go for the touchdown or for the field goal IF we
get to fourth and goal?
Coach McCartney knows several facts while his
team is marching downfield. Among others, he knows the current score, the time
remaining on the clock, the tone of the game at the moment. He’s a good guesser
about some of the variables, such as the momentum shifts and the opponents’
ability to sniff out some of his team’s strategies. He also knows that to be
fourth and goal requires some things to go right and some things to go wrong.
While the team got inside the ten yard line, they failed to score in three
downs.
With what he knows and with what he doesn’t
yet know, the coach can form a game plan. If a key player gets injured as they
approach the goal, or if a linebacker blows his coverage downfield, the coach can
alter his plan. But what’s important is that the coach has a
plan.
These are principles we can apply in the way
we live our lives. I'll give a couple of examples, but none would be as good as
the ones you’ll be able to come up with yourselves. So please consider this a
launching point, and allow your own creative juices to flow.
You’re looking for work. You attend a lot of
job fairs, you fill out a lot of online applications, and by some miracle you
find two companies are expressing interest. After interviewing with one of
them, the other company makes you a pretty good offer. So you think the
interview went well, and you may get a better offer by waiting around. Or do
you accept the one offer you have, or do you wait to hear from the company that
called you in for an interview? (Yes, I know this is a fantasy world, but I'm
being parabolic, so please work with me here.) By the time anything like this
happens, you should have already worked out your strategy. Who deserves to be
my employer? How much do I like one company over the other? If I like one
company five thousand dollars more than the other, then what if the other guys
offer me $10,000 more? Or what if the difference is $4,999? Or what if the
company offering less offers to relocate you to Muleshoe, Texas? Depending on
how you feel about Muleshoe, the relocation package may be enough to make your
decision for you.
OK, so you have a job and you’ve started your
probationary period. Do you have your excuses built up yet, to use when you
show up late for work one morning, or you return late from lunch? Don’t you
think it would be preferable to have these in your bag of tricks? Or would you
rather have to think quickly on your feet when facing a boss who’s coiled up
like a viper waiting to strike?
On a more serious
note, I keep finding myself drawn to Susan’s book and this site’s namesake.
You’re in a violent relationship, so you finally escape. You’ve been threatened
with death, or you’ve had other serious threats made against you if you try to
leave. You’ve long since discarded the fantasy that the Whistleblower
Protection Act will protect you as a whistleblower. So you’re unprotected,
undefended, and vulnerable. This is not the time to make public accusations
against your abuser. This is not the
ideal time to be creating an Evidentiary Abuse Affidavit. (If you haven’t yet,
there are reasons for doing so even this late in the process.) If you’re
planning your escape, the EAA should be one of the very first things you do. The best time is when you can be
methodical and stick to the facts. When you’re approaching the goal line, you
have too much on your mind to be fiddling aound with the Affidavit.
There is no
substitute for advance planning.
Luke 14:28 (KJV)
Grace and Peace,
Charles+
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