Philosophical Lesson from the Seattle Seahawk's Success at Super Bowl

[Guest e Yer]

Sunday's Super Bowl XLVIII (48), a contest between the Seattle Seahawks and the Denver Broncos, demonstrated how important philosophy (or an approach to human interaction) is in establishing a dominating competitive advantage. This philosophy can also be applied to business.

American Football has always focused on the quarterback as the as the trigger that sets the offense in motion. Like in basketball, the defense is to slow down the progress of your opponents offense and maybe get a turnover. The Seahawk's philosophy under coach Pete Carroll was to figuratively speaking, "move their starting blocks as close as possible to the finish line for yourself, before starting the race." To do this, the Seahawks defensive positions were handpicked and specially trained and encouraged to get the greatest potential from each defensive player in each position to stop their opponent's drive as early as possible and/or get a turnover at some point during their defensive session. This "short field" increased the chance foe scoring for your offense.The offense was diffused to non-quarterback offense players, that is the running backs and receivers. This caused the opponent's defense to be spread thin as they could not traditionally key in on the actions of the quarterback. Additionally, a "short field" increased the possibilities for more offensive plays and guaranteed at the very least a 3 point field goal.

The lesson is to 1) match your player's natural attributes to the position requirements, 2) don't micro-manage but encourage and trust in your player's abilities and motivations to do the right things on the field. The U.S. economy is full of laws, regulations, and requirements that micro-manage entrepreneurs and thus provides disincentives for what would otherwise be much needed capital investments and creative solutions for the economy and society. Corporations are full of agents of the shareholders, top managers and middle managers, who, because they are not held liable for losses due to mistakes (corporations are limited liability entities) carelessly pass the buck for blame down the chain of command and like government bureaucrats, hold the lowly worker to unrealistic standards while committing all sorts of mistakes and miscalculations. The successful formula of the Seahawks is a sports case example of what a free market society could be relative to the conventional status quo with its overburdening governmental controls and corporate bureaucratic top-down, centrally controlled management. By the way, most head coaches are top-down managers who micro-manage their players via assistant coaches. The simple formula for success of the Seahawks just hints at the possibilities of what an anarchy, free-market society could be.

[Wesley]

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[LanceD]

Oh my god giant wall of text has defeated me!