Sort of an unexpected realization

[detlef]

So, we were at the mall the other weekend and there was one of those temporary discount book stores that always pop up in vacant spots. We popped in and I grabbed a copy of The Genius. The story of Bill Walsh.

 

Being a lifelong Niner fan, I thought I could relive the glory years and maybe glean some nuggets of leadership and such to use in my everyday life and career as a manager of people and business owner.

 

Started out nice enough. Dude was a committed, resourceful, exacting tactician at every step along the way. It was exciting reading about how the Niners, a sad-sack team who'd just been run into the ground by a complete egomaniac idiot, took a chance on this guy and how that chance paid off as quickly as it did. How he took a relatively untalented batch of David's and slayed the Goliath that was the NFL in 1981.

 

From there, the story just gets downright depressing. Maybe some of this isn't news to people who were older at the time, but it sure it to me. Besides the fact that the rest of the story is about a paranoid man who feared constant scrutiny from the outside and within himself, who abandoned his family for the entirety of his 10 year run with the Niners and basically wanted to quit the team every year after 1982 (that is when his boss wasn't trying to fire him or crapping on him seemingly every time they so much as lost a game). I also never realized what a fragile house of cards the seeming juggernaught really was. They seemed to be constantly on the verge of implosion for any number of reasons.

 

Reading accounts of the games, the author seemingly nonchalantly keeps talking about them overcoming 2-3 INTs by Montana all the time. I really want to go back and look at his career stats and check them out. I already know that, while being very clutch, he rarely bowled anyone over offensively. The Niners won a lot of games 21-17 or such. But I'd like to have another look at his actual stats. It is odd, when you think about the Walsh Niners, you often think "The West Coast Offense". But reading the book, you're reminded of the fact that Montana's Niners were anything but unstoppable on offense. As a team, they made plays when they needed them but didn't do jack until they assembled such an amazing defensive backfield.

 

It was a really compelling read and I just plowed through it once I picked it up, but I'm certainly no more inspired than I was when I started it. Not that it was somehow obliged to have that effect, mind you.

 

It make me wonder how really seedy the league actually is. I mean, the Niners always seemed to be this image of efficiency and savvy. They were the thinking man's team. Cerebral and calculating. Everyone knew his job and approached it like a surgeon. You'd half expect these guys to go home after practice and contemplate a glass of fine scotch over a good read. Or that's what it seemed like. But according to this book, they were a bunch of loose cannons always on the edge of completely spinning out of control. I can't imagine how crazy it was inside the locker room of teams that were actually thought of as bad boys.

 

I suppose, in some ways, it makes the story more impressive. Well, unless every team was full of derelicts and the Niners just happened to control it better than others enough to dominate the league for a spell.

 

At any rate, it was certainly an interesting read.

[MojoMan]

 

[matt770]

Vince Lombardi was one of the greatest motivators to ever coach the sport. He also alienated his wife & kids, to the point where his wife drank too much at times to cope with his absences and mood swings. And he was so tightly wound that he developed stomach issues and died of colon cancer when he was just 57. It's a tough job, demands a certain kind of person to do well and can take quite a toll.

 

The Walsh book sounds really interesting. You guys were our archnemesis back in the day.