OLD STANDARDS UNDER STRAIN? HOLD MY BEER

Old standards are only for old people.

Wrong.

What’s wrong is the idea of standards, which I’ll clear up right now in case there’s any doubt:

The Standard is the standard, no matter the age, young, or old.

Got it? Good. So what exactly is The Standard?

I snagged, stole, or borrowed, the idea of ‘the standard is the standard’ from the NFL’s Pittsburgh Steeler coach Mike Tomlin.

It means more coming from him since the Steeler Standard was four Super Bowl wins in the 1970’s.

The San Francisco 49ers set the same standards in the 80’s with their four Super Bowl wins, which would never happen again.

Never, until the Dallas Cowboys took three titles in four years and would have dominated the rest of the 1990’s the way UCLA basketball did by winning ten college titles between 1964-1975, and the Boston Celtics with thirteen NBA titles between 1957 and 1976.

Those were the standards growing up, along with the New York Yankees run of ten World Series wins between 1947-1962.

Sports standards are said to reflect social standards, unless I’m missing something.

Sports are a microcosm of the rest of us? For the rest of us?

 

The Sporting Standard: Kicked Out

Watch any professional sports and you’ll see reactions to bad calls by the referee.

The liveliest people back in the day were major league baseball managers and tennis gentleman John McEnroe.

 

 

Since then the players and managers take it to the limit, hopefully just before getting kicked out.

And the limits have expanded in some cases. Take the NBA for example,

Guys used to clothesline each other in the lane to send a message: If you run down here like you own the paint I’ll hang you out to dry.

 

 

Today each game is full of the drama of ‘was it a personal foul, a technical foul, or a flagrant foul?

No one got disqualified for this play on the ball, and Rambis’s head.

The definition of ‘It’s all part of the game’ has changed.

Everybody gets to argue, everybody gets to vent. Players on coaches, coaches on referees, referees on their Association.

There are rules that must be followed in sports, and everyone is an expert on those rules.

For a violation of the rules there must be evidence of the incident, like video of a receiver’s foot in or out of bounds on the sideline and whether he was in or out of bounds when he got creamed by a safety with a running start.

One side screams they were in bounds for the catch and out of bounds for the hit; the other side says in bounds is fair game.

The decision is based on rules interpretation in the moment.

It used to be the final say on the field, but now it goes to another screen for approval.

Every moment of every game, every event, is a chance to improve the odds of winning, of affecting the point spread, of creating a prediction bet.

Prediction bet? See Kalshi.

 

Where Are Standards?

This is Albert Einstein, Big Al. Everybody knows Big Al.

He found the Theory of Relatively. It’s a big deal.

Click the link for an explanation.

In any event, he works with numbers and letters like you see on the blackboard.

It’s not a point spread, he’s not a bookie, or online gambling guru, but he’s made a difference with his work.

And he knew how important it was to share.

 

Einstein’s Letter to President Roosevelt – 1939

Big Al goes on to explain how things are and where they might be going without hyping himself or his achievements. He’s not a hype man.

Big Al saw big things in his time and played a big part.

He had enough vision to give fair warning.

Instead of some unstable old fart singing and dancing to his own boom-boom song where his ‘I told you so’ is more important than the consequences his work may inflict, he seems humble.

Don’t we all like humble? The ‘Aw shucks’ men and women who do amazing things, who make us feel like we have more possibilities than we give ourselves credit for?

Yes. We. Do.

Under-promise and over-deliver is a good thing as long as the under-promise is the standard.

 

PS:

The men who had a hand in cooking Hiroshima and Nagasaki seem awed by the responsibility placed in their hands. I like awe when it comes to things nuclear, like, “Aw, will it blow us up?”

 

PSS:

As a leading voice for responsible science, based on his letter, I feel a sense of reluctance in Einstein’s words.

Humble reluctance in the world’s smartest man? He’s an example of old standards that need new light.