Life Lessons I Learned from Super Bowl XI

Life Lessons I Learned from Super Bowl XI

January, 2013

Thirty-six years ago this month, during my sophomore year at Caltech, I was privileged to attend Super Bowl XI at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.  That event was quite special to me, since it was the first time that the Oakland Raiders, my favorite team since I first became a football fan in 1968, won the Super Bowl.  In the course of that afternoon (they actually played the Super Bowl entirely during the day back then), three moments taught me important lessons for life. I present these lessons in ascending order of the importance of the insight, which happens to be reverse chronological order of the occurrence of those moments on that afternoon.

1 –  From the point the Raiders took a 25 point lead over the Vikings in the fourth quarter, the sense that the Raiders were assured of winning grew, and it was quite an ecstatic feeling after all of the years of disappointment with losses in AFC Championship games in previous years.  I finally had the feeling of “This is what it’s all about.” This feeling is why one watches all those games, follows the standings and the statistics, and gets so emotionally involved in rooting for the team – to experience the joy of victory that I was feeling. By the time Kevin (my roommate who accompanied me to the big game) and I had walked half-way across the parking lot heading toward Colorado Blvd. to return to campus, encompassed in the air of post-victory exuberance, the thought dawned on me, “So what!”  The Raiders won (yippee!), but not much of lasting value would result from that victory. The problems of the world would remain the same (possibly exacerbated by the post-victory revelry in Oakland). Sports never held as much of my attention, emotional investment or time from that moment forward. I don’t think I’ve sat down to watch a full regular season game since then, and for the past 20 years, I only watch the fourth quarter the Super Bowl (although I did make an exception in 2002, the last time the Raiders made it, to watch from the beginning of the game).

2 – Earlier in the fourth quarter, with the Raiders holding only a twelve point lead, Vikings quarterback Fran Tarkenton hit wide receiver Sammy White with a pass near mid-field.  Raiders free safety Jack Tatum hit White with a brutal tackle. I remember vividly two sounds in rapid succession: first, the sound of the crunch of the tackle; second, the sound of the approximately 100,000 fans in the Rose Bowl gasping simultaneously as White’s body appeared to crumble lifelessly (whether due to death, unconsciousness or paralysis) to the ground.  (It seemed like forever before White got up and walked off the field. But see later note below in next section.) That play was a needed reminder of how easy it is to get so caught up in trying to win the game that one loses perspective of the overriding importance of human life. That simultaneous gasp was the temporary realization in the moment of that overriding importance, that even Raiders’ fans like me who gratefully welcomed Tatum’s hard-hitting defensive play as an antidote to the shoddy tackling which kept the Raiders out of the playoffs in 1971 (the year before they drafted Tatum out of Ohio State) hoped in that brief moment that White would not be permanently harmed by that tackle.  Concern for human life and well-being should be paramount in everything we do, but all too often we get so caught up in pursuing victory – achievement of our short-term objectives- that we put human life and health at risk. I write these words during the week in which Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were pointedly not voted into baseball’s Hall of Fame, and that Lance Armstrong finally admitted to using performance enhancing drugs, and reports of CTE in a number of football players. I need not say more.

3 – In the first quarter, the Vikings blocked a Raiders punt and recovered the ball just a few yards away from the goal line.  My sense that we might be in for a very long afternoon was relieved a few plays later, when the Vikings running back fumbled the ball and the Raiders recovered the fumble.  From our seats by the ten yard line, we had a perfect view of the ball squirting loose in our direction and the Raiders recovering the fumble. It was no surprise to us when the officials signaled first down for the Raiders – we had already jumped out of our seats in celebration.  However, it did come as a surprise to many people on the other side of the field, including the broadcasters and the TV audience. A person a couple of rows in front of us had brought a portable black-and-white TV with a battery pack in order to be able to watch instant replays. From his TV, we heard, “The officials are signaling that the Raiders have recovered a fumble, but I didn’t see a fumble; did you see a fumble, Don… No, Curt, I didn’t see a fumble.”  It took a while for them to find the replay from a camera angle that showed the fumble (still not quite as clearly as we had seen it).

It’s only in the past few years that I have realized that the root cause of the increasing polarization we are experiencing in the world these days is that we look at life from opposite sides of the field (and from various angles in between).  Just as no person in the stadium will be able to see everything that happens in the game – some things are obscured from view, and no one can focus attention on everything which every player does simultaneously – no individual human can perceive and understand everything in the challenges which face our communities, our states, our nation, and the world.  We all take in a relatively small amount of the information generated by particular situations from our unique viewing angles. We all start from various fundamental assumptions, both conscious and subconscious, which help us filter the information we consider important in order to be able to take in that information like the stream of a water-fountain rather than that of a fire-hose.    The perceptions we develop of the challenges we face is the product of that relatively slim slice of data and our extrapolations and interpolations from it to form a meaningful image in our minds. People who tend to look at things from a similar angle – from common assumptions – tend to form similar mental images, just as the fans sitting in one section of the stadium will tend to have a similar evaluation of the play they just saw, which might be very different from those viewing in a different section.

We err when we assume that any perceptive, intelligent, sane person must see things the same way that we do.  I received a surprising reminder of this point when I found a video clip on You Tube of Jack Tatum’s tackle of Sammy White described above, complete with play by play commentary of the NBC announcers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qqBaTlVVYo ).  I was rather surprised to see that from the broadcast booth angle, despite the graphic violence of the tackle (I didn’t remember White’s helmet flying off as clearly as I remembered the sounds), White clearly maintained control of his head and arms as he went down and remained conscious, though very shaken.  From my side of the field, that was obscured. So it was probably only the 40-50,000 spectators on my side of the Rose Bowl (or at least those for a few sections around me) who gasped simultaneously at our shared perception of his body crumbling to the ground.

The polarizing divisions in our world – between political parties, between secularists and religious people, between different religious communities, and between different nations – result from this error.  Each group assumes that the mental image it has formed regarding particular issues and challenges is the correct conclusion that any sane, intelligent person must arrive at. Those who see it differently are simply wrong.  The truth is that part of the mental image formed by every person from all their different points of view contains some accurate information, and much more extrapolation from that information. The extent to which those extrapolations are accurate is open to question.  We get into serious trouble when we insist on rejecting solid evidence provided by someone with a different point of view simply because it doesn’t agree with the mental image we have already generated. All too often we end up relying on our unreliable extrapolations and rejecting reliable data.

We would all be well advised to have more humility regarding our perceptions and the conclusions we draw from them.  We should view someone who has arrived at contrary conclusions based on a different point of view as a person who has some reliable data which we may be missing, even though that data comes coated with extrapolations at least as unreliable as our own – extrapolations with which we may vehemently disagree.  By taking the time to analyze what pieces of reliable data that person might have incorporated into his mental image which we may not have perceived, we can build a more accurate picture from which to better meet the challenges we face. Multiply that process by the seven billion plus humans who populate the Earth, and you get some approximation of what will be needed to bring about the day described in the Jewish liturgy for Rosh Hashana as the day when “all humans will unite to do God’s will wholeheartedly.”   When that day comes, every person will recognize the unique piece of the Truth which s/he alone perceives (as well as the pieces of truth which s/he perceives along with many others), and will gladly accept that the full picture of the Truth is much better than the incorrect extrapolations we each made from those pieces. That day will be the ultimate victory for everyone, and the joy of victory will be everlasting.

Many of our leaders seem to think that their job is to reinforce the mental images of a certain segment of people and lead that perspective to victory over those who have generated a contrary image of reality.  Sometimes that contrary image is so toxic and so unreceptive to counter-evidence that defeating and destroying it are the only options (e.g., Nazism).  However, in most cases, true leadership is leading people to develop a fuller perspective of reality by creating an environment in which those who disagree over the important issues of the day can consider the evidence presented by those with a different perspective without reflexively defending our unreliable extrapolations from the evidence.

Religions purport to teach their adherents truths revealed by God.  As such religious leaders have a special responsibility and challenge.  We need to remember that Moses, about whom it was written “Never again did there arise in Israel a prophet like Moses, whom the Lord singled out, face to face” (Deuteronomy 34:10), was also extremely humble:  “Now Moses was a very humble man, more so than any other man on earth.” (Numbers 12:3) To Moses was revealed more of the Truth than any other human, and that experience made him extremely humble and open to the possibility that what God wants might not be what Moses would intuitively assume (See Numbers 9:6-13; 27:1-11).   A teaching from the Jewish Oral tradition captures this idea well (Exodus Rabbah Parashat Ki Tissa Parashah 41:6):

And God gave to Moses when he finished speaking with him two tablets of stone written with the finger of God.” (Exodus 31:18) R. Abbahu says: “All forty days that Moses was up there, he was learning Torah and forgetting.  He said, ‘Master of the Universe, I have been here for forty days and I don’t know anything.’ What did the Holy One Blessed Be He do? When forty days were completed, He Gave the Torah to Moses as a gift, as it is stated, ‘He gave to Moses.’ Did Moses learn the entire Torah? It is Written in Scripture (Job 11:9): “It (Wisdom) is longer in measure than the earth and wider than the sea” and Moses learned it in forty days?!  Rather, God taught Moses the general principles (kelalim).  That’s what the verse means to say with the words kikhaloto ledaber ito (=speaking with him in general principles).

Those of us who have inherited only the testimony which Moses was able to learn, remember, and transmit to us need to be doubly humble about the interpretations and applications which we must extrapolate from that faithful testimony (Psalm 19: 8).

I am sure that there will be many more TV camera angles covered at this year’s Super Bowl than there were in 1977.  For all I know, they may all be livestreamed on the web for anyone who wants to make sure to see the best angle for any play.  We should invest as much effort in understanding the challenges we face in this world from at least as many angles.