Who’s the Other Guy, Stupid?
4th August 2010
Albert Haynesworth continues to attract sports media comment. Haynesworth locked himself into a duel with his new head coach, Mike Shanahan, at the Washington Redskins football team. Haynesworth earns a great deal of money, guaranteed money, but he can’t seem to pass Shanahan’s conditioning tests, so Haynesworth can’t practice with the team. Some writers wonder if Shanahan is losing the battle with Haynesworth, biting his nose to spite his face.
If you had any interest in not making this a distraction, wouldn’t there be other approaches than public shame? I mean, you could construct Haynesworth’s image out of neon toothpicks in the Redskins Park driveway without creating a bigger distraction than this conditioning test has been.
This perspective assumes that Shanahan is trying to persuade just Mr. Haynesworth with these tests. Is it possible that Shanahan might be persuading the rest of the team? Or perhaps the owner of the Redskins who paid wildly for Haynesworth?
Sure, It’s about the Other Guy, but you also have to figure out exactly who that Other Guy is before you start your critical analysis. Imagine that the head coach can actually persuade more than one person at a time.
Isn’t that more interesting than the obvious?