Doing your job key on team, in life

Shortly after Washington State University’s season-opening face plant, a 24-17 loss to Portland State on Saturday, players and coaches analyzed just exactly why the Cougars had lost to a team to whom they had no business losing.

Well, it was raining and some players were worried too much about that. There wasn’t enough communication, others said, and coach Mike Leach suggested that players had tried to do too much and ultimately ended up not doing their jobs.

Football boils down to just that: doing your job. In some circles, it’s expanded to: do your job well.

It’s a life lesson that the game brings into sharp focus.

It’s easy to get caught up in the hoopla of the game. The great throw, the out-of-this-world move, the thunderous block. They’re what make the game a thrill to watch. But great plays are the tip of the iceberg. In order for one player to make an outstanding play, 10 others have to do their jobs.

We get into a bad habit of labeling the great play “heroic.”

But which is the more heroic? The player who made the big play, or the ones who did their job and made the big play possible?

We call those kinds of players “unsung heroes.” They toil in anonymity – noticed only when they fail to get their job done.

The center, for example, snaps the football dozens upon dozens of times. But does the ordinary fan notice? But let the quarterback fumble the snap just once …

An offensive line makes block after block, dominates the line of scrimmage, but what gets talked about after? The great game the quarterback had or how outstanding the running game was.

It’s embarrassingly obvious when the process breaks down and individual jobs don’t get done. Flags are thrown, numbers are called and penalties are assessed. Or worse, plays are blown up and players are thrown for a big loss.

Except when it’s your team that makes that tackle-for-loss. Because the other team’s job is always to make it difficult, if not impossible, for an opponent to do theirs.

It’s only when that process of doing the job well breaks down that we understand just how important that building block is, because the consequences can be humiliating. It leads to a Pac-12 football team losing to a middle-of-the-pack Big Sky school.

Portland State wasn’t in Pullman expecting to win a game – that was a bonus. The Vikings were in Martin Stadium looking for the kind of payday FCS schools get for playing up against an FBS school.

Just doing your job – doing that job efficiently and well – isn’t sexy. It’s not the stuff of headlines, nor is it the stuff of legends.

And yet that’s what makes the world work, not just a football team.

Whether the vernacular is “Do Your Job” or “There is no I in TEAM” or any of the other coaching clichés on the subject, it’s a life lesson we all need to both remember and appreciate.

If a successful football play can be defined as the result of a set of players each doing their respective jobs, the same can be said for just about everything in life.

The luscious, ripe tomato that makes it to your plate is the end result of a long string of workers doing their job well. From the farmer who planted and tended it to the workers who picked it and got it to market, each is an unsung hero.

We need to do a better job of acknowledging the unsung heroes of the world – but part of the problem is that we don’t always know just how many unsung heroes go into making any one thing work in our everyday life.

I’ll start by simply saying thanks.