You may want to toss your game plan out the window. That's exactly what coach Kevin Kelley did after his high school football team punted on fourth down only the see the opposing team score on an 80-yard return.
During the following 2008 season, his team did not punt once. Sheer lunacy you say but on December 6, 2008 his team won the state championship.
6 incredible lessons
Just because it's always done a certain way... Certainly our world is changing faster than the game of football. Twitter, facebook, web applications, distance learning, wikipedia, online video, sound, collaboration, you name it, it is changing the way we process information and relate to each other at light speed. What may have worked a mere six months ago may not work today. Heck, what worked last week may not work today.
Challenge assumptions. Traditional ways of doing things are safe and comfortable. No stockbroker will lose his job for telling his clients to diversify but Warren Buffet, the world's richest man in 2008, says this is bunk.
Be smart not foolish. Coach Kelley did not wake up one morning and decide that he knows more than the entire football establishment. Although he had theorized with eliminating the punting game since 2003, he took an evidence-based approach and analyzed university studies and computer models, which were becoming more accurate in predicting football outcomes. He made sure that he had the right team and quarterback to handle the pressure of going for it on every fourth down. Before abandoning tradition take some time -- and it may be a lot of time-- to conduct a proper analysis. Form a small group of people you trust and encourage open disagreements and discussions. Challenge your own assumptions and analysis and where possible test your theories in a limited basis before moving forward.
Expect to take some heat. This will not be casual disagreement -- some people will think that you are an absolute idiot.
Go for it. Be prepared to be wrong or you will never come up with anything original.
Expand your unorthodoxy. Coach Kelley also tossed tradition to the wind with his unconventional approach to kickoffs. Roughly, 75 percent of the time his team uses an onside kick instead of the accepted deep kickoff. He figures that with the onside kickoff the odds of his team getting the ball are much greater and therefore worth the risk of the additional yards he may give up. Realize that if one part of traditional thinking is wrong then other parts are probably wrong too.
I can't say it better than the coach, "Just because something's always been done that way doesn't mean it should continue to be done that way."
My hope is that through all of the access we have to more information and ideas that we do challenge assumptions and that this results not in winning football games but in changing the very way we think and value each other. Some of the traditional assumptions we carry are just dead wrong. Everyone knows that sometimes in life we have to punt -- or do we?
