It would have been the perfect story, the perfect parable, even. A reckless genius casts caution to the wind and wins. He ignores the skeptics and the conventional wisdom and his own doubt, and writes another story in his personal legend.
But Tom Brady’s pass, completed, was just short of the first down. And Bill Belichick, coach of the NFL’s New England Patriots, was suddenly a laughingstock.
Perceptions can swing as quickly as that. One play — Belichick decided to go for a first down on a fourth-and-two play from the Patriots’ own 28-yard line — turned Belichick from an undisputed master of game strategy to a tragic figure, an Icarus of the gridiron.
No matter how many great decisions Belichick had made previously, no matter that he actually increased his team’s odds for victory with the try according to statistical analysis by Brian Burke of The New York Times’ football blog, this failed risk was too much for his critics.
Even if the statistics weren’t convincing, and I think they are, there was something strangely reassuring about Belichick’s risk, failed or not.
There is perhaps nothing more American than risk.
In our early days, we had the examples of Thomas Edison, whose quote about failure, “I’ve found 10,000 ways that won’t work” may be apocryphal, but whose actual high rate of failure was not, and of countless other inventors and businessmen who failed spectacularly both before and after striking it rich.
Something about risking everything for the hope of something greater resonates with Americans, from the signers of the Declaration of Independence, to the settlers of the West, to Eisenhower on D-Day.
Indeed, a central truth of our system of capitalistic entrepreneurship — beset from all sides of late — is that the creation of wealth requires risk, and that a government that tries to completely manage risk will inevitably stifle innovation.
There are consequences when a whole nation becomes uncomfortable with risk.
Where political risk is required, as it is in our current health care argument, too many resist the difficult, risky truths that must be told, as they were by David Goldhill, and prefer to hang on to the idea of a chimerical health care beast that is larger, more comprehensive and somehow cheaper.
The inability to accept risk has invaded our legal system. Where someone is injured, no matter the cause, the first thought is to sue. So playgrounds are being closed and kids are chased off open sports fields, because no one wants to risk a lawsuit because no one accepts the assumption of risk.
Now, as Michael Chabon notes in his sad and nostalgic essay “The Wilderness of Childhood,” children are growing up entirely within the confines of a “door-to-door, all-encompassing escort service,” without ever discovering the joys of adventure and exploration — all because of the statistically tiny risks of child abduction and injury.
Chabon concludes, “If children are not permitted — not taught — to be adventurers and explorers as children, what will become of the world of adventure, of stories, of literature itself?”
We’re starting to find out. Risk is frowned upon, safe is better than sorry, security is a panacea, and the vitality seeps out of us one conventional decision — one punt on fourth-and-short — at a time.
Reach Will at wmunsil@asu.edu.
