[rrpjr]

What has happened to pro football, the tradition of the champion's heart? I've seen two successive games, San Diego v. Jets, and Jets v. Pittsburgh, marked by the same bad and fearful leadership. Both were close games that ended in apparent "exciting" fashion but were anything but exciting. Both were contests of fear not courage, dismal exhibitions of weak nerve and "risk aversion" more suitable to a corporate quarterly-earnings mentality than a great team's heroic heart. Instead of striving for touchdowns to win games, teams reached a certain safe point in the field, the dispiritingly termed "field goal range," and essentially gave up. Teams did not try to win so much as avoid losing. It was pitiful.

Vince Lombardi, Chuck Noll or Weeb Ubank would be disgusted. They played to win. With first down on the opponent's 30 they didn't think of field goals. They thought of the end zone; they thought of glory. Somehow, I think it is a sign of our times.