Bad As They Want To Be

I like sports. There's a lot to learn about life from watching it. You can figure out why some people fail as consistently as they do from observing a team like the Cincinnati Bengals or the Detroit Lions, both of the NFL. The thing is that every team is bad at one time or another. The well-run ones go through a rebuilding process, and emerge as contenders again. The poorly-run teams are always rebuilding, and a closer examination shows why.

There's a saying that applies here: "Even a blind squirrel sometimes finds a nut". That's true of a team like the Bengals. Even they, inept as they are, sometimes wind up with a very talented player who fleetingly elevates their level of play. I say fleetingly because such players never linger. Veteran quarterback Carson Palmer is retiring rather than continue risking his neck on a terrible Bengals team for paychecks he no longer needs.

If they had treated him better, say by building a better team around him, he might want to stay. If they let him go willingly, they might improve their image to other players. They certainly didn't make the former move, and they show no signs of the latter. Instead, they are spitefully holding him to his contract, thusly losing him anyway, getting nothing in return, and looking like jerks in the bargain. That's a textbook example of how you stay a loser.

Then again, maybe I have it wrong. Maybe what we're looking at is a football version of 'The Producers'. Maybe, as in that film, the Bengals have taken money from a serious of investors, all of whom have been promised 100% of the team's profits. If they're not already doing that, they're just leaving money on the table, as that would be a far more sensible business model considering their longstanding business practices.