Principles of Coaching #11 - You play the game, not the other team. Measure by your best effort, not only the result. (Bot9 #330)

For just a moment, let’s rewind our minds to the 2005-06 college football season. The landscape is in a full-blown USC-aissance as the Pete Carroll-led Trojans were the best team in the land. Multiple national titles, an incredible roster of both athletes and coaches, and the LA hype machine was in full effect. It really was an extraordinary time as some of the great programs of years gone by (USC, Oklahoma, Alabama) shot back to relevance after years of being dormant. Ignore all of the improprieties that would surface later, it was a memorable time in college football.

This era of USC football was quarterbacked by Heisman Trophy-winner Matt Leinart. Leinart had an incredible college career but the ending became something of a controversy. The 2006 Rose Bowl was one of the most memorable college football championship games in history, highlighted by a comeback led by Texas Longhorn QB Vince Young. That game represented the beginning of the end of the USC dynasty on many levels. One of the seemingly unfortunate comments was caught on camera as Leinart was interviewed on the field after the loss. Leinart made it clear that he believed in his team, even after the loss, when he said, “I think we are the better football team, they just made the plays at the end.”

While this statement caught many off guard and judged Leinart as arrogant as a result, it was actually representative of a mindset that permeated the USC program at the time. Throughout the season and the ones before, this group communicated that they were focused on themselves and their efforts in a powerful way. I’m guessing that some of this was prompted by a level of dominance by the team and the coaching staff seeking new ways to challenge these athletes. The Trojans were trying to compete with their own level of excellence; one where their measurement was not the other team, but their own focus, camaraderie, and execution. Leinart’s postgame comments were consistent with this belief and were simply communicated awkwardly in an emotional time after the opposing team won the big game.

This mindset is the barometer for any great team or leader in your organization. Are they comparing themselves to others to their own best efforts? This is what separates the successful from the scuffling. That’s the measuring stick - you at your best, your best efforts. Are you falling short? You control that effort. Stop playing the other team, play the game with your best effort and measure yourself by the ideal of your best self.

I think we see this in the earliest stories of scripture as well. Cain and Abel is a story highlighting how we tend to compare ourselves to one another. Cain gets angry because Abel, his brother, receives God’s blessing on his offering when he does not. God tells Cain that he’ll be blessed in time and not to get angry. Had Cain listened to God and measured himself by his own effort and not the blessing of someone else, things would have ended so differently for him. It’s important for us to learn from the story and not to make the same mistake.

This is what it means to work for God and not for man. Stay on the straight and narrow, humble yourself, and things will work out. We have be proud of our own best efforts and not measure ourselves based on the wins or losses of a single game. One of my proudest moments as a coach came at the end of the state championship game in 2021. We had just lost the game by a run after a well-played game and a long grind of a season coming off of the Covid year the season before. Though we were certainly disappointed at the loss, one of the players captured the moment in a powerful way. As we embraced to bring the season and his high school career more, he said, “It’s okay - they needed it more than we did.” He was measuring our effort on an entirely different scale. Our effort was excellent, we wanted to win, but our souls weren’t going to be impacted by losing a game. We had succeeded. We measured ourselves by our efforts, not by the result.

Seek to live this out in life and watch how your perspective is transformed for the better.