The Better Letter: “It’s not you. It’s me.”
Some craziness makes perfect sense.
It is a classic break-up excuse: “It’s not you, it’s me.” These five small words reek of phony compassion and are usually used to draw attention away from the real reason the relationship is over, often because the true reason is emotionally painful. The real message is typically much closer to the following.
“I don’t find you sufficiently attractive, but I can’t say that because then I’ll feel guilty. Oh, and by the way, I don’t really still want to be friends, either, so good riddance. I’m off to find someone as perfect as I am.”
This excuse has become such a cliché that almost nobody buys it anymore. Why should they? We’ve all heard perpetrators of INYIM turn right around and tell anyone who will listen what the ex’s faults and failings were as soon as he or she is out of earshot.
But George has a point when he says, “Nobody tells me it’s them not me, if it’s anybody, it’s me.” The sad truth is that Pogo was right. A shocking amount of the time the crux of the problem – any problem – is us and not them.
An example of exactly that situation is the focus of this week’s TBL.
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“It’s not you. It’s me.”
Ben Roethlisberger recently retired after 18 seasons, all with the Pittsburgh Steelers, after a great career as an NFL quarterback.
Roethlisberger was selected 11th overall in the 2004 NFL Draft and was immediately touted as Pittsburgh’s franchise quarterback by then-coach Bill Cowher. He became the youngest Super Bowl-winning quarterback in NFL history, leading the Steelers, in only his second professional season, to victory over the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XL at the age of just 23. He later orchestrated one of the great late game comeback victories in Super Bowl history, in Super Bowl XLIII (note that you have to click through to YouTube to watch the video below).
In all, Big Ben led the Steelers to 23 playoff games, three Super Bowls, and two Super Bowl championships. He was selected to six Pro Bowls. Roethlisberger has the fourth highest career winning percentage as an NFL starter among quarterbacks with a minimum of 100 starts.
In college, Roethlisberger was a three-year starter at QB and star at Miami of Ohio. In his three years there, he threw for 84 touchdowns and 10,829 yards, including a Mid-American Conference record 4,486 yards as a junior before declaring early for the NFL Draft. As a RedHawk, Roethlisberger broke 10 single-game, season, and career records. He also tied the mark for most touchdown passes in a game with five, which he did twice. He closed out his college career in style, too, throwing for 376 yards and four touchdowns to lead his 14th ranked team to its 13th straight win in the GMAC Bowl over Louisville.
Roethlisberger was also a great quarterback with enormous potential at Findlay High in Ohio. As a 6’5” high school senior, he threw for over 4,000 yards and an astonishing 54 touchdowns, including eight in a single game.
In a road game at Napoleon that season, the home team scored to take the lead over Findlay and, when Ben took over with 24 seconds to go, many fans were heading for the parking lot. But Roethlisberger threw a 50-yard pass up the left sideline and then a 17-yarder into the right corner of the end zone for the win with 1.4 seconds left. He was a terrific high school basketball and baseball player, too.
So why did Big Ben end up playing his college football at Miami of Ohio, a local mid-major, instead of a traditional football power?
Two obvious possible explanations don’t hold up to any sort of examination. Ben was not a late bloomer and his coach was not an idiot. In fact, his coach had an excellent record and understands quarterbacking well, as he had played the position in college at Kentucky, in the SEC.
“In high school, you don’t know who’s going to be a pro yet,” said Cliff Hite, Roethlisberger’s high school coach. “You still have kids that are 5’7” and weigh 145 pounds that will give you every ounce of energy and everything that you could possibly desire.
“In Ben’s case, you knew Ben was going to be special.”
But here’s the thing. Roethlisberger was barely recruited before his senior year of high school. And by that time, the big-time schools already have their QB recruits locked down.
What happened?
The explanation is simple. Big Ben was not recruited before his senior year because he did not play quarterback until then, even though he had been a prolific JV passer. For his junior season, when Roethlisberger moved up to the varsity, he was played at wide receiver and, not surprisingly, played it very well, catching 57 passes and making the All-District team.
That sounds unbelievable – one of the great QBs in the world did not get a varsity snap at that position until his final year of high school, until you realize that the Findlay High QB Roethlisberger’s junior year was the coach’s senior son. Once more for emphasis: Ben Roethlisberger, two-time Super Bowl winner and Pro Bowl quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers, did not play QB in high school until his senior year because the coach’s son was the starter. Ironically, the coach’s son went on to have a fine college football career at Division III Denison as (get this) a wide receiver.
Roethlisberger’s coach was no doubt certain that he was making an entirely objective evaluation and doing what was best for the team. “I was brutal to my son because I thought he had to prove he earned it,” Hite asserted. He still thinks he made the right call, because of course he does.
When we possess the added information of who the starting QB was in relation to the coach, the result, while crazy, makes perfect sense. In that context, the otherwise apparent absurdity surprises precisely nobody.
If you’ve spent more than a few weekends watching youth sports in this country, you are surely no longer surprised by crazy sports parents (like the assistant coach of the Florida state champion T-ball team – itself an absurdity – who credited the championship to the kindergartners’ “incredible” defense). Unrealistic expectations are par for the course. It’s caused by some combination of confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, optimism bias, in-group bias, and tribalism. Watching youth sports means seeing lots of coaches’ kids playing leading roles — usually the leading role — no matter how good they are (or aren’t).
Despite the exceedingly long odds (“For every 2,300 high school senior basketball players, only 40 will play college basketball [at any level] and only one will play in the [NBA];” and because many professionals enjoy only a proverbial “cup of coffee” in the bigs, the odds against having a successful professional career are even more daunting), lots and lots of parents think their kids will earn college scholarships and then go pro. Irrespective of talent.
On the other hand, when the parents have real “skin in the game,” their expectations for their kids just might be a bit more rational.
Every parent clearly sees the weaknesses of other peoples’ kids, especially when comparing those kids to their own. Their own kids? Not so much. As ever, “it’s not you. It’s me.”
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Totally Worth It
Listen to “The Great Gate of Kiev,” composed by a Russian, orchestrated by a Frenchman, conducted here by a German.
Feel free to contact me via rpseawright [at] gmail [dot] com or on Twitter (@rpseawright) and let me know what you like, what you don’t like, what you’d like to see changed, and what you’d add. Praise, condemnation, and feedback are always welcome.
A Sonnet for St. Patrick (listen here), by Malcolm Guite.
Six years a slave, and then you slipped the yoke, | Till Christ recalled you, through your captors’ cries! | Patrick, you had the courage to turn back, | With open love to your old enemies, | Serving them now in Christ, not in their chains, | Bringing the freedom He gave you to share. | You heard the voice of Ireland, in your veins | Her passion and compassion burned like fire. | Now you rejoice amidst the three-in-one, | Refreshed in love and blessing all you knew, | Look back on us and bless us, Ireland's son, | And plant the staff of prayer in all we do: | A gospel seed that flowers in belief, | A greening glory, coming into leaf.
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This is the best thing I saw or read this week. The cleverest. The coolest. The smartest. The silliest. The scariest. The stupidest. The bravest. The loveliest. The sweetest. The worst. The most pragmatic. The most interesting. The most important. The most inspiring. The most incredible. The most disconcerting. The most heart-wrenching. The most horrific. The most obvious. The most hauntingly beautiful. The least meaningful. The Godfather premiered 50 years ago this week. The stupidest political move. Not The Onion. Duh. Yikes. Uh-oh. Ruh-roh. Why propaganda works.
Please send me your nominees for this space to rpseawright [at] gmail [dot] com or via Twitter (@rpseawright).
The Spotify playlist of TBL music has been divided in two. A Christmas music edition has been split off from the regular version so you needn’t listen to Christmas music all year – not that that’s a bad thing. The regular TBL playlist now includes more than 200 songs and about 15 hours of great music. I urge you to listen in, sing along, and turn the volume up.
I lost a ton of saved work for future editions of TBL a couple of days ago, including what was supposed to be this week’s issue. What you have here now was begun a few hours ago and looks nothing like what I intended. I hope I’ll be able to recreate at least some of the original. At the moment, I hate technology, Apple, and Microsoft.
Benediction
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there. Fast. (The video below is a magnificent mash-up of Bob Dylan and Franz Schubert).
That’s why we need the Light (and this week’s benediction).
To those of us prone to wander, to those who are broken, to those who flee and fight in fear – which is every last lost one of us – there is a faith that offers grace and hope. And may love have the last word. Now and forever. Amen.
Thanks for reading.
Issue 106 (March 18, 2022)
No need to despair or fret. You can record CNN for a few days and be caught up in no time.