Blue must be more than just a ‘sorry’ bunch

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/11/2010 (5451 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If only we could just say we were sorry and be done with it.

This is the approach that works for many people today. You do something wrong, you recognize you screwed up, you apologize for it and wipe your hands clean of the whole mess.

If only that worked in the world of sports and we could just issue one comprehensive apology. “Sorry about 2010. We will try not to let that happen again. P.S., My bad.”

The thing I revere most about professional football is the fact that it makes you accountable. You play the game, the game is filmed, you watch the film after, and you share in your victories and disappointments with your teammates.

Yet often, especially in seasons that go the way of 4-13, players apologize for mistakes made or recant the ever-popular “my bad,” when something that they are responsible for goes wrong. While there is something to be said for being remorseful, I cannot stand apologies. My ex-girlfriends will attest to the fact that I rarely say I’m sorry when I make a mistake, and it probably stems from how football has made me detest this short-cut to absolution.

In my estimation, when most people say they are sorry in football or otherwise, they feel they have then atoned for all wrongdoing, and should be exonerated. “I didn’t give any effort on this play and made a piss-poor attempt at making a tackle, so by saying I’m sorry, all will be forgiven and forgotten.” It’s a Get-Out-of-Jail-free card, and it doesn’t carry near enough weight for some of us.

The act of being sorry is natural and happens to everyone, save for those afflicted by psychopathy. We all screw up, we all make mistakes, we all have our fair share of plays that we are “sorry” for. Sorry means you are ashamed or feel sorrow for what you have done. Yet in my mind, that is the least important part of an apology. I once had a coach that, when he would critique us during film, would actually get mad at the players that would say they were sorry after they were corrected. The coach didn’t want you to feel sorry about it. He didn’t want you to feel any shame from your honest mistakes, if indeed they were honest and not recurring or lazy errors. He wanted you to learn from it and say that instead of being sorry, you were going to take certain steps to prevent it from happening again.

I read in the Free Press two days ago that the director of officiating in the CFL issued an apology of sorts to the team for an incorrect call. I haven’t been keeping track, but it seems like there may be a pen-pal relationship developing between the FP and this director with all the correspondence that has gone back and forth this season, and it seems like our fans get more infuriated every time a mistake is acknowledged and repented for. In my estimation, fans can live with the fact that referees make mistakes. It happens in the very best of leagues by the very best of officials. What fans want to hear, instead of error admissions and corrections, is how the system holds people accountable, and what is being done to make the process better going forward.

An example of the frivolity of apologies is what happens when we have our first team meeting after every game. Our head coach identifies players that took personal-foul penalties and makes them stand up and explain to the team why they did what they did and what they learned from it. To a man, almost everyone has apologized to his teammates — it’s a natural reaction — and every time they do, coach LaPolice stops them and tells them not to because it is not the point of the exercise. In my mind, the reason this is done is three-fold: a) the player realizes how he is accountable to the rest of the team, b) he explains why he acted the way he did and what he will do to prevent it from happening again and c) the rest of the team can learn from this player’s experiences. Whether we have been intelligent enough to benefit from this exercise is another story entirely, but you get the point.

We can say we are sorry for the 2010 season until we are blue in the face. We can apologize to the fans, each other, sponsors and stakeholders until we are sorried right out. We are sorry we lost eight games by four points or fewer, we are sorry key players got hurt at inconvenient times, and we are sorry that our inconsistent play drove many of you to drink. But sorry doesn’t solve anything. Recognizing the problems and taking prudent action to solve any or all of the issues that we are sorry for is the only thing that actually makes people believe in an apology. Don’t waste your time confessing you made errors and displaying shame for them. What matters most is reassuring those that you are accountable to that you learn from your mistakes and will make efforts to stop them from happening again.

Doug Brown, always a hard-hitting defensive lineman and frequently a hard-hitting columnist, appears Tuesdays in the Free Press.