Mediocrity

Normally, some of the only interpretation and analysis on sports as a business comes from the Tank McNamara comic strip by Miller and Hinds. These images are from 3/18/2008. I love this strip and frankly, I believe if Doonesbury can win a Pulitzer Prize for editorial commentary on the basis of a comic strip, so too should this strip be a Pulitzer Prize winner. (Note that Post columnist Tom Boswell wrote some pretty good pieces on the baseball stadium issue.)

I don't normally quote from sports writers here, except when it comes to stadium and public subsidy issues, but Sally Jenkins' column today is relevant to how we think about governing and governance and civic culture.

From "Truth Hurts, but It Also Builds " in the Post:

Actually, Zorn's paint-thinner brand of honesty is a critical quality if he's going to transform the Redskins from a second-rate franchise into something better.

Candor is an indisputable requirement in a leader in a high-risk enterprise, especially one seeking to refashion a team into a higher-functioning one, according to Col. Thomas A. Kolditz, head of the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the U.S. Military Academy, and author of the book "In Extremis Leadership: Leading As If Your Life Depended on It." It's a riveting manual that weaves first-person accounts from soldiers, captains of industry, firefighters and other command situations.

"The leader's job is to create for that team the reality of their performance," Kolditz said in a phone interview from a parachuting competition in Arizona, with the whine of airplanes in the background, as he watched cadets float to earth. "The players get feedback from the press and public, and on all these teams, you have a lot of testosterone and ego on one side of the equation, but a very high need for team interdependence and teamwork on the other side of the equation. Sometimes egos get in way of making a candid appraisal, so it's very important for a coach.

"Candor allows them to focus on the things getting in the way of their success. Candor is not necessarily abusive or mean-spirited. It's just honest. And right now I'm trying as hard as I can not to say that it's unsurprising to me that in Washington D.C. they think there's too much candor on their football team."

How Zorn's honest appraisals are received this offseason, up and down the chain, will say a lot about just how poisoned an outfit the Redskins are by mediocrity.