A Stupid Bowl Meditation On Perfection

Supposedly, in the midst of the mayhem of the NFL line of scrimmage, everything slows down for Tom Brady. Zen (Japanese: 禪) or chán (Chinese: 禅) is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism notable for its emphasis on mindful acceptance of the present moment, spontaneous action, and letting go of self-conscious, judgmental thinking. Perhaps that is what happens when an athlete or a team achieves "perfection." According to J.(erome) D.(avid) Salinger, "It's being able to hear the sound of one hand clapping." Perhaps Nadia Comaneci heard one hand clapping in the 1976 Olympics. Perhaps Tom Brady will hear one hand clapping one more time in the Stupid Bowl. If this is (fair & balanced) mysticism, so be it.

[x NY Fishwrap]
Perfection Is Afterthought, Perfect Examples Say
By Bill Pennington

The 18-0 New England Patriots take the field Sunday for Super Bowl XLII seeking perfection and a place in sports history. But those who have already tread the path to a flawless sports achievement say that finding perfection and fame will be the farthest thing from the Patriots’ minds.

“During my routine and even after it, I did not think it was all that perfect,” said the gymnast Nadia Comaneci, whose unprecedented score of 10.0 at the 1976 Olympics exemplifies perfection on a grand sports stage. “I thought it was pretty good, but athletes don’t think about history when making history. They think about what they’re doing, and that’s how it gets done.”

Tom Brady, the Patriots’ star quarterback, insisted that Sunday’s game would be no different.

“I know it’s a very important game, but we cannot play it like that, like it’s history being played out,” he said Thursday. “It is a football game we want to win, and the only way to do that is to treat it like a football game. It’s not about being perfect. I don’t even know what perfect in sports is.”

With a victory, the Patriots will take their place alongside other landmark sports triumphs, like the boxer Rocky Marciano’s spotless 49-0 career record or the U.C.L.A. basketball teams of the 1960s that had four undefeated national championship seasons.

Like Brady, the speedskater Eric Heiden, who won five gold medals in a sweep of the individual events during the 1980 Olympics, said his approach was not reflective at all.

“I never once thought about the consequences or legacy of my efforts — a perfect Olympics never entered my consideration,” said Heiden, who was so relaxed on the eve of his last race that he overslept and arrived at the skating oval late.

Heiden conceded he might have felt the pressure briefly at the beginning of his final race, the grueling 10,000 meters.

“I wasn’t skating particularly well in the first few laps of that race,” said Heiden, who is now an orthopedic surgeon in Utah. “And what did enter my mind was that I had been training seven years for that moment. It was a rare opportunity that wasn’t ever going to come along again. I started skating faster and better. I certainly wasn’t going to let fatigue or the fear of losing get in the way.”

Comaneci’s and Heiden’s achievements are largely unquestioned in a sports culture where statistics can sanction perfection in quantifiable ways.

Just don’t tell that to those who achieved the so-called perfect records.

“There is no perfect season,” said John Wooden, who coached the U.C.L.A. basketball teams that once won 88 consecutive games. “You can have a season where you win all your games. But that is far from perfect.

“The other teams you played scored points and your team made mistakes. Maybe a lucky bounce actually won you a game or two. No, winning doesn’t make you perfect.”

Glenn Allison, the first to bowl three consecutive perfect 300 games, known as a 900 series, in a sanctioned league in 1982, had something other than perfection on his mind. Now 77, Allison said he barely recalled the last two of his 36 successive strikes because his goal was to break the existing record of 886 for three games.

“I did feel a bit of the pressure before the 34th strike because I knew it was for the record,” said Allison, who still works at the La Habra 300 Bowl in California where he bowled his three 300s. “I actually made a bad shot and got a lucky strike. To me, the pressure was over at that point and the last two strikes were afterthoughts.”

Allison is known as Mr. 900, even though his record, after a protracted legal fight, was later disallowed by the American Bowling Congress for what officials called noncomplying lane conditions.

Wooden was the only person to say he discussed perfection with his teams, but in an unusual way.

“I never even mentioned trying to win games to my teams,” he said. “I did talk about perfection. I said it was not possible. But I said it’s not impossible to try for it. That’s what we did in every practice and game.”

Comaneci said: “I did not even look at the scoreboard when my routine was done in 1976. My teammates started pointing because there was this uproar.”

The scoreboard read 1.00 because it only went up to 9.99. A perfect score had never been considered. “Even then, I thought: ‘One point zero? What’s that?’ I didn’t get it,” she said.

Even so, for some athletes, simply entering a competition can evoke anxiety. Bill Russell, for instance, was known for getting sick at times before games when he took the basketball court in his days at the University of San Francisco and with the Boston Celtics. That did not stop him, though, from leading San Francisco to an undefeated season in 1955, not to mention the Celtics’ eight N.B.A. titles in a row from 1959 to 1966.

Perfection in sports — at least as it is widely defined — has long been a fascination. In other walks of life, there may not be a perfect opera or a perfect soufflé, but sports fans like to believe they know a perfect sports achievement when they see one.

“In sports, we seek perfection because it is so rarely achieved anywhere else in life,” said John F. Murray, a sports psychologist in Florida. He added, “But I tell my clients to focus on excellence, not perfectionism.”


In interviews, the athletes and the coaches associated with unbeaten teams and other so-called perfect achievements did identify certain commonalities.

“The first thing you see in all these cases is the overwhelming confidence that intense preparation brings about,” Heiden said. “When you watch the Patriots play, if something goes wrong, they are not the least bit affected by it. I know what that’s like. When you’re on your game and you know that everybody else knows it, too, it’s a big psychological advantage.”

Rebecca Lobo, the senior leader of the 1994-95 Connecticut women’s basketball team that was 35-0 and won a national title, said: “It starts with a great head coach who keeps the player egos in check and keeps the priority on unselfish preparation rather than a win streak. I see the Patriots’ Bill Belichick doing that just as our coach, Geno Auriemma, did it for us.”

Comaneci, who with her gymnast husband, Bart Conner, owns an Oklahoma gymnastics academy and appears extensively at promotional and charity events, said hunger for superior results was a trait found in all elite athletes.

“Hard work for consistent, excellent good results is what matters,” she said. “Perfect is not the goal. Because, is it real?”

Comaneci then told a story. At home in Romania in 1980, she parked her car crooked so it was jutting into traffic. A police officer came by and pointed out her mistake.

“I started laughing and told him, ‘I can’t do everything perfect,’ ” she said.

[Bill Pennington is a reporter for the New York Times and has been writing about sports for twenty-five years. A former syndicated sports columnist, Pennington is a ten-time finalist and five-time winner of the Associated Press Sports Editors' national writing contest. He lives with his wife, Joyce, and three children in Warwick, New York.]


Copyright © 2008 The New York Times Company

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