Another high school football fan and I were considering the success of a player in kicking extra points.
The lad was one-for-two at the moment, kicking one extra point successfully and missing on the other attempt.
His 50-percent success rate at the time launched my mind on a convoluted numbers and statistics trip that led me from sports to politics.
Back to the young man kicking extra points. Let me note that, before the night was over, he would successfully kick several more, finishing the game with just one miss.
But let's go back to when he was one-for-two. How does that success rate stack up in our everyday lives?
It's all relative.
In our everyday lives, if we go to work each day and regularly fail to successfully complete our tasks 50 percent of the time, we're likely to be shown out the door pretty quickly. But if we were professional baseball players and successfully did our job half of the time we went up to bat, we would have .500 batting averages, land multi-million dollar contracts and be assured of being voted into the Hall of Fame.
Just as how our personal statistics apply in our particular lines of work, our attitudes also play a major part in determining whether we are going to be successful and, if you'll hang with me just a bit further, I might get around to connecting how what started out at a high school football game finally gets around to politics.
If the boss called you in one day and demanded that you learn how to cooperate with your fellow employees or else go to the house and never come back, what would you do?
Chances are you'd say, "Sorry, boss, I didn't realize I was being such a jerk. I'll try to get along better with my co-workers."
But, for this little scenario, that's not what you say at all. What you do say is, "Look boss, I don't care how smart my co-workers are on the other side of the room. I'll never agree with them and I sure as heck am never going to cooperate with them."
"But," the boss argues, "you've got to admit they've got some pretty good points and it's hurting the company when you oppose absolutely everything they try to do."
"Yeah, OK, that might be true, but I don't care. They're on that side of the room and I'm on this side of the room and, I don't care if they say the sky is blue, I'll never agree with them. Now, I know we haven't finished our latest project, but I'm going back home to tell my friends what a bang-up job I'm doing."
Yep, that's right, we finally got from a high school football scrimmage to the halls of Congress.
Too bad a high school team is a much better example of how to work toward a common goal.
Maybe the problem is that a high school football team, or any type of team, actually knows what the common goal should be and the players know that, while winning the game at hand is important, the team's success will be judged on the entire season.
In Congress it seems, members of one team concentrate on winning a particular moment's game regardless of the costs and to heck with the entire season, which is what the country has at stake every time Congress convenes.
A successful season for the country, which should be the team that politicians represent, will be not be determined if the Democrats defeat the Republicans on an issue in the House of Representatives or if the Republicans defeat a Democratic measure in the Senate.
All of which brings us back to statistics.
What if members of Congress were to be judged and deemed worthy of running for re-election based on their rate of successfully achieving accomplishments that are positive and progressive steps for the United States of America?
"OK, politicians, I am the coordinator of the process to determine if you guys did your jobs during the most recent session of Congress. Yes, Senator, you're raising your hand. What is your question?"
"We talk about lots of stuff in Congress. How many different things are you going to use to figure out what kind of job we did and what we accomplished?"
"Actually, Senator, we have figured out that you guys didn't accomplish a darn thing other than argue and blame the other side. As far as what kind of job you did, we have determined that it comes down to just one question."
"What's that?"
"Have lives of the average American improved one whit since you've been in office?"
(Jim Edwards writes this column for the Banner-News. Contact him at [email protected])