Every coach and general manager in sports seemingly wants their team to have a blue collar approach. Not only is it thoroughly cliché at this point, but it doesn’t mean anything. These are just words said for no apparent reason.
The most recent and ridiculous occurrence came from the world of college football when New Mexico State Head Coach Jerry Kill uttered the following, “Our team will have a hard hat and lunch pail mentality every time we take the field.”
Firstly, you are at New Mexico State, the team that college football forgot. It should go without saying that you plan on working as hard as possible. However, hard work for hard work’s sake is just plain stupid. It’s why we invented the wheel. Working smarter always beats working harder.
Also, can we go back to having a lunch pail? In the past 15 years, I have seen a grand total of two people carrying a lunch pail. They were hipsters in downtown Sacramento, not blue collar laborers. Using these to symbolize hard work is no longer apt. It would be like equating technology with a Discman.
Not only that, but lunch pails signify taking a break. If you have ever worked in food service, the concept of taking a lunch break midway through your shift at a set time is mythical, like the yeti. The lunch pail has never been about work let alone working hard.
But let’s refocus on the matter at hand, the sheer stupidity of the sports world glorifying being blue collar. These contrived lines are usually nothing more than pandering from coaches and management who don’t understand the concept to begin with. Here’s now former New York Giants Head Coach Joe Judge at his introductory press conference:
“I want this team to reflect this area. That is blue-collar. It’s hard work. We’re gonna come to work every day and grind it out the way they do in their jobs every day.”
How’d that go for the Giants? Apparently, saying you will blindly work hard isn’t enough to win football games or even be competitive in them. Maybe that is because the entire premise of sports being blue collar in this day and age is bullshit.
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Here’s why sport and being blue collar don’t mix
I worked blue collar and food service jobs between the ages of 16 and 25. I appreciate the experience but make no mistake, it sucked. My parents have worked blue collar jobs throughout their lives, mostly in hope that I wouldn’t spend my life following in their footsteps because they know just how brutal it is.
Now their parents, our generation’s grandparents, have basically ruined everything for everyone being alarmingly selfish. They wrongly believe the cushy life they led like 40 years ago constituted hard work and refuse to listen to anyone who disagrees. Seriously, their solution to a person needing to work two jobs is for them to work harder at one. Good luck tracking that logic.
This group also spends an inordinate amount of time getting scared by Tucker Carlson and supporting TacLights, crappy insurance policies and whatever else is advertising with Fox News these days.
That’s a whole different rabbit hole, however.
The issue today is that sports world doesn’t understand what the modern blue collar experience really entails. It is a few people actually working hard; a lot of people telling you how hard they work but not actually working all that hard; and some total screw ups who are there to make up the numbers.
Here’s the thing though, that first group of people working hard are doing so either to escape or to ensure their family isn’t relegated to life on this conveyor belt to nowhere.
When coaches and other sports figures talk about a blue collar mentality, they are actually pandering to the second group who, for no apparent reason, believe they know everything and work extremely hard. In reality, they are just entitled brats who equate showing up with hard work.
Oh, this group is also incredibly stupid and refuses to accept any idea that isn’t their own. Case in point, I worked at a warehouse for an F&B supplier way back when. Anytime we finished our pick list and delivered it to the shipping dock, we would have to find the boss to get our next assignment.
That meant we had to track him down, go with him to the office, have him print off the next list and then start work once more. One day, I suggested he could text us what we needed to collect next, print off the list when he had time and then bring it to us. It seemed liked an improvement for everyone.
With the way he and my co-workers responded, you would have thought I was Michael Richards at the Laugh Factory. Their anger and disappointment were off the charts. Why? Because they felt I was being lazy. Some of them had been doing this for five years and it was the way it had always been done. If I didn’t want to work hard, I shouldn’t be working at all.
For starters, working in an inefficient manner is not hard work. It’s being stupid. But that is what being blue collar in America is all about. Don’t think critically. Don’t try to improve things. Just do something because that is the way it has always been done.
And we shouldn’t want sports teams to operate in that blue collar fashion. I mean we saw how it worked for Joe Judge. Hard work and blue collar do not mean the same thing despite coaches wanting to use these interchangeably. And even then, the former alone isn’t enough to be successful.
If you look at the greatest teams in sports over the past decade. The Golden State Warriors, New England Patriots, Los Angeles Dodgers, Tampa Bay Lightning, Alabama football and so on. They all worked extremely hard. There is no debating that.
But they were also all adaptable and thought critically about what it takes to win. The best teams don’t do things just for the sake of doing them which is a hallmark of the blue collar experience.
As for the old warehouse I used to be employed at, they are still hiring. So, if you are a coach or sports figure wanting to experience that blue collar approach to hard work firsthand, I can make it happen for you.
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