Times change. Does sportsmanship? Does the code of the warrior on the playing field, or the sportswriter pondering the combat from the Olympian aerie of the press box?
Once they understood that Holmgren had actually told his defense to lie down, writers were apoplectic. In the Sun-Times, Rick Telander denounced the coach’s situation ethics. “It undermines the integrity of the sport itself,” Telander wrote. “So unbelievable was it that a coach in the biggest pro game of the year . . . in an environment saturated with gambling fears and gambling realities, actually would ask his players to quit trying that not one of the myriad TV commentators picked up on the fraud. . . . Some things are just unbelievable.”
Haugh did allow that letting the other team score “is contrary to every football player’s instinct,” but there are times when “it makes sense as a last resort” and Sunday was one of those times. If back in 1998 honesty and integrity stood in the way, these have by now been reduced to mere “instinct,” as annoying an impediment to advanced thinking as lack of imagination.
It’s not fraud. But it’s farce.
