Sterile Specialization

It's mind numbing literary name dropping for a post set-up time here at FTT, and this one comes from a review of a book about architecture that I saw in the current edition of the London Review of Books.

Now that I've secured the coveted over-educated and pretentious sports fan demographic (it's treasured by the right advertisers, really), let me get to the meat of this.

The Pittsburgh Steelers lost a game last week, in very large part, because they only had one guy on the entire 45-man roster who could accurately long snap a football.

I might be overstating the case, and it's just that the back-up snapper picked the very worst time to whiff on a ball, but I have to think that if he had to do that job on a consistent basis, Steeler Fan would not be happy.

It's very likely that, had a similar injury happened to any other team's long snapper, they would have met a very similar fate.

Now, doesn't this strike you as, well, a bad way to run a railroad?

* * * * *

It's unlikely that anyone who is reading this has any idea what's involved in long snapping at a professional level. Besides, that's really not what I wanted to talk about here, anyway.

What I really wanted to get at was how specialization (in the case of an architect no longer being also a painter, a sculptor, or an illustrator) creates sterility (i.e., all the buildings start looking alike.)

Now, here's the reason why you have a dedicated long snapper; if the player fails, you can just blame the player and be done with it.

If you don't do it that way... well, the coach and general manager's ass is on the line, and that's not something that NFL front offices are all that comfortable doing. The advantage of an extra player on the 45 man roster just isn't worth it.

But still... Paul Hornung was the Green Bay Packers kicker. George Blanda kicked for the Raiders. The Patriots have a half dozen guys playing both ways. For all the ways to lose a football game, having a back-up long snapper among the active players just isn't a way to go.