The Parable of the Football Team

There once was a university football team.  The coach spent years collecting great players and assistant coaches, and the team had many winning seasons.  Millions were donated to the football team over the years, providing first rate equipment, assistant coaches, stadium, training facilities, etc.   The coach was even able to use some of this donated football money to hire an office manager to administer affairs for the team.  The office manager was, however, really a soccer fan; he felt football was too violent.  (I like soccer too; I love watching my grandson play.  He made three goals in his latest game!)  But the office manager’s love of soccer didn’t matter because his job was to manage the office.  When the old coach finally retired, the university, in its wisdom, decided that, rather than making the current assistant coach the new head coach, they would make the office manager the head coach.  The players and and assistant coach were perplexed, but wanted to be “team players” so they tried to make the best of it.  But the office manager, in his new role as head coach, decided that what the university really needed was a first rate soccer team.  (He didn’t seem to care that there actually already was a university soccer team.)  So, he started to try to make the football players play soccer.  When the assistant coach objected, the office manager fired him.  “If you don’t want play soccer, there’s no place for you on this team!” he said.  Needless to say, the soccer fans were ecstatic.  “At last a well funded soccer team!”  Then, the new season began.  The football team ran onto the field and the game commenced.  Needless to say, the football boosters were more than perplexed to discover that their football team, to which they had donated millions of dollars over the years, was now trying to play soccer against their rival football team.  I’ll leave the readers to decide if the new coach had a winning season.