hope floats

There aren't many things that I look to the Detroit Lions for beyond losing and roster instability. And I wouldn't consider head coach, Jim Schwartz, to be a regular beacon of knowledge. Now, I realize that's probably unfair, but if you ask me, anyone taking the head coaching position with an organization as messed up as the Lions either has a God-like complex, believing he can turn things around, or may be just a little crazy. Either way, I don't usually look to Schwartz, or anyone connected to the Lions, for inspiration. But then I stumbled upon this quote from Schwartz in the middle of ESPN.com's Camp Confidential report: "Hope is not a strategy". I mean, I was just reading the article in hopes of finding a couple digs to keep at hand when my guy friends start boasting about their Lions finally turning things around! But, this? This caught me off guard. It's sort of one of those duh! statements. Of course we know hope isn't really a strategy. But how often to we act like it actually is? Like if we want something bad enough or hope for it strongly enough, we can just will it to happen. Just like that! Hope is a really powerful thing. But I think hope, on it's own, can sometimes be debilitating. Hope isn't enough. It's never enough. To accomplish any great feat, to make any big change, to do anything worth doing, hope has to be present. But it has to be accompanied by a strategy. By a blueprint. By a game plan. By a way to put one foot in front of the other. Hope, alone, can only do so much. It's not going to move you from point A to point B. It's not going to change the world. And it's not going to win football games.

Who'd have guessed that it would be Jim Schwartz to remind me of this?

I guess it makes me wonder if the Lions are going to catch a couple teams, just like they caught me, off-guard this season . . .