Practice Hard, and Cue the Singing Bananas
With the Winter Olympics fast approaching, along with the inevitable chatter about who is cheating, it seems a good time to reflect on some steroid-free approaches to winning,
and losing. Create a diver
sion. Generals have been using this tactic for as long as there have been battlefields, but as with so many old ideas, there are modern adjustments to be made.
Consider the basketball team at Rutgers University in New Jersey. As a visiting rival, nearby Seton Hall, warmed up, the giant Rutgers video board began playing a 1970s clip of a Russian singer crooning oddly. The Times described the scene:
“The singer, Eduard Khil, wearing a double-breasted suit, a frozen smile and a coif like the clip- on hair of a toy figurine, ambles across a mustard- colored backdrop like a mannequin come to life. It was impossible to look away.”
And no one did. Seton Hall’s players stopped their preparations, transfixed.
“Their players were looking up at the video board, and we thought, ‘ Wow this is making a little bit of difference,’ ” Mike Greengarten, a Rutgers official, told The Times. “‘It’s getting in their head a little bit.’ ”
It is hard to give the credit to a YouTube clip, but Rutgers won that day, a big upset. It also upset Wisconsin after rolling seven minutes of clips that included not just Mr. Khil but singing bananas in pajamas.
“I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything like that before in any arena,” said Wisconsin’s Aaron Moesch.
It’s not foolproof; Rutgers has lost to some lesser teams despite playing the videos. But it’s a step up from the old your-shoelace-is-untied trick.
Adjust your wardrobe. Norway is a speedskating powerhouse, and it always wears red. So it was jarring when its team arrived at the season’s first World Cup event in blue. Germany wore a similar shade — also not its traditional color.
“People are saying now the blue color is faster than any other color,” Hein Otterspeer, a Dutch skater, told The Times. “That’s a bit of a strange theory, but maybe they tested it.” What do the experts say? “I cannot possibly imagine how dyeing the same fabric with two dyes that have the same properties to different hues would generate differing aerodynamic responses,” said Renzo Shamey, a professor of color science at North Carolina State University. Still, he said, “I have sufficient confidence in what I’ve done and what I know, but at the same time I’m not so arrogant to dismiss claims people make.”
Mike Crowe, the Canadian speedskating coach, called it “the oldest trick in the book,” simple gamesmanship. “Make them wonder,” he said.
For the record, the Rutgers basketball team wears red. For now.
Keep some perspective. For Army and Navy, the United States military academies, the football game against each other is the biggest of the year. And on a snowy day in December, with Army leading 14-13, Navy’s Bennett Moehring imagined being the hero as he lined up a 44-meter kick. He struck the ball well. Then it drifted left, just missing.
Mr. Moehring has made no excuses, and talks openly about the experience. He wants to set an example of sportsmanship. “It’s important for me to go through this,” he told The Times.
His Navy training helps. He talked about one professor, a former SEAL, who has spoken about resilience when missions do not go as planned.
“It’s all about how you respond,” the professor would say. “People are going to see that and they’re going to say, ‘Is this a guy worth following?’ ”