THE FUTILITY OF ENDING AROUND

In football, the end around is a trick play that takes advantage of the defense’s focus on the middle of the line of scrimmage. Instead of handing the ball to a running back between the tackles, the quarterback gives it to a wide receiver running through the backfield and around the opposite end.

It is an old play that football teams still run because it works. But it only works if the offense’s earlier success in the interior of the line has drawn the defense’s attention there. In other words, the predicate to the end around is strong fundamentals up the middle.

In fact, strong fundamentals are the predicate to success on both sides of the ball. A football team that does not block and tackle properly cannot succeed, because blocking and tackling are the fundamentals necessary to winning. Not to say that blocking and tackling guarantee success, only that their absence guarantees failure. A football team cannot end around its absence of the fundamentals. The temptation to do so is obvious. Blocking and tackling is trench-work: difficult, unglamorous, and unseen. It is not where the glory is.

The same is true in the life of a man. There are certain fundamentals that must be strong for him to succeed. Like blocking and tackling they are the trench-work that is difficult, unglamorous, and unseen. In my life, those fundamentals are my diet, my marriage and dedication to daily prayer.

Periodically, I try to end around my fundamentals. I convince myself that I can outrun a bad diet (I can’t), that I can have satisfactory relationships with my children, friends, and coworkers without putting my wife first (I can’t), and that I can grow in my faith without speaking with God on a daily basis (I can’t). After a season of ending around to failure, I will return to the trenches and reestablish my fundamentals, not as a guarantee of success but as predicate to it.

In life as in football, failure to do the trench-work is a guarantee of failure. There is no ending around that and it is futile to believe otherwise.