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Glowing
Pucks
* V. Michelle Obradovic, Esq.
Hockey action is fast - the best NHL players skate at speeds in excess of 28
m.p.h. The puck routinely reaches 100 m.p.h., and when shot from the blue
line, gets to the net in 0.34 seconds. At the 1996 All-Star Game in Boston,
fans watched Ray Bourque score the winning goal for the Bruins with 38
seconds left in regulation play. Although something was going on with the
pucks that night – they kept changing them out – attendees were oblivious to
what the fans at home were seeing: a blue halo around the puck that turned
into a red comet tail on the slapshots. The FoxTrax radio
puck and the new FleetCenter’s built-in receiver technology were created to
make the game easier to follow by making the puck easier to see. Although the
glowing puck was eventually abandoned, the idea grew legs and a company too.
SporTVision, Inc. is responsible for the Yellow 1st & Ten™ line and blue
line of scrimmage used in NFL and NCAA games; and Baseball’s K-Zone, which
frames the strike zone and marks the path of the pitch; and NASCAR RACEf/x™,
which puts a bubble around a particular car; as well as PITCHf/x™, which
tracked the dips and curves of pitches during the 2005 World Series.
Proponents argue the technology is helping fans to appreciate the athletes
and to follow the game without necessarily knowing all the rules. Detractors
argue that it is imprecise, distracting and unnecessary.
Sports are an important part of American culture. Sport happens when
individual(s) participate in an activity with a set of agreed upon rules where
their physical and mental abilities are to be measured against a standard.
The rules and venue become a shared experience and allow for the emergence of
learned and innovative strategies, skills and behaviors. Individuals can
measure personal best performance and improvements in personal best as well
as those of the team, and of their opponent. The other important dimension of
sport is as a metaphor for character. But, what does this have to do with
conflict resolution?
Aristotle in Poetics, saw metaphor as a part of rhetoric, making discourse
more elegant. Negotiation, a kind of discourse, is often thought of in sports
terms. Usually, the references are to sports with opponents, for example;
court and field sports like basketball, baseball, soccer and football or
combat sports such as boxing, wrestling and martial arts. Rarely are
references made to individual achievement sports, such as running, swimming,
cycling, golf or weightlifting.
Sports metaphors are sometimes good for talking about business because they
are similarly paradoxical: Sports are fun to play, but they are also serious
undertakings, bringing many rewards and often a great deal of pain and
sacrifice; A combination of raw energy and discipline is required for
sustained success; There is a tension between keeping to the rules and
breaking them; There are always stars among teams and a balance is often
impossible to achieve, and a bit of luck never hurts too.
Keep in mind that with metaphors, analogies, and similes, qualities of one concept
are imparted to another. A simile compares two essentially dissimilar
concepts using like or as. A metaphor compares attributes of one concept to
another and an analogy is an extended comparison. They all work by conjuring
up an image in the listener’s mind, so choosing something that only makes
sense to you or that does not really make your point probably won’t create
clarity. However, if used artfully, they can capture abstract ideas that
would otherwise be lost. Thinking back on your experiences in mediation and
negotiation: Did the mediator lay the ground rules and touch base with you
prior to the mediation? The ball was in whose court when you started? Did you
get to the ballpark?
When working with negotiators who see it as sport, the essential question
becomes: Which game are we supposed to be playing?
- A team sport such as Basketball calls for a high
level of skill and intuition to discern the totality of a complex
situation and then react in a highly specialized way instantly. Although
players used to “do the shuffle” playing every position, now the best
players do one thing extraordinarily well, such as power forward,
shooting forward, point guard or off guard. Teams aggressively push the
ball down the court, each performing as a specialist, but also as part
of the team.
- A team sport such as Football calls for situations to
be thought out ahead of time, plays written - such as the Single Wing,
the T, the Wing-T, the I, the Wishbone, the Veer, the 4-3 Defense, the
5-2, and the 4-4 - and practiced almost daily. The play is executed when
a particular situation presents itself in the game. Performance is
analyzed again and again and again.
- A team sport such as Baseball calls for order and
deliberateness and does not concern itself with time. Players, except
the pitcher and catcher, have freedom to move around depending on the
situation, but each is actually assigned a position. The head coach is
know as the manager and sets the team’s strategy and makes all personnel
decisions. Some managers control pitch selection and defensive
positioning, but others leave it to the player's discretion or delegate
decisionmaking to other leaders.
Figuratively speaking, it could be said that the mediator is to negotiation
as the yellow line is to the offensive first down. It highlights something
that is already there, but is hard for some people to see. Some don’t need it
because they can read the markers. Others find that the switching camera
angles, zoom shots, small screens, diminished eyesight, interruptions and
other such things make it too easy to loose one’s orientation, even though
the rules of the game are fully understood. Although sometimes unnecessary,
the yellow line will be there when you need it, but won’t get in your way if
you don’t.
*V. Michelle Obradovic, Esq.
lives in Birmingham, Alabama. She is a former litigator and trial attorney
and is and owner of Wise
Resolution, LLC. Her general mediation practice also includes complex
litigation, mass torts and class actions. She is an Associate Adjunct
Professor at Samford University, Cumberland School of Law.
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