[anentropic]

The Benedict Arnold comparison is absurd and the football analogy is very weak.

There is no 'other team' and the coach is paranoid. He keeps the playbook secret from his own team, suspecting any one of them may be playing for the other side, which does not exist. No games are scheduled anyway, but still he insists on spying on them and recording all the details of their private lives in his secret playbook.

One day one of the team finds the playbook and is horrified at what their coach has been doing behind their backs...

etc etc

[narcissus]

I agree that the football analogy is weak. As an outsider looking in, it seems as though the 'secret plays' are secret just because that's the way it's become... not because it's the only way.

I mean, you just have to look at pretty much every other team sport out there: none of those have secret playbooks. The team is smart enough to work together to determine the best course of action, sometimes taking the advantage, sometimes responding to the loss of that advantage.

So what we have is one sport out of dozens that has a particular quirk, and then we use that weirdness to justify what the government is currently doing?

Odd.

[bostonpete]

Whether or not it's appropriate to be using sports analogies here, it's not true that football is unique in the secrecy of information. Plenty of sports have information that is known between teammates and not shared with the other team (baseball pitchers don't communicate what they're going to throw, basketball teams draw up plays, etc.).

The only thing that's unique about football is how much complexity they can factor into each play since they've got 11 players to work with and there's a stoppage before each play during which they can regroup and coordinate.