Responsibility for our agencies’ technology infrastructure is a major part of my job. During the current hurricane season we had a 32-hour period when everything at our home office was down and out of my hands. We had staff members with major damage to their homes and roads closed off by fallen trees and flooding. I was completely at the mercy of our utility company, communication providers, and Hurricane Irene, but we managed to stay connected. Not the computers or the email, but the people.

In the span of about 10 hours this past weekend, both of my favorite teams lost games that I thought they were in. Well maybe could have been in. On second thought were kind of in. Being totally honest, they were never in. I listened to both coaches (for purposes of this discussion, let’s call them the “Heads of Marketing”) post-game press conferences and heard the usual reasons. We didn’t tackle very well. Costly penalties. Turnovers killed us. Too many third and outs. Poor base running. Left too many runners stranded. Swung at too many bad pitches.