Clarkus Aurelius

Meditations on the Philosopher-Coach ⚓

[Clarkus Aurelius @ClarkusAure1ius]

SUNDAY MEDITATIONS, VOL. IV

Auburn 21, Vanderbilt 15

On the quarrel between consistency and surprise.

I. We were beaten. The books are honest in defeat or they are worthless in victory.

II. Saturday exposed a tension, and resolving it is what separates good programs from great ones. On one side stands consistency: tend the internal, play Vanderbilt football, execute the same way every snap. On the other stands surprise: an enemy who knows your move before you make it will always defeat you. One ideal says be the same. The other says never be the same. How do we resolve this tension?

III. The Stoics answered it long ago. Virtue never changes, they taught, but the right action always does. The wise man is the same man in every circumstance, and that is exactly what frees him to act differently in each. This program already has the first half in abundance: its devotion to process is the constancy the Stoics prized. What remains is the wisdom that reads the moment and acts spontaneously. The sameness belongs in the character: effort, detail, will. The variety belongs in the battle plan: formation, disguise, call. Be consistent in your character, but surprise your enemy.

IV. Discipline alone gave us thirty-seven minutes of possession to their twenty-two. But in that time they scored twenty-one points to our fifteen. Control alone is not conquest. The game was decided not by Time of Possession, but by two key moment. In both, Auburn knew exactly what was, or was not, coming.

V. The first moment was a punt. Earlier we had reached for surprise with a fake, and it failed on execution. Surprise without execution is only a gamble. So on the next punt, Auburn sent eleven rushers with the confidence of men certain we would not dare fake twice. They were correct. The block went back for seven, in a game lost by six. Execution without the possibility of surprise is a script for your foes.

VI. The second moment came with five minutes left. Our defense won first and second down, and a stop on 3rd and 5 would force Auburn to punt. We showed cover zero before the snap, with tells plain enough to read from the stands. Auburn audibled to a routine man-beater outside, converted, and the drive lived. Vanderbilt would not see the ball again. Epictetus taught: consider what follows, and only then act. We showed them what was coming, and they showed us what followed. The moment that most demanded surprise was the moment we were easiest to read.

VII. The good news: our character of discipline runs deep, and the tools for surprise are already on the roster. Curtis has every skill to run a pro-style passing attack or the spread and option concepts Pavia thrived in, and an offense that can be either requires a defense to prepare for both. Cole Spence is back, and a tight end who began as a receiver opens combinations we could not run without him. Young, Sherrill, and Alexander give us speed, hands, and power to deploy in any order. And Berlowitz slotting in as a WR or RB, could open up two-quarterback packages of the kind that has given Utah flashes of brilliance and would catch any team off guard. Finally the defense can look inwards and scout itself, learn its own third-down patterns, and against Georgia, intentionally do the opposite. Marcus wrote the Meditations as an audit of his own habits. So can we.

VIII. The art of living, the emperor wrote, is more like wrestling than dancing. We were thrown. We rise, and next Saturday, we go to Athens.

Amor fati. ⚓

[Clarkus Aurelius @ClarkusAure1ius]

With all due respect to our leaders in Congress, it’s regrettable that the fate of one of our most important civic institutions (college football) depends on a bunch of people who do not know ball.

[Clarkus Aurelius @ClarkusAure1ius]

@GhostOfWoody Amen brother 🤝

[Clarkus Aurelius @ClarkusAure1ius]

@joey_dwy Would love to see us adopt some of Utah’s 2QB packages. Really nifty stuff they’re doing.

[Clarkus Aurelius @ClarkusAure1ius]

Going cover zero against 3rd and 5 with the game on the line was a questionable call. AU #11 was the obvious read even from the stands.

Even so, blocked punt was the difference in the game. Get that back and Dores win by 1.

[Clarkus Aurelius @ClarkusAure1ius]

@GhostOfWoody We’ve got to be setting up for a WR pass package, right? Curious to see what the concepts end up being

[Clarkus Aurelius @ClarkusAure1ius]

Bang 🔥

[Clarkus Aurelius @ClarkusAure1ius]

Plenty of places to exploit in the Auburn secondary. We should come out to start the 2H in our two min offense, spread 5 wide and pick them apart.

75 yard touchdown drive loading ⚓️

[Clarkus Aurelius @ClarkusAure1ius]

Our Oracle has infiltrated the enemy’s video system @natebargatze

Anchor Down ⚓️

[Clarkus Aurelius @ClarkusAure1ius]

And so it begins ⚓️

[Clarkus Aurelius @ClarkusAure1ius]

The Ancients had no word for “frame mogging.” Neither, until this afternoon, did the local fleet.

The team will learn tomorrow.

[VandyStranger @VandyStranger]

Great to see the statues of the 2 greatest players to ever play at Jordan-Hare have been completed.

[Clarkus Aurelius @ClarkusAure1ius]

Like Odysseus at Troy, we have arrived behind enemy lines.

Anchor Down ⚓️

[Clarkus Aurelius @ClarkusAure1ius]

@vandy_62 Could have been 13 sacks if Miles got to CJ a second earlier… I’ll take the win over the sack record though! 😉

[Clarkus Aurelius @ClarkusAure1ius]

In his weekly press conference, the Coach was asked about the miracle, and he answered with the founding sentence of Stoicism.

Epictetus opened the Enchiridion articulating the division between what is up to us and what is not. Everything the Stoics built stands on it.

Nineteen centuries later, a man in Nashville runs a football program on the same foundation, and calls it “tending the internal.”

He did not learn this from Saturday. Saturday was the harvest.

Marginalia, No. I. A new series: the Philosopher-Coach, annotated.

Ancora demissa. ⚓

[Clarkus Aurelius @ClarkusAure1ius]

Now that the battle has passed, I offer an olive branch as we return to being friends.

A wise approach, Mr. Lupus. There is value in being deliberate and intentional in matters of succession. I wish you success in courting Phillip.

I wrote a Meditation on Vanderbilt’s own QB decision before the season, which may provide helpful insight. It draws from the successes and failures of the great Roman Emperors and their practices of succession.

If there is value here to you, take it.

https://t.co/qA0KLVfw8y

[Clarkus Aurelius @ClarkusAure1ius]

The five-star sits and the mob is confused. Marcus Aurelius made this exact decision once. He chose wrong, and Rome fell.

Coach Lea understands what the philosopher did not...

The Parthenon Papers, No. I: Meditations on Vandy's Quarterback Situation ⚓ https://t.co/8aFXLf3KiR

[Clarkus Aurelius @ClarkusAure1ius]

A correction for the record: nothing collapsed. A building collapses. What happened Saturday was built: a punch-out is a trained act, a recovery is a rehearsed drill, and max effort on an “irrelevant” snap is a culture installed intentionally.

The Journal covers markets. It should recognize the difference between a crash and a hostile takeover.

[Clarkus Aurelius @ClarkusAure1ius]

@SleeperCFB The Stoics warned of claiming victory in battle before the final opponent had been vanquished. You’d benefit from more reading.

[Clarkus Aurelius @ClarkusAure1ius]

@AuricGoldfnger Thank you, brother. I’m glad my reflections are useful to you.

[Clarkus Aurelius @ClarkusAure1ius]

SUNDAY MEDITATIONS, VOL. III

Vanderbilt 35, NC State 31

Delivered from the Porch.

I. Before the season began, a weary brother of the Porch looked at this very game on the schedule and told me he had watched the old collapse a thousand times: the shaky quarterback allowed his groove, the ending we all knew by heart. I answered him then, in writing: a thousand times means nothing to the Stoic. The thousand-and-first is all that matters. I confess I meant it as encouragement. I did not know I was prophesying. This meditation is about the moment the thousand-and-first arrived.

II. Seneca carried an old line from his teacher for occasions such as this: “the fates lead the willing and drag the unwilling.” He meant that fate comes for everyone; the only choice a man is given is his posture when it arrives. Saturday, two teams were summoned to the same final second. One ran there. One was dragged.

III. The situation, for the stone tablets: the Wolfpack led by three with six seconds left, fourth down at their own 5, needing only to take an intentional safety and go home. Teams in that position had won 1,046 of their last 1,046 games across twenty seasons. Miles Capers punched the ball loose. Cayden Daniels fell on it. The officials restored one second to the clock, as if fate had filed an appeal. 35-31. We are the one in 1,047. An entire philosophy occurred in six seconds.

IV. Their coach, in grief, preached the lesson for me: "We made enough plays for 59:59 of this game." Yes. But the game is 60:00. There is no version of Stoicism, or of football, in which the last second is optional. The duration is the discipline.

V. Marcus commanded: be like the pankratiast, not the gladiator. The gladiator sets down the sword he carries and is killed, while the pankratiast's weapon is his own hand, and he needs only to use it. Their plan was an implement: a scheme, a kneel, a clock to be managed. Implements can be dropped, and this one was, as a football, in their own end zone. Miles Capers carried nothing droppable. His weapon was effort, and he needed only to use it. The ball does not know the score. The effort must not be conditional on circumstance.

VI. For those calling it luck: a punch-out is a trained act, a recovery is a rehearsed drill, and effort on a meaningless snap is a culture installed on purpose. Preparation built the door. Fortune merely walked through it.

VII. Now the optimist's ledger, because this game gave the team gifts a clean win never could. A freshman learned in his first start that his worst half does not get to write the ending; he answered seventeen points of his own mistakes, and that knowledge travels to every hostile stadium ahead. A roster learned that its comeback is real, tested at full weight, not theoretical. A defense learned that its final second is worth exactly one victory, and will never again need convincing to prepare. And a fanbase learned to hold, down seventeen, without turning on its own. These are not consolations. These are provisions, packed for the road. Auburn waits, and the conference behind it, and we travel as the willing travel: 3-0, tested in battle, a work in progress but carrying everything Saturday taught us. The fates prefer companions to cargo.

Ancora demissa. ⚓