What's the Difference.

I don't follow minor-league football. (I can't semantically call it college football. Not only are the coaches paid more than anyone else in the state their "schools" are in, the players are paid, too. Plus, the players can leave one team for another it seems every few minutes if they can make more money at some other institution. What's more, I'd imagine published graduation rates bear as little relationship to the truth as tump does to marital fidelity.)

Nevertheless, even if you care not a whit about college football or Taylor Swift or some other imbecility, these things sweep our world with such intensity, that you can't fully avoid them.

If Thoreau were alive today and living in ostensible seclusion on Walden Pond, he'd probably get his food via GrubHub and spend his day looking at his iPhone. The incessance of amerrykaka is as unavoidable as a fart in an elevator and about as pleasant.

All that to say, though I haven't watched a college football game since Sid Luckman hung up his cleats, even I was aware of the remarkable football season of the Indiana University Hoosiers.

The Hoosiers have always been the doormat of the Big Ten. Before winning the conference this season (on their way to the national championship game against #10 ranked Miami on January 19th) IU's last Big 10 championship was in 1967. Their bowl (not bowel) record is 5-11. As a comparison, Ohio State's bowl record is 31-30 and Michigan's is 24-30.

Nevertheless, this season is different for the red and white. Fernando Mendoza, their quarterback has already won the Heisman trophy as minor-league football's best player and the Hoosiers and their unorthodox coach, Curt Cignetti, have made a lot of people take notice.

The thing that set me off on this post was an article in the January 8 Wall Street Journal about how Cignetti, by ignoring conventional wisdom, has built the strongest team in the sport.

So much of our lives, in advertising and outside of advertising, is ruled by conventional wisdom, by "if-then" propositions, by following the herd and by best-practices.

Perhaps, Little Eva said it best, "everybody's doin' it...":

In advertising, if a creative has an ad in her portfolio that successfully mimics all the au courant trends of the previous year's awards shows, that creative will get scooped up like a dollar in a sewer drain. If a story-board of a commercial looks like a story-board of a commercial, it's way more likely to get through the meandering intestinal track of the agency and client worlds. Do something "odd," and you'll be considered odd person out.

About Cignetti, the Journal wrote:

Since taking over at Indiana in November 2023, Cignetti has proven himself to be the premier evaluator in the country. By hunting for underrated prospects and exploiting the transfer portal, he has transformed the program with the most losses in college football history into the sport’s No. 1 team.  

“He doesn’t care if you’re a five-star or have no stars,” said Indiana offensive coordinator Mike Shanahan, who has worked with Cignetti since 2016. “I just feel like he has kind of a sixth sense.” 

In Cignetti's 15-years as a minor-league football head coach, Cignetti has never once signed a five-star recruit. Five-star recruits are the Cannes winners of the sport. They're unusually gifted. Fast, strong and giant. Cignetti looks for character and other intangibles, like "flexible" joints (which lead to speed, torque and quickness.)

I have an axe to grind here. 

TBH, I usually do.

As an industry, we hire people who have learned how to make ads. Not people who (as Apple urged us) "Think different." We hire ad craftspeople, not creative thinkers.

All agencies are the same. All holding companies are the same. All our "insights" are the same. All our ads are the same. All our sameness is the same. And insane.

Like Procrustes in ancient Greece, we fill boxes and lop off the overhang. We fit people into boxes. We don't let them build their own.

There's a value in conventional practices, of course. There's a value in bringing in carpenters who know how to build the things you need built, who can dovetail joints, design chairs, and make a perfect Shaker table. There's a value in having people who know the how so they can do the what. But there's also value in a Nakaskima table. Built by someone who breaks the mold.

We need both in advertising.

Instead we get Ikea.

But there's a huge limitation in following.

Following can lead to stultification. 

And it doesn't win, as the metaphor goes, football games.

BTW, you should look at my friend Don McKinney's portfolio sometime. Especially his personal manifesto and Polaroid book.

That's what I mean.