Friday column: A tactic is cheesy but effective

Decades ago, covering a high school baseball game in Southern California, I saw a diamond tactic I’d never before witnessed: At one point in a middle inning, every member of the home team stood on their dugout bench, looked at their opponents on the field and screamed, “I hate you.”

Over and over and over.

I don’t remember the name of the molder of young men who came up with such a brilliant stratagem, but I can tell you this about him: He was in the wrong sport.

He should have been a football coach.

Like Rex Ryan.

Now, to be sure, the New York Jets’ head man is a top defensive mind with more than a single skill, but in a recent column for ESPN, Gene Wojciechowski quoted an NFL team executive who knew Ryan well. “His No. 1 ability,” the exec said, “is to get his players to identify hate in the week (before a game).”

Ryan does this, in part, by using a related tried-and-true artifice: getting his team into an “us vs. the world” mentality. Also known as “no one respects us.”

The effectiveness of this flimsy contrivance can be seen in the Jets’ upset of the Patriots on Sunday, and also in New York linebacker Bart Scott’s on-field rant following the game:

“To all the nonbelievers, to all the nonbelievers!” Scott screamed at an interviewer. “Disrespect us. Talk crap about the defense, and we’re the third-best defense in the league.”

I don’t recall anyone running down the Jets defense before the game, but that hardly matters. It was enough that Ryan got his players to believe it. And getting players to believe such tripe has been a Ryan staple for years, even at such a modest football program as New Mexico Highlands University.

Wojciechowski quotes West Las Vegas head coach Mike Ulibarri, who played for Ryan when Ryan was an assistant at Highlands in 1989. Ulibarri still remembers a speech Ryan gave before the Cowboys played Mesa State.

“Nobody’s your friend on the field. You want friends? You can have friends after the game. Right now, it’s you against everybody, and you have to prove yourself every time.”

Ah yes, you against the world.

(Sigh.)

Ryan’s motivational skills — “his ability to get his team to identify hate” — impress even players of other teams. This week, New York Giants safety Antrel Rolle openly admired Ryan’s approach, and said of the Jets, “That team is going to war for him.”

The war reference may be odious, particular in a time of actual combat and loss of life, but it’s also apt in that nations have sought to demonize the enemy — and thereby work up a good hate in their soldiers — for millennia.

Why? For the same reason Ryan does. It works.

And what does it say about us as a species that it continues to work so well, even in our games?

Nothing good.