You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
Being cool under pressure and performing when that pressure is palpable.
It’s called being clutch.
The Giants win over the patriots was an example of clutch.
Superbowl 46 was the most watched TV show of all time. It was a back and forth affair, and the entire game boiled down to the last 3 minutes. That’s when Eli Manning orchestrates the new millennium version of the drive.
With fireworks exploding in the stands and noise levels rivaling that of a 747, it was time to go big or go home.
With the Madonna Super Bowl show now a distant memory, Eli Steps into the huddle and calmly eyes his teammates. He doesn’t say a word. He calls out the play. He stares in their eyes and quietly signals it’s time to be extraordinary.
This is a moment of calm where possibility meets inevitability.
With only a handful of minutes left in the Super Bowl, Manning drops back in the shadow of his own goal line. It looks chaotic to normal humans, but to him there is a singular focus. The path is illuminated, easy to see in a vortex where time has slowed.
Eli cocks back his million dollar arm and lets the ball fly toward the sideline. The spheroid drops like a beautiful 38 yard rainbow in the hands of his wide out, Mario Manningham.
It is a delicious catch. It’s the chocolate eclair of pass patterns. It’s a highlight for the ages. It is a catch that has to be made, in the most pressure packed of moments.
The announcers will call it a Clutch catch.
There’s that word again: CLUTCH.
The catch, the drive, the win, prompts an ABC news story on what makes some people, like Eli Manning able to excel when the odds are stacked against them.
The reporter asks the question; “can you set aside fear and win when it counts?”
What is fear? Is it 68,000 people screaming while you do your job?Is it 110,000 million world wide watching as you decide the fate of history?
Is it an ability to rise above the chaos as 11 New England Patriots try to behead you while you set poetry in motion.
And poetry it was. Manningham grabbed the ball with his cuticles and dragged both feet in bounds, maintaining possession through the catch.
38 yards. First and ten. The Giants are suddenly in position to win the game. A minute later, the Superbowl is a ticker tape parade.
And the pundits and pontificators and philosophizers began to ask;
“What intangible something does Eli Manning have and how can normal people get it?”
Now people say Eli is cool under pressure, the epitome of clutch. But early in his career some said he was aloof, disinterested. What they mistakenly thought was indifference was really a special ability to compartmentalize chaos and cope with pressure.
When it is raining hand grenades around you and you can see the way. That’s clutch.
Clutch is that place in your brain, when fried synaptical nerve endings crackle like Jiffy Pop and somehow, you can push your way through the confusion and make sense of something improbable, cluttered.
ABC News called it the science of clutch. They equated high stress performance to a condition in the pre-frontal cortex of the brain.
According to the broadcast, this is the crowded region where the brain deciphers problems while dealing with anxiety.
Imagine a soldier running through a battlefield of sniper fire. It’s chaotic and dangerous, but for the soldier, time slows and it all makes sense. He pushes crazy to the periphery and moves to the center where it is warm and feels familiar.
ABC news says during this fire storm of stress we think too much. We have to rely on instincts and react.
When asked about the throw, Eli Manning said, he didn’t even think about it. He said it was just muscle memory and he let it fly.
Clutch on Superbowl Sunday was an awe shucks Cajun named Eli who elevated himself to superstar status in the house his brother built.
Clutch.
And that is crazy.