Football and baseball are not the only competitive sports where coaches and players keep tightly-held secrets from rival teams and nosy sportswriters. It might surprise some of you to know that those super-secret XXX/000 charts kept under lock and key in the NFL have similar counterparts in fishing tournaments and powerboat races.
In saltwater tournaments, particularly here in South Florida, the leading teams don't mind telling anyone who asks --reporters, tournament officials, rivals -- what they used for bait on a particular day. But questioners would have to try waterboarding to get them to give up where they fished ( Triumph, the "Steeple, Haulover, etc.) and the water depth where they got their bites.
In bass tournaments, the pros will readily give up their fishing locations (on many lakes, they're within sight of each other anyway), but they would rather pull a 3X treble hook through their lower lip than tell exactly what baits their big fish ate. (There's also the embarrassing problem of a big bass inadvertently biting a bait whose manufacturer is not one of the angler's sponsors; they REALLY don't want to go there.
In powerboat racing, the secret intelligence information concerns the boat's set-up: the pitch of the propellers; distribution of weight; gear ratios; configuration of the outdrives. The engines are no secret; they're specific to the racing class.
At the conclusion of the 2007 Key West World Championship, with no more major races scheduled until next year, the winning team in the Super Vee class refused to divulge anything about the set-up of their victorious Fountain boat, Miccosukee Indian Gaming -- not even to fellow Fountain Powerboats team members.
"I can't tell them THAT!" insisted Miccosukee owner/driver Brett Furshman of Coral Springs. Then he lapsed into motorsports platitudes:
"It's the combination of the driver, the throttleman, and the set-up," Furshman said. "You got to get all three -- just like when you see NASCAR. All those drivers can win. It takes a lot of work. You've got to try a lot of different stuff. "
I bet neither the former Soviet KGB nor Tom Clancy's fictional Mr. Clark could pry anymore information out of these guys.
In effect, these tight-lipped boat racers, bass fishermen, and sailfish captains are striking a blow for competitive outdoors sports. They are showing the world that they, too, can employ obfuscation, dissembling, and cliches as well as any star quarterback, forward, or pitcher.
Who says fringe sports can't be in the Big Leagues?
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