Bill Belichick a Captain Ahab, Yes; Vengeful, No

In a recent piece about coach Bill Belichick of the National Football League's Buffalo Bills, Associated Press writer Jim Litke paints in fairly true colors a description of the despot-like football man. However, when he says of him: "(Belichick) could have taught Captain Ahab a thing or two about revenge," Litke's metaphor goes off course.

In Moby Dick, or The White Whale, by Herman Melville, Captain Ahab hunts the whale in a "dehumanizing" way that "sacrifices his crew." Ahab is not a man to put on false appearances. On the other hand, Belichick dissembles when speaking about his team to the press, and according to Roger Goodell, franchise commissioner of the league in which the Buffalo Bills play, Belichick "represents a calculated and deliberate attempt to avoid long-standing rules designed to encourage fair play and promote honest competition on the playing field." Ahab is "monomaniacal" in his "search for truth" as he hunts the whale. Belichick is also obsessively single-minded in pursuit of his goal of "perfection" and is willing to negotiate ethics in his drivenness: He uses modern technology to steal vital information from his opposition (see Goodell above). Belichick also "likes swollen heads inside helmets...and leaves his first team on the field even after well-established leads" according to Litke.

So far, the implied metaphor of Belichick as more of a Captain Ahab than Ahab himself ("Belichick could have taught Ahab a thing or two...") might hold, but ("taught Ahab a thing or two about revenge"?) No. Doesn't work. To suggest that Ahab was seeking revenge on the whale is mistaken. He recklessly sought the "truth" to his own detriment and that of his men. At the end of the day, Belichick is not seeking "truth" in the form of hunting down his opponents or a perfect won/loss record, and his men return home quite wealthy and celebrated, if a bit sore.

But let us dig deeper into the metaphor. Captain Ahab, himself, was inspired by the Old Testament king Ahab of Israel "whose name has become a byword for wickedness." (William Rose Benet, The Reader's Encyclopedia). Instigated by Jezebel, "a woman of loose morals," King Ahab executed a man on false charges because he wanted his vineyard. King Ahab, himself, could not be accused of revenge. He was "merely" wicked. Coach Belichick may be colored in negative terms, but he is neither vengeful nor wicked.

Thus, the metaphor of Belichick as Ahab, either the Captain or the Captain's own prototype, is a metaphor gone as far astray as the Pequod sailing after the white whale. Fortunately Mr. Litke is not going down with the whale. He will live to write another day while perhaps using perfected metaphors.

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