Did you see the Patriots/Bill game last night? Unbelievable!

You couldn’t have asked for a more exciting Monday Night Football game. It was awesome.

Like most exciting, impressive, popular, successful things in society, it almost didn’t happen. After SuperBowl III between the Jets and the Baltimore Colts then NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, trying to increase the popularity and expand the game of football, proposed to air weekly Monday night football games. CBS said No! NBC said No! They thought it was too risky. They were defending the status quo. ABC, the lowest rated station at the time said No at first too! After Rozelle looked to the independent Hughes Sports Network, ABC changed their mind. Monday Night Football has run for 40 years and is one of the most watched TV programs of all-time. CBS and NBC lost defending the status quo.

-Pink Fiberglass
-Harry Potter
-The Personal Computer
-Social Networking
-Women Professionals
-Light Beer (way to go Miller)
-The earth evolving around sun
-Email, IM, and Enterprise 2.0 in the workplace, (shoot almost anything “NEW” in the corporate world)

All of these and tons of other innovations broke the the status quo and had to fend of its defenders. It’s too easy to defend the status quo. It’s the devil we know. The status quo is the safe route. It makes us feel safe. It’s our way of playing not to lose. Unfortunately, this way of thinking stifles innovation and growth.

Fear the status quo. Its sole purpose is to maintain itself. The status quo will defend itself at all costs, attaching risk, loss, destruction, and of course fear to all those who dare to displace it. The status quo is the bed of the average, those who have plopped themselves onto a comfortable pillow, requiring nothing more than it’s defense. The status quo is rarely defended by those who established the innovation that was once at it’s core. The innovators have since left to innovate some more. It is those who rose up from it’s ascension from innovation to status quo that defend it as everything they know and have is at risk should it go away.

Fear the status quo, it is a mirage. It will lull you into a false sense of security. It will lull you into a false sense of accomplishment. Like a parasite, it will kill its host. The status quo is the enemy of progress. Without progress there is no Monday Night Football.

Go Pats!