Faith + Reason = Truth

The Financial Times has an article by Clive Crook today (no link, since it requires a subscription) that delves into whether President Bush is villified for his bad decisions or for the bad outcomes of his decisions, which may have actually been good ideas at the time.  It has obvious relevance across all spheres:  politics, business, sports, you name it.  I'll go the sports route with my potentially relevant example.  Another professional American football league is being explored (seems a new one is tried every 10 years or so).  On the surface, this may seem a bad idea, given the history of failure since the lone successful attempt at competing with the NFL ended with the AFL-NFL merger around 1970.  But those failures were due to poor implementation, rather than lack of merit in the idea.  As Mark Cuban, a force behind the latest potential competitor, astutely points out, there is obviously more demand than supply when it comes to pro football.  The reason I give his idea a chance of working is solely based on him personally:  he is an extremely successful pro sports franchise and facility owner, and more importantly, he owns his own broadcast distribution network.  Other leagues may have been doomed from the start by a lack of exposure to their products, which could be enforced by the NFL employing strongarm tactics in prohibiting partner networks from helping the other fledgling leagues.  They also may have had ownership groups that had no idea of what goes into successful sports leagues.  Cuban single-handedly takes care of both of these issues, and in an age of quality, household name players finding themselves out of work due to "cap constraints", this environment, coupled with Mark Cuban's unique position, experience, and resources, may be the ideal combination to give an alternative pro football league its best shot since the 1960's when the NFL and television itself was still in its adolescence.
In the broader scheme of things, see if you can think of some great "idea men/women" who were labeled failures as a result of their inability to execute or implement, in spite of the brilliance of their ideas.  You may actually find some ideas worth a second (or, as in this case, a third or fourth) look, with the only thing missing being the right person or team to pull them off.