Sometimes, You're a Loser

Have you ever really lost? Been totally outclassed, or just failed so miserably that the competition walked all over you?

And not just any competition. Your rival--your opposite number.

Sitting in the stands, I watched the fans filter out out en masse with the final quarter yet to start. It was eerily quiet after the opening roar, the stadium once full of shaking white pompoms replaced with one full of shaking heads. One fan straightened his hat, stood, nodded to us as if he needed to apologize, and said, "Sorry. Its just too painful." He joined the trudging crowd. There is no other way to describe that kind of walk, like you're grinding through mush with your feet.

And I can understand. Sometimes a loss is not just a loss, but an utter defeat, a complete and total capitulation. You get to feeling pretty low. You have to start trying to explain things, but nothing really comes. There's not much you can say but, "We're better than this. Everything just went wrong."

This was my niece's first college football game as a student. How odd it was that we had to keep telling her things like, "These games are really fun. Usually. Really!" when I'd seen so many victories there, felt the rush of so many good times. Even defeats usually had some small moral value. But not this game. It came to the point were there were no excuses to grasp at. There was nothing to say. There's simply no way to even start to explain it when something you really believed in seems to fail you.

So what's next?

People are arguing schemes, stats, and potential, quantifying emotional damage and psychological reactions, making proclamations and if-then statements. Let those with experience and savvy in those realms pour down what help they can, but I have a limited knowledge of those arenas. Instead I just keep thinking: it isn't over. We want it too much, and too much is on the line.

I won't let it be over.

2004 was the first year my brother took me to games. We had an improbable win against a weak Notre Dame team to open the season, but then tumbled through three consecutive losses, including two home games, finishing the season 5-6. This was also the year that the coach was fired for somewhat shady recruiting as well as the losses, when starters by the truckload were kicked off the team.

Somehow, I still became a fan. A stay-to-the-end-no-matter-what-happens fan, a guarantee-to-be-there-if-life-and-limbs-are-intact kind of fan. And maybe I'm the exception, or maybe I'm deluded, but I believe. I believe in in overcoming weaknesses and righting the course. I believe in improvement, both dramatic and small, and in the chance to make good on broken promises, and in the worth of the team and what they stand for. I believe in victory.

And you should believe it to. No matter what you cheer for, what you support, if you don't have that kind of belief, you're living a hollow, shallow husk of what living is supposed to be like. When you put no faith in anything, never soulfully throw in with a side and a cause, you may never feel the bitterness of defeat, the humiliation of a sound trouncing, but you'll never have the rush of a close battle one, or a foe beaten.

Or that ever essential experience: rising again when you fall.

I sat in my seat until the scoreboard was all zeroes. It was getting cold, and there was nothing really to warm me. I joined the trudgers and made my way home, without so much as a farewell, I think, and sat in my room and watched things explode on my screen until late into the night. I slept in, had a day of rest, and kept quiet. I admit avoiding sports articles for a few days.

But when this Friday comes, and another opponent comes and another chance comes, I'll be back just where I was, in the stands with my hands cupped over my mouth, roaring out with all I've got. Because I still believe.

Yes, we lost. Sometimes you lose, badly, and fall far.

So take this year's theme to heart: Rise Up.

Death of a Rivalry?

Somehow this blog has become a place for notes on sports.

The issue of the week is, of course, the Rivalry. Those peddlers of pointless speculation known as sports writers and their attendant fan comment sections are engaging in the usual hand-wringing--the Rivalry is too hateful, people need to calm down, bring back civility, etc. In an of itself, this has a familiar flavor, and having attended games at both stadiums, I can somewhat agree. I was never subject to projectiles or assaults, but a fair number of taunts, jeers, and gestures have come my way. On the other hand, last year all the people trying to go out of their way to be friendly was a little bizarre.

Ironically, at the same time the new fad of this year's competition is the mantra of "the Rivalry is dying." They list several reasons for this: "We're not in the same conference, no championship is on the line; it just isn't the same in the third week; there are no national rankings or bowl projections riding on this; nobody cares." Local news did a spot interviewing random mall goers who seemed specially selected for a fine mix of ignorance, apathy, and scruffiness (seriously, some people should not grow facial hair). Even coaches and players are being guarded about that they think, but generally indicate the separation is "strange". Soon we'll have street-side mourners rending their clothes and wailing, proclaiming the Doom of the Rivalry, and then going back home and writing articles to that effect in the Herald and the Tribune.

And we haven't even played the game yet.

I think we're a little too early in the process to start the funeral pyre for the Red vs Blue. The good squire may have taken the arrow bearing the message of independence and conference affiliation in the gut ("Message for you, sir"), but I think we should take care not to jump to soon to assault the castle and take vengeance in his name.

For me, it was never about the national ranking, or the conference title. It was the compounded memory of wins an losses, 4 and 18s and blocked field goals, hard hits and penalty after penalty, for calls that send one crowd howling in outrage and the other in glee. It was the game itself. The day. The last play.

So don't tell me the Rivalry is dying. I'm tired of hearing "it just won't be the same". Those kinds of things are determined on the field, in the stadium, in the crowd. Then, with game over flashing in our eyes, if you feel so inclined, bring in the coroner and the M.E.s, give in to your urge to head-wag and hand-wring. But don't be too surprised when the dust has cleared that though wounded, Concorde stands up and says "I'm not quite dead, sir."

Mentality of a Sports Fan

Its Thursday, September 1st. I'm at work. I specially mention this because obviously, if I'm at work and I'm writing this, it must be work related, because only slackers do other things when there's work to do at work. But once the work at work is done, and I start getting paid to stare at a screen, I start to look for sources of internet entertainment. The first is my email. The second is Facebook. The third is an exhaustive search of every sports journalists' dead-horse-beating opinion article, thrice-rehashed quote from the coach or a player, and pointless reexamination of the offensive and defensive match-ups for every team on the schedule for the rest of the season.

And I eat it up.

I know the player's weights, heights, years, numbers, and often individual plays they made last year. I spent an indecently mispreportionate period of time carefully putting them all in their two-deep roster on my game console. I can rattle off the schedule by opponent and date (even if its just 'TBA'). I spend time watching old games by current coaches and former players and similar situations to get some idea of how it might run, what plays will be played. It all takes a pretty large amount of time I could have spent writing ten novels and a thousand blogs.

How did it get this way?

I didn't grow up a sports fan. Playing them was fun, when I wasn't disheartened by my lack of coordination, but the fan-ship did not set sail until I became a college student. All of a sudden, I had a Team. I had someone to root for. I didn't understand many of the rules of the sport, besides a lot of hitting and basics of throwing and catching, but I knew that when My Team knuckled down and fought, and struggling, snatched victory from the jaws of the foe and sent 65,000 roaring to their feet, that I was up and roaring with them.

This is why I stick to singing base on Sunday mornings.

It took longer for me then some, but sports drew me in. Men, especially, are drawn to sports. Its the permeating existence of competition, the adrenaline-inducing rush brought on by two forces colliding, never wholly certain of the outcome, and then throwing in with one side, coming to the point where they are YOUR Team, where you throw in your heart and soul to their side, where you start using esoteric terms like "faith" and "belief" in reference to comebacks and scoreboards. You refuse to believe that the Team can't still win. You even refuse to believe it after they've already lost.

Victory, especially a close one, is a rush; possibly causing week-long, completely drug-free euphoria. Defeat, once finally admitted, causes fundamental, illogical, near-irreversible angst and depression. The only thing that cures it is the next game, the next victory, and those with grit sometimes can wait it out when its a long time in coming. To others, enough of these defeats and they become disenchanted, distance themselves, and choose to ignore their team when it does not do well. Its a very understandable reaction. People learn to shut out pain, and pain is deeper when caused by things that you cherish. This is what we call a fair-weather fan.

Those people suck.


Understandable, yes. Condonable, no way.

This coming weekend heralds the start of another season. TVs are being purchased. Cable contacts are being signed. The smell of barbecue and grass; the thrum of people moving, watching, debating; stands made of wood, metal, and plastic, and whatever other uncomfortable materials that can be found; and the aching need for struggle and vindication are all here. All that's missing is the main event.

Bring on the dead-horse-beating, the reexamination, and the rehashed quotes, because its all that there is to be had. Otherwise, I'm just left with the Wait.