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.