Winners and Losers
It was another great weekend of sports:
- some great matchups in college football (unusual for this early in the season)
- some great racing as NASCAR now heads into its own version of a playoff
- some great golf as only the top 30 in “cup points” make it to the championship rounds in two weeks
- some great tennis, with the favorites on the women’s side getting beat or losing control and giving the matches away
- some great games in the first weekend of pro football with some “all pro” players making mistakes at the pace of rookies
- some great baseball, with records being broken over a half century old and some teams soaring while others are collapsing right now
In every case, there were winners and losers. In some cases, there were losers that won. In other cases, there were winners that lost.
For every sport, the announcers and the media talked about revenge or respect or repeat, which were often times translated into justice or payback or dynasty.
But for every individual or team that was supposed to win, there was the other team that didn’t quite see it that way.
An unranked team beat a top 5 college football program.
A driver that never before had made the “race to the chase” beat out the favorite from last year and his hated rival.
A golfer said Tiger was beatable when Tiger was a very workman like 1 shot back, and Tiger then erupted and beat the field by 8 strokes.
An unseeded player who left the game just a couple years ago because it wasn’t fun anymore came back this year after having a child and after playing in only 3 tournaments to win the US Open.
Teams that were certain to lose with 2 minutes left somehow found a way to win. And teams that had games locked up at the 2 minute warning found ways to lose.
Teams that were in the playoffs as of September 1st somehow forgot how to pitch and hit, and in only two short weeks, they went from sure things to not a chance.
In each sport, we saw clear evidence of great winners who lost and the usual losers who won. For the winners, there were moments of greatness not just on the court, on the field, or on the track, but also in the words and actions afterwards when every microphone imaginable was shoved in front of them and they responded with a sense of awe and a wonderful maturity regardless of age. For some of the losers, their collapse was often times accompanied by verbal eruptions that couldn’t be played on family friendly TV and within moments of losing, the blame game began.
We all know, “America loves a winner.”
But I long for the epic matchups in sports where both the ultimate winner and thus the loser battle it out to the bitter end and both go in front of the microphone in awe of the game that just finished. That happened in the last two Super Bowls. That happened in this years Men’s Wimbledon final. That happened in the 2008 US Open in golf. I remember each of those because of “the catch” by the Giants, “the catch” by the Steelers, “the match” between Federer and Roddick, and “the knee” from Tiger, respectively. All were classic matches providing classic moments with the utmost in class shown by the participants – winners and losers.
It’s sad that we remember not only the epic championships but also the outrageous meltdowns.
We unfortunately saw both this weekend.