That Championship Season
In the immortal words of Dr. Zachary Smith, of "Lost In Space," "Oh, the pain, the pain!" I speak of last night's BCS national title game. Ohio State vs. Florida. For we Buckeyes, it was humiliating, inexcusable and just plain god-awful. Now, I'll confess that I actually conked out around 7:30 and didn't awake until 12:30, when it was all over except the shoutin' and the cryin'. I watched part of the press conference. "Shell-shocked" was the word that came to mind watching Jim Tressel, Troy Smith and the other players, but I was still impressed by what I saw. Everyone could have sat there and made all kinds of excuses. Everybody could have sat there and cried. What everyone did while I was watching was respond with "the better team won today" and "we weren't on our game". Troy Smith tried to pick up the burden of the loss, and his head coach wouldn't let him. Jim Tressel figured it was more his burden and that of his coaching staff. My heart went out to everyone sitting on that dais, and to all those in the locker room.
I'm sure there will be plenty of post-mortem on this one, and that there will be lessons learned and taken to heart. At the end of the day, you win 'em as a team and you lose 'em the same way. No individual can take credit for the wins and no one gets to bear the burden of the losses alone. I am going to take the position that you learn more about a man's character and about a team's character from defeat than you do from their victories.
I happen to think that it was Florida's day. They came in underdogs, and they knew it and they had something to prove. They wanted it badly enough, they played well enough when we didn't, and the stars and the planets aligned to give them their day in the sun. Florida peaked on Monday night and became more than the sum of their parts. Among the comments I read on a story about the game in the Akron Beacon Journal someone wrote, "To my Buckeyes, remember that the sun can't always shine. Sometimes it has to rain, but as a wise man once said, 'If it don't rain, we don't eat.' Keep your chin up. We'll be back." Naturally, there were others wanting to eat the boys alive and fire Jim Tressel immediately, but most were relatively sane and rational and in the vein of "every dog has its day".
I don't know Jim Tressel, only what I've seen of the man in the local papers and on local TV, but I do believe that beneath that reserved demeanor beats the heart of a true competitor, and that he is probably hurting, angry, confused and embarrassed today. My take on what happened? Coach had a really, really, really bad day at work. The kind where nothing you touch and nothing you do doesn't go completely awry. The kind where you wish you could just go back to bed and start all over again. I think, that like most of us, he got blindsided by that and never saw it coming. Unlike most of us, however, Jim Tressel got to have his really, really bad awful day on national television where we could see how utterly confused and flummoxed he was. We saw as genuinely human a face as we're ever likely to see from such a private and reserved person. We're not used to seeing that kind of human frailty from "The Vest." We've come to expect that he's the guy who'll come up with the answers and the plays that result in another victory. And Monday night just wasn't his day to be that guy. Happens to the best of us, and being the head football coach of nationally ranked Big Ten school doesn't make you immune. So let's not howl for blood and let's cut the man slack on that point. If anyone can figure out what went wrong and figure out how to set the ship right again, it's Jim Tressel.
At the end of the day, it was disappointing at best to be subjected to such an unholy ass-whuppin'. Winning is always going to be more fun than losing. But one game, even if it is the national title game, does not a season make. A nineteen game winning streak is nothing to be ashamed of, and no one can ever take the sense of team pride and togetherness that it took to earn that winning streak away from these boys. Maybe the loss puts the fire in the belly for the boys who are coming up and who'll come into their own next season. I don't know. But I do know that it is always easy to be gracious when you win and when things roll your way. The measure of a man and of a team is what you do when things don't go your way. That is what defines a championship season.
I'm sure there will be plenty of post-mortem on this one, and that there will be lessons learned and taken to heart. At the end of the day, you win 'em as a team and you lose 'em the same way. No individual can take credit for the wins and no one gets to bear the burden of the losses alone. I am going to take the position that you learn more about a man's character and about a team's character from defeat than you do from their victories.
I happen to think that it was Florida's day. They came in underdogs, and they knew it and they had something to prove. They wanted it badly enough, they played well enough when we didn't, and the stars and the planets aligned to give them their day in the sun. Florida peaked on Monday night and became more than the sum of their parts. Among the comments I read on a story about the game in the Akron Beacon Journal someone wrote, "To my Buckeyes, remember that the sun can't always shine. Sometimes it has to rain, but as a wise man once said, 'If it don't rain, we don't eat.' Keep your chin up. We'll be back." Naturally, there were others wanting to eat the boys alive and fire Jim Tressel immediately, but most were relatively sane and rational and in the vein of "every dog has its day".
I don't know Jim Tressel, only what I've seen of the man in the local papers and on local TV, but I do believe that beneath that reserved demeanor beats the heart of a true competitor, and that he is probably hurting, angry, confused and embarrassed today. My take on what happened? Coach had a really, really, really bad day at work. The kind where nothing you touch and nothing you do doesn't go completely awry. The kind where you wish you could just go back to bed and start all over again. I think, that like most of us, he got blindsided by that and never saw it coming. Unlike most of us, however, Jim Tressel got to have his really, really bad awful day on national television where we could see how utterly confused and flummoxed he was. We saw as genuinely human a face as we're ever likely to see from such a private and reserved person. We're not used to seeing that kind of human frailty from "The Vest." We've come to expect that he's the guy who'll come up with the answers and the plays that result in another victory. And Monday night just wasn't his day to be that guy. Happens to the best of us, and being the head football coach of nationally ranked Big Ten school doesn't make you immune. So let's not howl for blood and let's cut the man slack on that point. If anyone can figure out what went wrong and figure out how to set the ship right again, it's Jim Tressel.
At the end of the day, it was disappointing at best to be subjected to such an unholy ass-whuppin'. Winning is always going to be more fun than losing. But one game, even if it is the national title game, does not a season make. A nineteen game winning streak is nothing to be ashamed of, and no one can ever take the sense of team pride and togetherness that it took to earn that winning streak away from these boys. Maybe the loss puts the fire in the belly for the boys who are coming up and who'll come into their own next season. I don't know. But I do know that it is always easy to be gracious when you win and when things roll your way. The measure of a man and of a team is what you do when things don't go your way. That is what defines a championship season.
posted by Mel at 10:48 AM
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