My Uncle Leo never cared much about football, and his cavalier attitude to the game would test the patience of us who revered college football on Saturdays as much as we did the King James Bible and momma’s pot roast on Sundays.
“I know who is gonna win this game,” he would say as we sat down in front of the TV at Thanksgiving to watch the OU-Nebraska game. The game, not the turkey and dressing, was the “main event,” for us.
“Okay, who’s gonna win, Uncle Leo?” someone would finally humor him.
“The team that has the most points at the end of the game,” guffaw, chortle, snort. We would all force a chuckle, so as not to hurt his feelings.
Uncle Leo’s favorite was, “I wonder what they’re doing back there in that huddle? Deciding where to eat lunch?”
We would roll our eyes as he slapped his knee and hee-hawed.
There will be the Uncle Leos this Sunday as millions will gather around their TV to watch the Super Bowl, but for others, the game carries utmost importance. Then, snap, it will be over: someone will lose; someone will win (the one with the most points, no doubt); some will be sad and others happy.
But the lessons gained by winning and losing run deeper and last longer than the three to four hours it will take to play this game.
I was watching the Kansas City Chiefs celebrating after their AFC Championship victory. The new champs were whooping and hollering it up. And everyone that spoke congratulated their teammates and others for the victory.
But, I couldn’t help but wonder what those in the other locker room were saying.
It’s in the loser’s locker room that we often hear the most meaningful statements. The trouble is, we don’t usually tune in, for the winner’s circle is always more fun.
I intermittently listen, when they spare us their political viewpoints, to the winners at the Golden Globe and Screen Actors’ Guild awards, in January each year, the same month as the pro football playoffs. Like the professional athletes, they too acknowledge their efforts, as well all who helped them along the way.
But, I’m curious to know what those nominees who didn’t win would say, not to the TV interviewers, but forthrightly, to their closest companions at their table. Would there be words of resentment? Gratitude? Fear? Reevaluation?
It wouldn’t be the same conversation at the winners’ tables. As Bill Gates has said, “Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.”
Several weeks after their embarrassing defeat to LSU in the Peach Bowl, I noticed where OU’s center, Creed Humphry, posted on Instagram, “It ain’t all flowers, sometimes you gotta feel the thorns.”
Raheem Mostert, running back for the San Francisco 49ers, knows the pain of losing. Mostert went undrafted in 2015, then bounced from team to team until finally catching a break to play for the 49ers late in the 2016 season. Between September 6, 2015 and November 24, 2016, he was cut by six teams.
“It’s crazy that I’ve been on seven different teams. I actually still have the cut dates and I look at that before every game.”
He has used his defeats to motivate himself to peak performance.
I know it matters that his team win the Super Bowl, but he is already a winner, because he has learned from his losses. “I did have a lot of doubters and naysayers,” Mostert said. “Now I get to tell them, ‘Look where I’m at now.’ I never gave up on my dream. I never gave up on the opportunities when it presented itself. I always worked hard, no matter what.”
Uncle Leo may not have understood football, but I think he knew that losing has a way of teaching its own lessons, for I did catch him casting a sympathetic eye in my direction when OU lost on to Nebraska on Thanksgiving Day in 1971, a classic game, then labeled, “The Game of the Century,” and remembered today by longtime OU fans in part for a missed call that assured Nebraska’s win.
I learned a life lesson that day: life’s not fair, the best team doesn’t always win, so deal with it.
As for OU, they learned too, for the loss virtually relaunched their football program, making them perennial national contenders throughout the 70s.