Bowls

If you know me, you know that "Bowls" has nothing to do with something out of which you eat soup or salad.  It is a major football game.  I like football.  Strike that.  I love football.  I love going to games; I love watching them on TV.  I love football weather and talking about football.  And my two favorite days of the year are whatever day Michigan State is playing in a bowl game and Superbowl Sunday.  I loose my voice over football.  I go from quiet, unassuming me to screaming in excitement.  I put the fan in fanatic.  Football is my favorite way to spend time with my family.  It's a great way to spend a Saturday and a Sunday afternoon.

Today, for those of you who don't care a lick about football (don't worry, I still love you even if I don't understand), was the Cotton Bowl.  Michigan State played Baylor.  It was a fantastic game!  So much intensity!  I love intense football games.  And this one had it all.  Trick plays.  Blocked field goals.  Interceptions.  Onside kick recovered by the kicking team.  Things a lot of people don't care about at all.  But for those of us who do have an abiding interest in football, these are the things that make games particularly fun to watch.

The thing that made this game truly exciting though is that Michigan State fell behind by quite a bit and then ended up winning.  It was painful watching as they made big mistakes.  It was hard to see them feeling somewhat defeated.  But they won.  How did they win?  They didn't let mistakes turn into failure.  They didn't let loosing the battle cost them the war.  They didn't let feelings of defeat reach their hearts.

How many times have you been on the sidelines in life waiting on your next play feeling as though you have been an epic screw-up?  There was a powerful moment in the game when MSU's quarterback, Connor Cook, came back to the sideline clearly feeling his mistakes.  What you saw in that moment might convince you that he was defeated.  But he didn't let that moment be the end of his game.  He came back on that field.  He kept playing until the end.  That didn't necessarily mean that the team was going to come back from being behind.  Playing the whole game didn't mean they were going to win.  Baylor is a good team.  But playing until the end meant they were going to be able to go home and say, "We put it all out there."

We don't always get the happy ending, the outcome we want.  That's not the question though.  The question is did you play the whole game?  Did you put it all out there?

It's so easy to let defeat rule us.  It's easy to let our mistakes cause use to feel like failures.  But you are only a failure if you let yourself be a failure.

Another great football story is the story of Marshall University's football program.  After a tragic plane crash killed most of the team and coaching staff, Marshall was devastated.  What were they to do?  How were they to move on?  They kept their football program, but they questioned how to rebuild their team, especially since true freshman could not play and that was all they had available to them.  They were able to convince the NCAA to allow them to play freshman so they could rebuild their team.  But inexperienced players struggle to build team camaraderie.  And they make rookie mistakes.  But this school managed to overcome the tragedy, the long odds, and come to be a competitive team in their own right.  It wasn't overnight.  It wasn't even for a few seasons.  But eventually, they did overcome.

Football stories speak to me, in case you hadn't noticed.  And I am most fond of the ones that show how a team overcame itself even more than another team.  So today was a good day.

Go Green!