“For when the one great scorer comes to mark against your name
He writes - not that you won or lost - but how you played the game.”
Alumnus Football, Grantland Rice
It has been a long season. It was a long afternoon. In a string of long afternoons, in a string of long seasons. Watching the season unfold has been excruciating, I hate to think of what it has been like for the coaches. Reviled, booed, smeared all over the newspaper, television, radio, internet, over coffee, beers, breakfasts, dinners, anyplace that can support the anger and disappointment of broken hearted fans, and “sports personalities. I don’t even like to think about the pain of the players, children, kids really, youthful men, who have worked so hard to reach the exalted ranks of college athlete, Nebraska Cornhusker. Now they are being manhandled regularly. Losing is a great teacher
It teaches humility, acceptance, tolerance. These are the rewards of watching your team slowly disintegrating over the course of a season. When it is three seasons, well the benefits are almost the stuff of biblical trials. But, there is a cleansing in the pain, a strength from putting on the shirts adorned with team logos and rooting against the odds, and common sense, and recent history, and the barely forgotten pain of only a week ago. Rejuvenation by fire, just like the ancient warriors, when their teams were suffering through droughts. The stakes were probably a little higher, losing to the lions meant a whole lot more in Rome than it does in Happy Valley.
A person learns there are only so many polite ways to refer to the days when a team used to be relevant, “the once proud Nebraska Cornhuskers,” has been repeated so often it rings through the empty spots where I used to keep my vanity. The echo makes a chilling, mournful sound, the mating call of a manic depressive bird. It lasts for days and manifests itself in awkward conversations when the pain comes flooding out over coffee on Monday morning. “So, Tim, did you do anything this weekend?”
“Oh, I put a new filter in the glove box, dusted all the lightbulbs and cried myself to sleep in front of the television, after swearing at people I don’t know, will never meet. I wrapped myself so tightly in the success of a distant team that their loss was a crippling blow to my self esteem, which left me feeling empty, a hollow shell of who I was only the day before. You?”
Next year we will have a new coach and the expectation of a Phoenix rising from the ashes, and I will buy in, I always do. Every year, no matter what, I tell my wife, who is kind enough to agree, this is the year, we are going to make some noise. I am not referring to a funeral dirge, which is the sound of this season.
Today, probably, but within a week definitely, a man will lose his job, and people will celebrate. I will wait until they hire a new coach, I don’t want to be seen dancing on any graves, even if they are only symbolic. When they announce a new coach I will jump on the bandwagon, raise my glass and sing, until then I will be sorry a man lost his job.
Until then I will be sorry to see Mike Riley go. He was a true gentleman in a business filled with jackals. He always had an air of dignity, even in defeat. Which isn’t often the case in the world of big money college athletics. I hoped he would return glory to the program. His kindly demeanor and quiet manner was refreshing. But, that isn’t enough in the business of college athletics. Results are what count. He has been coaching long enough, he knows what is coming. Still, I will miss the calm. Winning isn’t everything, no, it is, winning is everything.
Which is odd, because contracts are never written with any provision for winning. It never says “we want you to win, if you don’t we will fire you.” I’m not sure what the contracts say, but I do know if you have three seasons that are well below the acceptable level of athletic performance and are fired the university is required to pay you through the end of your contract. Unless the school can dream up some “lack of institutional control” scandal, leak it to the press and ruin a man’s career and the reputation of several young men you promised to “mold into successful adults.” Better known as Plan A.
If you want to know the truth, and who doesn’t? I’m not sure what to say, how to wrap this up. So, I will leave you with the words of Thayer, Mighty Casey at the Bat;
“Oh somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing and somewhere children shout,
But, there is no joy in Mudville, Mighty Casey has struck out.”
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