By Julie Buehler
There’s nothing easy about winning championships in sports.
We become familiar with teams and individuals that make it look easy because we watch their performances with such wide-eyed wonder, yet fail to connect the daily training, film study and nuances that make them great.
We know about the monstrous Super Bowl win from a brash, overconfident Seattle team. But they built a championship franchise from guys drafted in the later rounds who fight hard with early-round picks for playing time. Guys who come in entitled get their butts handed to them by guys who are hungry.
We saw Florida State ride its immeasurable momentum into history books, but don’t forget they started an unknown redshirt freshman named Jameis Winston early in the season. People didn’t know who the future Heisman winner was at that point, but they sure did after he completed 25 of 27 passes, threw for 356 yards and 4 touchdowns against the Pitt Panthers. FSU went on to win their games by an average of 42 points a contest. Said Winston: “When we do something, we do it big.”
UCONN basketball coach Kevin Ollie told his players if they’re fearless, they can play. If they aren’t, they can’t. Simple as that. All they did was win the fourth NCAA Championship since 1999 while becoming the first 7-seed to do so and while setting an NCAA record for best free-throw percentage of any team in tournament history.
We witnessed the second youngest winner in a major at the Kraft Nabisco Championship because Lexi Thompson took her all-or-nothing, bombs-away game plan into the final round, tied for the lead, and pulled away from the rest of the competition with a 68. Only 10 players in the final round broke par. Thompson shattered it.
There’s nothing easy about winning a championship in sports, but there’s one trait champions share that contenders admire: Fearlessness to pave a new path.
It’s the difference between talent and greatness. The key between finishing second and hoisting the trophy.
There’s a comfort in being pretty good.
You can sleep well knowing you compete hard, but targets don’t get get plastered on your back. You’re good enough to be content, just not a threat.
But win, rather, dominate; and the whole world either expounds endlessly on your greatness or looks to take a machete to your knees. A wild pendulum of emotional instability and a razor’s edge of results replace balance and sensibility.
And that where champions find their balance: in that world of sharp contrast.
While fate certainly is known to favor the bold, it’s a fact that scoreboards and record books do as well.
Saturday, April 12th, we’ll watch as local hero and current welterweight champion, Timothy Bradley Jr. does what he’s done all along: win. His way.
He’s taking on Manny Pacquiao for the second time with a renewed focus to obliterate any doubt that his first victory is deserved. Bradley told me he fights to keep judges happy and his undefeated record suggests he’s been successful at that, but this fight is now to make the fans happy and launch him to new heights.
Could he fail? No question. Is he concerned about that? Not for a moment.
With the Master’s coming up this weekend, the field loaded with talent, but the one man left standing in the green jacket will be the guy who most successfully dashed the critics’ ideas of what he should do and does exactly what he must to win.
It’s fascinating that with all the changes to sports through the decades, with champs getting younger, with media getting bigger, with expectations growing and margin or error shrinking, the one trait that made Ali great, that made Namath a Hall-of-Famer is the same that resonates through champions of today: Fearlessness.
Julie Buehler hosts the Coachella Valley’s most popular sports talk radio show, “Buehler’s Day Off” every day from 3-6 on 1010 KXPS, the valley’s all sports station. She’s an avid gym rat, slightly sarcastic and more likely to recite Steve Young’s career passing stats than American Idol winners. Tune in M-F 3-6 pst at www.team1010.com or watch the show on Ustream.
