By Julie Buehler
Sports have gotten so soft. It’s disappointing.
I’m talking to everyone from spoiled fans to shortsighted ownership who think winning a championship happens in one-year increments and their ego should dictate how a team’s success is delivered.
Somehow we’ve taken the squishy-soft “everyone gets a ribbon” mentality, juiced it with million-dollar contracts and billion-dollar facilities and now, every season MUST be a playoff year, game MUST be a win, every win MUST be dominant and every dominant win MUST be flawlessly executed or face the wrath of spoiled sports fans and swirling internet media ready to pounce on any rumor of juicy gossip or controversy.
I realize it sounds ironic, but the stupidity really starts early as the “It’s okay you finished dead last, little Johnny, here’s a ribbon for your efforts” mentality.
Nothing worse than teaching someone that average is good enough.
Rather than saying “Well, little Johnny, reality is, you came in dead last, good news is, if you practice harder, maybe next time you won’t.”
We train kids and parents and our sports culture to not only honor mediocrity, but perhaps more distressing, ignore losing.
News flash: When you compete, the odds of you losing or winning are 50/50. Which means if you live a sturdy life and compete a lot, regardless of how great you are at anything, you’ll be losing a lot.
Fact.
Get over it.
Actually, losing can be a great benefit, IF given the proper respect and credence.
Losing can illuminate weaknesses requiring work, humble a hothead, create compassion, forge faith, inspire a fervent work ethic, connect competitors under a common rallying cry, etc.
If a coach or athletes don’t utilize losing as part of the learning process and just ignore a losing outcome or act like it’s “unacceptable,” something to be distained, or worse yet, hope it just doesn’t happen, they miss out on the best part of competition: overcoming adversity.
Winning is only awesome IF we understand the pain of losing.
Kobe Bryant has missed the most shots in NBA history. Brett Favre has thrown the most interceptions in NFL history.
They are both champions.
Let’s look at some of the NFL’s best head coaches’ career records:
Bill Parcells: Won 57% of the football games he coached. He lost 138 games, or more than 8 straight seasons.
Don Shula earned the most career wins in NFL history, won an INCREDIBLE 67% of his games. He lost 173 times, or for almost 11 straight years.
I could go on, but I think you get the point.
If we aren’t willing to understand losing, we end up with an entitled sports culture that assumes winning comes easy and often and that there’s “no excuse” for losing.
And we’re there now.
And it’s stupid.
I know you’re probably saying, “But Jules, it’s the money. SOOOO much money at stake.”
Yes, one of the reasons this illogical mindset persists is because there’s so much money at stake. I understand that. As I said in the intro, this “nobody loses” mentality, when inflated with million, or hundred-million-dollar contracts and billion-dollar stadiums means the margin of error is incredibly small to convince people that a team is doing everything in it’s power to WIN.
That’s fine, but it’s just not reality, kids.
I don’t care how much money is at stake, and I don’t care how much people want to ignore a basic reality for the convenience of a narrative. Ignoring the rain doesn’t keep you dry. And acting like losing is “unacceptable” doesn’t help a team battling injuries, fatigue, and a confluence of other circumstances leading to losses.
That’s not an excuse, that’s reality.
The 49ers are currently 7-6 and battling swirling stories of their coach getting fired for this disappointing season.
Forget the fact he came into the is season with the highest winning percentage among active coaches, the entitled fan base and according to reports, an owner who wants his coach to be more of a politician than a football coach, could collude to dismiss Jim Harbaugh, a man who became the first head coach since the merger to deliver his team to 3 straight conference title games in his first 3 years as an NFL coach.
I’ve used this word a couple times before, I’ll do it again: That’s stupid.
It’s raining in San Francisco and the Niners expect Harbaugh to remain dry without providing the umbrella, or competent offensive line for that matter.
Rumors of him wanting the Michigan job are hardly compelling as anyone who knows Harbaugh, knows he is nothing if not competitive and there’s NO WAY he’ll leave the NFL game without a Super Bowl trophy. Especially since his brother got one against him.
Rumors of the Niners trading him to Oakland are flimsy at best, and downright insulting if you consider what the Niners looked like before Harbaugh.
Before the Stanford coach took over in San Francisco, the team’s last appearance in the playoffs was 2002. Same for the Raiders. In fact, between ’03-’10 both teams struggled mightily.
The Niners amassed 46 wins over that span (5.7 per season), the Raiders netted 37 (4.6 per season).
Since Harbaugh came along for the Niners: 48 wins (including postseason). The Raiders: 18 wins. In 3+ years.
It begs the question what on God’s Green Earth could the Raiders possibly deal to the Niners to justify that trade? It also begs the question, why would Harbaugh approve a trade to Oakland?
So this irrational debate about what to do with the NFL’s most winning active head coach is fundamentally strange, unless you consider an entitled sports culture that would burn a Colin Kaepernick jersey after a loss to the Oakland Raiders (that shameful act actually happened) and a franchise that would rather have a head coach that can recruit high-end sponsors rather than high-caliber free agents.
Real fans understand the ebbs and flows of a season-in-season-out commitment to a franchise and aren’t swayed by a season of .500 ball. Real people understand losing can teach more than winning and properly understand that reality.
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 can also be seen every morning between 6-7am on KMIR sharing the coolest stories in sports. 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 “Buehler’s Day Off” on Ustream and KMIR.com for her sports reports.
