Not every team can win the championship. In fact, only one does, but not every team is even in contention for one.
I recently reminded a friend of mine who was struggling in her fantasy football leagues that if you assembled the 12 greatest football minds of all time and put them in a league, a handful of them would be out of contention every single time.
So you can’t win them all, as they say. But while winning drives sports, the camaraderie and joy of the battle are important, too. The life lessons have value no matter the score.
I never played sports at a varsity level, but I played them at a competitive level with people who wanted to win as badly as anyone. The basketball games in my neighborhood were tougher than the ones in our high school gym half the time, and I did not find myself on the winning side much.
But I would not trade those memories for anything. Learning to compete and push yourself to be the best version of yourself are opportunities that cannot be taken for granted, especially when you start drifting into middle age.
My college roommate’s birthday came this week and we reminisced about some good times playing intramural ball. We had a few successes, sure, but a lot more failures.
If failure is the greatest teacher, then tenured professors are we.
But we had fun, and we did it together. No one can take that away from us.
We did get frustrated at times, though, even once deciding to resort to extreme measures to score a touchdown in intramural football. One of our friends devised the “Fake Heart Attack Play,” where one of us would presumably go in motion and clutch their chest, falling toward the ground just as the snap is taken.
We rehearsed this a few times (seriously) and those of us on the team had different percentages in our head about whether it was a joke or an actual plan.
Someone must have been talking about it in warmups, because one of the officials came up to me before the game and said “Are you the captain of this team?” (Note: When they ask it like that, it’s never good news.)
I said I was, and the ref looked at me sternly.
“I’m only going to say this once – if any of you fake a heart attack during this game, you’re all banned from rec sports forever.”
So, we didn’t run the play, and we lost. But the fellas all remember those days and that we crawled out of bed on Saturday mornings in the fall to band together on the field, even in the face of a subpar record.
It doesn’t matter if you play varsity sports, or rec sports or just play in your backyard. You should never take for granted the opportunity to compete in an athletic contest. A lot can happen as we age and gain adult responsibilities, and you never know when that chance will pass you by.
As much as when the Raiders are winning, the community is behind them in rough times as well. All you can do is strap it up and get ready to go again.
Matthew Osborne is the editor of The Northeast Georgian. He once played for the Washington Generals, which pretty much summarizes his athletic career in one move.