MONDAY MUSINGS

February 4, 2008

Just a Game

The New York Giants spoiled the perfect season of the New England Patriots last night in the Super Bowl, one of the more entertaining final games of the professional football season.  If my favorite team, the Green Bay Packers, is not playing, I tend to root for the underdog, so my sympathies were with the Giants, improbable as that seemed.  To use the biblical image from the newspaper, it was David against Goliath, and David won, again.

We are a society saturated in sports of all kinds.  Some actually play the sport while most of us watch from the safety of our homes or a seat far removed from the action, giving us the latitude to critique the strategies and the decisions made by real people in the heat of the contest.  I like the custom of shaking hands with the opposing team after the game is over.  It may seem very perfunctory, but it is an admirable display of sportsmanship.

I imagine the loyal Patriot fans are languishing in depression today, angry and resentful that their team lost.  I also imagine some Giant fans were busy gloating about the victory in which they played no part.  It is sometimes hard to separate avid from rabid when it comes to team loyalties.

It is good to be reminded that this is only a game, perhaps an important game, but only a game.  This is big people playing a game meant for little, young people, to teach basic rules of sportsmanship, team play, and the development of skills and discipline.  We often invest too much in following our teams.  Commercialism has almost taken over, bending essentials to profit and loss and greed.

I am reminded of watching an historic basketball game between the unbeaten UCLA Bruins and Notre Dame.  I think an 88 game winning streak was at stake when UCLA lost to the Irish.  John Wooden, the coach of UCLA, was interviewed following his team’s loss, the reporter obviously looking for some immediate response from the losing coach.  As I remember it, Coach Wooden said it was only a game played between two good teams of young men, but the more important story was what was happening on the world scene that day, the decisions people were making in places far and near that would shape the future of our world.  That was not the response the reporter was expecting.  For Coach Wooden, it was just a game.

The lesson I draw is to be loyal to a team if you like, but don’t get too high when they win or too low when they lose. It is only a game.  The bigger reality is the way you and I and others are shaping this world for those who will follow us, giving them the chance also to be able to play games and enjoy life.  Peace.  John Krueger