One of my favorite things to do on Saturdays when I was a kid was to turn on ABC’s Wide World of Sports. They had the craziest sports on there. It’s where I remember watching luge for the first time. I think they had a lot of bowling on there as well.
But my favorite part about the show was the introduction. The booming announcer voice proclaimed, “Spanning the globe, to bring you the constant variety of sport…The thrill of victory… and the agony of defeat.” At which point some poor bastard tumbles ass over teakettle down a ski slope.
Those words will forever be burned into my brain. The thrill of victory. The agony of defeat.
We saw it in so many ways this past week. A victory snatched from those jaws of loss. Or, contrarily, a loss snatched from the mouth of victory.
The emotional ride was one that left everyone watching a little bit changed. And even after a win, you couldn’t really celebrate it because of the toll it took on you. And if you were on the losing side, oh man, to go from such highs to such lows. It’s going to take a while to walk that off.
But this is the world we live in, right? We win. We lose. We pick ourselves up and keep moving. Because that’s how the game is played. No matter the outcome. No matter what happened to get us from there to here, stopping at this point would be silly. If you’re on the winning side, you have more work to do. If you’re on the losing side, you start looking for ways to pull back a victory the next time.
And oh how the talking heads are bobbling about as far as who is to blame. These things are, of course, a team effort. But someone’s head has to roll, right? There has to be a scapegoat for every loss.
Sometimes, even if you perform terribly, you walk away with a win. That’s just how it goes. On any given day, wins and losses are inches apart – especially during these times. And losing sucks. It really does. Especially when you go in thinking you’re walking out with a win. I’ve seen it time and time again. It’s hard to focus for hours or days after.
But, eventually, you get back on the horse and keep working. And that’s what you have to do in this situation.
So let’s think about those poor Broncos fans before we start strutting our stuff too much, okay? Two seconds on the clock and a field goal blocked. A season remains undefeated.
What, were you thinking I was talking about some other loss recently?
(Follow Chris Kamler on X, the social media space formerly known as Twitter, where you will find him as @chriskamler)
