Any Given Sunday Or: What I Learned from Watching Football

Via Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (one of my all-time favorite webcomics)

I'm a casual sports fan at best. I went through a baseball phase in about seventh grade where I followed the Mariners like crazy and looked at all the stats and watched most of the games, but I think much of that might have been due to the fact that baseball players are cute and wear tight pants and I was thirteen years old.

Though my interest in sports has dwindled over the years, I still watch baseball and football games and count myself a genuine fan of both the Mariners and the Seahawks. So it was with a passing but not insignificant interest that I sat down to watch the Seahawks play the St. Louis Rams two weeks ago to determine who would be the NFC West Champions. (If all that is sports-babble to you, it was a game to determine who would go to the playoffs [win all the playoffs, go to the Super Bowl] -- winner goes on, loser goes home.)

Though both teams had less than stellar win/loss records, the Seahawks were the definite underdogs and were expected to lose. Their playing had been sloppy for the majority of the season, and they were going into this game with six wins and nine losses under their belt. On top of that, they were playing without their star Quarter Back, Matt Hasselbeck, who was recovering from an injury.

It was a tense game, to be sure, but it was evident that the players were given new life by this unlikely opportunity to become division champions despite their poor season. The rookie QB, in only his second start in an NFL game, kept a cool head and didn't let the (immense!) pressure get to him. In the end, they pulled off a 10-point win, beating the Rams 16-6.

Okay, okay, you say. Sure, they won that game and made it into the playoffs. It must have been some kind of a fluke -- and they were clearly playing a team of equal caliber who were probably making mistakes and stuff. They won't last a minute in their first playoff game against last year's Super Bowl champions, the New Orleans Saints.

The thrilling conclusion (and the point of this whole thing) after the jump...


Yes, things were looking pretty grim for our intrepid heroes as they made their way onto the field this Sunday. Never in the history of football had a team with a losing record won a playoff game. They were facing the reigning champions of football. It was hopeless. All week long and even during the game, every sports commentator didn't waste a second letting us know that they were doomed, slipping in snide comments and cutting remarks about how we didn't deserve this spot and this opportunity.

Right of the bat, things started to go poorly. Even though Hasselbeck was back in the game, he threw an interception his third pass of the game. Before you knew it, the Seahawks were down 10 points. But, like the game the week before, it was clear that they were playing with the intensity only the underdog can bring to a game. They rallied, tying the game, and came back again after the Saints picked up another 10 point lead. By half time, Seattle was leading 24-20.

They didn't get complacent with their lead, though, and kept fighting up until the end when they solidified their lead (now 34-30 with four minutes left in the game) by a stellar 67-yard run by Marshawn Lynch who avoided nine separate tackles to give a final score of 41-30. No one expected this miraculous win. No one, that is, except the Seahawks.

In a post-game interview, Seahawks coach Pete Carroll had this to say:

There were so many chances to just say, ‘ah ok, not today, we’re just lucky to be here,’ and all that kind of stuff.  For whatever reason, our football team, two weeks ago, has believed that we’re going to win a game that we were anticipating, and they believed that we were going to win today.  It didn’t matter what I said to them, or what was said outside, and all of the story lines, and all that, they just did not buy it.  Where that came from?  If I knew that, we’d have something special here.  It came out of an attitude and it came out of a faith in one another.  We put together a great day today. 

I'm not going to run out and tell you guys to start using The Secret or something lame and new-age-y like that. This is just a powerful example of believing in yourself, believing in those around you, and not letting anyone or anything shake your confidence in yourself.

The beauty of football is that each game is a fresh start, a clean slate. In contrast to baseball, where you play the same team three or maybe four days in a row, and have up to 7 chances to win the World Series, every football game is do-or-die. Every playoff game is sudden death. Every time you step onto the field, you've got to give it everything you've got.

This also gives you a wonderful opportunity to leave the past behind you and focus on being present in the here and now. So many of us (me included) dwell on our past experiences and let negative events shape how we react to the future. But if the Seahawks had done that -- if they had let themselves be burdened by the losses and the mistakes of their past season -- there's no way they would have had the confidence and the chutzpa to win on Sunday. 

Yes, we get knocked down. Yes, we get tackled and sacked and hit -- hard -- by life. But every day is a new opportunity. Every day is a fresh start. Learn from those mistakes (I bet you those players were studying the tapes of those games they lost to fix their problems) but don't let them define you.

Don't let the negative energy of the naysayers get you down, either. What if the players had listened to the sports commentators and let their predictions of Seattle's eminent defeat seep into their hearts? They truly believed (and rightly so!) that they had the right to be there and the ability to beat that team. And they had enough faith in themselves and their teammates to make that a reality.

So I hope when you wake up tomorrow, you treat it like a fresh start, and a new opportunity to show life what you've got. Who knows -- maybe it will be a surprise victory for you.

Pete Carroll quote source.