THE AGONY OF DEFEAT

I can remember growing up watching ABC's Wide World of Sports. At the beginning of the show they played the same intro every week. It talked about the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. Every time when they said the agony of defeat we saw this ski jumper crashing spectaculary at the end of the ramp. That man was a Slovene ski jumper named Vinko Bogataj. It was during the 1970 World Flying Championship that on his third attempt he felt he was going too fast and tried to slow down but fell and you know the rest. Interestingly enough he only suffered a concussion in the fall.

Last Sunday afternoon those of us who are Dallas Cowboy fans suffered the agony of defeat. With a 13-3 record, the best ever by America's Team, our beloved boys went down to the hated New York Giants and for the second year in a row lost their first playoff game. For me it was the culmination of two years of frustration with my favorite football teams. Two years in a row now my son's team, the Ryan Raiders, have lost in the first round of the playoffs and now the Cowboys have done the same. We won't even mention the Baylor Bears and what they have done the last two years!

A funny thing happened last Monday morning after we all experienced the agony of defeat . . . . the sun came up! That's right, just when we thought the world had come to an end, the sun still came up! It was amazing! I can confirm it first hand I was outside jogging when it happened! The same thing happened on Saturday November 17, 2007 the day after the Ryan Raiders lost in my son's final high school football game! Again I was amazed to see it happen, although not first hand that day!

The older I get the more I come to realize what is really important in life. I still love football. I loved playing it in high school, I love watching it as an adult and for the past four years or so I have loved being invovled with the athletes at Ryan High School, their head coach Joey Florence and especially my son Ryan. But I've come to realize that football teams come and go, championships last for only one year and then we move on. What I have come to realize is that people are what's most imporant in life. Even though the Cowboys lost, my family was still there, my friends were still there and they are worth more than all the championships in the world.

And after all the agony of defeat is not so bad because there's always next year! Go Cowboys!