Trying to Find the Wins in a Loss

That forced fumble. . .  That drive to tie the score. . . . After three-and-a-half quarters, FINALLY, we found our Ducks.

Casey Matthews forces fumble.

"Too small" Casey Matthews put on his speed burners and caught the Heisman QB 'god' from behind. He knocked the football free in front of the watchful eyes of Cliff Harris.

Oregon's ball.  And Darron Thomas was ready.


Cliff Harris recovers fumble.

 With three pass completions including a 29-yard catch by D.J. Davis on 4th and five, Thomas brought the Ducks to the four yard line.

After an Auburn penalty and a timeout, Thomas flipped a beautiful inside pitch to LamJ for the touchdown.



LamJ scores off Thomas shovel pass.



Maehl Man delivers 2.

Oregon made no hesitation about going for two. Auburn was ready, or so they thought.  But they never saw it coming, that pass -- a diagonal cross-field heave that your Pop Warner coach told you NEVER to throw -- into the arms of the always reliable Maehl Man.

Good News: Score tied. A new ballgame.

Bad News: Cam Newton had 2:33 left to put his near perfect field goal kicker into good position. I started preparing myself for the odds.

You know the rest of the story. We'll save the "Was he down?" discussion for another time.

I want to tell you about the near-equal drama simultaneously happening in our house.

My grandson, ten year-old Joe, was just as excited as the four grownups in our living room.  When Maehl caught that two-pointer, our collective screaming had no doubt rattled our neighbors' windows.

The body flip and continued run of the Tiger player everyone thought was down, combined with the endlessly long review of the player's knee outside the goal line, had blood pressures soaring all over the nation for sure.

Can you imagine what it was like for a ten year-old who grew up with Duck fans, has been to Autzen more times than many of you lately, rarely has seen a Duck loss in his young life, and has been talking and thinking about this game for over a month?

His voice started getting higher, shrill even. With increasing rapidity, he was shouting, "HE WAS DOWN!  HE WAS DOWN!  HE WAS DOWN!"  Joe was hopping up and down on the couch, his hands slapping the cushions.

I, sitting nearest to him,  became alarmed that I was about to see my young Duck padawan suffer his first stroke at the tender age of ten. I jumped up and went to him and as I did, he broke into tears sobbing, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

I sat down and put my arm around him and said "Joe, it's OK."  We all tried to calm him down, and at the same time cool our own levels of anxiety and excitement.

I very calmly explained the reality of the moment to him. If Auburn makes this field goal, they win. That's it. The game is over.

With my arm still around him, we watched the ball sail between the uprights. And we grown-ups filled the air with nothing more than benign exhales and simple utterances like "That's it." "It's over." And Joe observed as we all got up and started taking dishes into the kitchen.

Oh don't let this charade fool you. We were all crying like colicky babies on the inside. But none of us wanted to be the one to teach Joe how to lose your composure and allow something you love -- something that's supposed to be fun -- tear you apart.  Football is ideally supposed to be an escape FROM the harsh world and not a part of.

As the elder Duck fan in household, I knew more than anyone what the Ducks are capable of doing to their beloved fans. Football, basketball, ultimate Frisbee, you name it . . . . Each soul-filling win has the potential to merely set you up for the next heart-crushing loss.

String 12 wins in a row?  God help us all.

In the minutes that followed, I noticed Joe was following me around the house. The events of the last three hours still swimming in his young mind, he kept uttering things like, "I hate Fairley." "Fairley played unfairly."  "He was down."  "If the Ducks had only . . . . "  "I wish Thomas could have . . . . "

I turned to him and said, "Joe, do you know what you're upset about?" 

He just looked at me.

"You're upset that your Oregon Ducks just lost the National College Football Championship by three points.  And I'm telling you, that's a pretty cool thing to be upset about.  Do you understand?"

His eyes started misting up again as his mother came by. I tried to explain a little more about how most teams never even get to the championship (That would be you, Beavers.).

I could have stretched that thought out in perspective with examples of things to really be upset about like death and war and a shooting in Tucson. But I stuck to the event of the moment.  Hey, he's TEN.

Still, any bit of wisdom you can teach a ten year-old is probably something worth remind ourselves.

You've heard of the game, "Would You Rather"?

WOULD YOU RATHER . . . . .

. . .hate losing the National Championship, or love winning the GoDaddy.com Bowl?

. . .lament a loss to end up 12 - 1, or cheer a victory giving you a winning record of
6 - 5?

If you're a fan of any team that has it's ups and downs, you get enough of these losses into your system until they start acting like a vaccine against despair. 

Disappointment? Sure.  But no need to despair . . . . unless you were one of those Duck fans who spent $10,000 for a ticket.  I truly pity those poor bastards.

THANKS LIL' BROTHER
There we Duck fans were, standing on a cloud. And after the game, who was there to help us down?  Our Little Beaver Brothers were waiting to step us back down to our grounded reality.

 Tuesday morning I woke up to find this email from one of my Beaver friends:
\/
\/
\/
\/

Beautiful. That's great.  No really.  I'm laughing even now. Thank you for welcoming me back down from my high.  National Championships may come and go, but you'll always be there for us, Beavs.

BTW, tell Quizz I said "Hi". . . . . . . . Hey, where'd he go?


So as Mike Brady would ask his Bunch,
what can we learn from this experience? *
*Editor's note: I'd like to take this moment to welcome newest subscriber Connor Fieggen to the readership -- a young teen who probably has NO IDEA what I'm talking about with Mike Brady or Bunch or whatever.

Perhaps we can learn from this loss that which we win by teaching our children and reminding ourselves the character building value of dealing with loss and disappointment.

From this loss we can learn the virtue of graciousness.


From this loss, Coach Kelly reminds us of priorities and perspective.
“I said in my first game [Boise State] when I was the head coach one game doesn’t define you as a person or as a football player,” he said. “And the same thing still holds true. These guys are champions. I love them. We’ll be back.” -- Coach Chip Kelly after the game

In fact if we take a moment, we can discover all of the things we gain -- the "wins, if you will -- in the silver lining of this loss.  We Ducks have WON some immeasureable human qualities from this contest that Auburn fans will never know. 

We say congratulations to Auburn. You have won. But we have NOT lost.

 . . . . . . . . . .

 . . . . . . . 

 . . . . .

 . . . .

 . . 

Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa !

Losing sucks and so does Auburn.

And you Beavers can all GO TO HELL!!!!!

I hope you've learned
a valuable lesson from this.

Just don't tell Joe I said that.

--KB