Last night I watched the WVU - Pitt football game and had an epiphany that Man (note the caps - I'm talking homo sapiens on a whole) wants to fail. Success and perfection is too much to handle. Remember that some olde-time English guy with flowing locks, Alexander Pope said "To Err is Human..." - right?
Last night I witnessed an implossion of WVU (11-1 before the game) as they played a falible Pitt (4-7) squad. The game had a lot more on the line for the WVU Mountaineers than just the bragging rights of the rivalry game that the folks in that region of the world call the "Backyard Brawl". WVU was playing for the right to play in the BCS National Championship game - a holy grail of sorts especially for a program that holds the record for number of victories for a school that has never won the National Championship.
West Virginia was not only expected to win but they were expected to roll over Pitt --- the boys in the sports-books in Vegas was giving Pitt 28+ points. But human nature took over the WVU team and coaching staff and I witnessed -
-- A team that averaged nearly 300 yards a game rushing was limited to just a tad over the century mark.
-- WVU dropping the ball 5 times including giving away the ball 3 times.
Yes, their Hesiman Trophy candidate QB was sidelined for a good deal of the game with a bum thumb but it seemed as if the rest of this mighty team forgot how to play.
They were destined to lose - they are men like me and you -- they feared success at the highest level and failed. I hate to pick on these WV hee-haws only -- as since the beginning of October -- 10 other times teamseither ranked #1 or #2 in the nation failed to maintain their rankings.
Think about this..
USC ranked #1 - loses to unranked Stanford
California ranked #2 - loses to unranked Oregon State
LSU ranked #1 - loses to Kentucky - a team that ended up 3-5 in the SEC
South Florida ranked #2 loses to unranked Rutgers
BC ranked #2 loses to unranked Florida State
Getting the picture....let me continue...
The Ohio State University ranked #1 - loses to unranked Illinois
Oregon ranked #2 loses to unranked Arizona
Want more? Here...
LSU ranked #1 loses to unranked Arkansas
Kansas ranked #2 faces its only opponent with a ranking in the top 20 and loses.
And also last night - we saw Missouri ranked #1 go down to the Sooners (although alot of us didn't think that was unexpected).
Here we had young men (the players) and mostly slightly older men (the coaches) faced with meeting the pinacle of their playing or coaching lives and just couldn't (by circumstance or by destiny (?)) on to it.
This isn't also something that just happened to occur this season in NCAA D-1 football - think about the 1972 Miami Dull-fins - that was the year Larry Csonka, Mercury Morris (I hate the Fish but think MM has one of the most bitchin' names ever) and the No-Name defense coasted 14-0 through the regular season. But we all know no season can be considered perfect without a Super Bowl victory which the Fish almost literally fumbled away. Do yourself a favor a get the NFL Films Slo-Mo clip of Garo Yupremian (the Dull-fins Cyprus-born kicker) trying to throw the ball after a botched field goal attempt - and you realize that absolutely no-one (or collection of people) are perfect. No-one wants to be.
Think about the following on how humans react when faced with ultimate success or responsibility.
-- Do you really think that Isiah Thomas wants to coach the 'Bockers - he might have thought it was cool at first - a good way to meet (and harass) the ladies -- but he like all of us asks himself everyday "Who needs this headache?"
--Do you think George W. Bush really wanted to win the presidency? He has always seemed to me be that kid that came to "Take Your Kid to Work Day" got lost during the tour.
--Did the people working on the Manhattan Project really want to develop a nuclear bomb?
--Did Pope John Paul I really want the papacy? He was the guy who lasted a little over a month until his ticker gave out.
-- Did the kid (who does the acting job of a lifetime playing a cool high school athelete - something he obviously wasnt in real life) in High School Musical really want the lead part in the play?
See ya' -- I need to go fail at something to avoid some overbearing responsibility.
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