Archive For The “Saints” Category
I grew up in a family where the men didn’t easily show their emotions, a character trait that extended itself to sports.
It certainly didn’t help that one grandfather, a proud military man that stormed the beach in Normandy, had seen and experienced things that were a whole lot bigger than sports, though he enjoyed watching Major League Baseball’s “Game of the Week” as well as college football. It also didn’t help that another grandfather, though a loyal corporate employee and Boston Red Sox fan, lived through a period of such baseball and pro football angst that there was little to truly celebrate except the Sox’s latest collapse or broken dreams. (And the Pats were the definition of mediocre.)
My father, too, has always been a sports fan but also didn’t do things like swear under his breath at the TV, stand up watching the game because “sitting down ruins the luck”, or speak in tongues because his favorite team snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
As I watched New Orleans lose tonight on an utterly devastating play – whether it was THE most devastating play in NFL postseason history will have to be debated by historians – I sat down in my chair for the first time in over an hour. My son, not always one to watch football games but was caught up in this one, was next to me, and I gave my son a warning.
“Never root for a team,” I told him, almost immediately regretting in afterwards.
I grew up in a family where the men didn’t easily show their emotions, a character trait that extended itself to sports.
It certainly didn’t help that one grandfather, a proud military man that stormed the beach in Normandy, had seen and experienced things that were a whole lot bigger than sports, though he enjoyed watching Major League Baseball’s “Game of the Week” as well as college football. It also didn’t help that another grandfather, though a loyal corporate employee and Boston Red Sox fan, lived through a period of such baseball and pro football angst that there was little to truly celebrate except the Sox’s latest collapse or broken dreams. (And the Pats were the definition of mediocre.)
My father, too, has always been a sports fan but also didn’t do things like swear under his breath at the TV, stand up watching the game because “sitting down ruins the luck”, or speak in tongues because his favorite team snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
As I watched New Orleans lose tonight on an utterly devastating play – whether it was THE most devastating play in NFL postseason history will have to be debated by historians – I sat down in my chair for the first time in over an hour. My son, not always one to watch football games but was caught up in this one, was next to me, and I gave my son a warning.
“Never root for a team,” I told him, almost immediately regretting in afterwards.
You are what your record says you are.
So yes, Virginia, Lehigh is 0-4.
It is also true that the Mountain Hawks have been right in the thick of three of the four games they’ve played, vs. Monmouth, James Madison, and Yale – three good teams, and squads with very strong skill players on offense. It is easy to imagine an alternate-universe Lehigh, despite the well-publicized struggles, being 3-1.
With this reality, when senior DT Tim Newton is quoted as saying that “I felt it today. It’s there,” when it came to getting over the hump and into the win column, he’s absolutely right. “I felt like we just need that one little kick to get us over it. But it wasn’t there. We obviously weren’t able to finish the game,” he continued.
Fortunately, “finishing games” is a chapter of my 27 part series on “How To Win Football Games,” something that might be of use to any football player, or fan, that might want to call on my decades of experience of observing different Lehigh teams and what it takes for those teams to turn losses into wins.
Because the season is nowhere near over. There’s not any extra breathing room anymore, and it’s not ideal to wait until your first league game in two weeks to figure out how to win, but the truth remains that with the right work and the right attitude, Lehigh can win.
Even if it looks right now that the Mountain Hawks could finish 0-11.
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