From the Kansas City Star.
Maybe that was the first whole football game you watched. Maybe it was the thirtieth. Maybe your father has gotten you into the great sport of football because he doesn’t have any sons…yet. Maybe you desperately wanted to hang out with your older siblings or uncles and were watching football in order to do so. Maybe you were at your friend’s giant game watch party in her giant house and her seven brothers and sisters and all of their friends.
Maybe it was your turn in the awesome wicker hanging chair in the den (quite the hot commodity in a party fill of 40 kids from the ages of 5-18) when Billy Cundiff’s kick went wide left Sunday afternoon, sealing a win for the New England Patriots and costing the Baltimore Ravens a chance at the Super Bowl.
You’ll probably remember that exact moment for the rest of your life. It’s either the moment where you gave up on football forever, or discovered how intriguing and mysterious football – and sports in general – can be.
Sport shows us an important life lesson: that the almost certain isn’t always guaranteed, that what seems a given is not always granted. The Ravens missed field goal showed you that on Sunday evening, and it may be the first time you’ve experienced the phenomenon, but it will not be the last. As you get older, you’ll find that the man who you’re “certain” is “The One” unceremonially dumps you out of the blue. You’ll find that the career you thought was “certainly” your destiny isn’t what you end up doing at all. You’ll find that the almost anything guaranteed has an annoying catch that ruins its perfection. But you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, take a shot of espresso (or when you’re old enough, vodka), smile and continue on. It’s life, and you’ll always remember the first time you learned that nothing is a given in life.
If you decide to stay a football fan despite Sunday’s disappointment, you are in for more lows but some wonderful highs. There will be seasons where your team actually makes it to the Super Bowl, but is trounced by an overbearing loudmouth Texas team. There will be times, however, that while your team is losing massively in that Super Bowl, they’ll make those brazen Texans look like fools. (Wikipedia “Leon Lett” for more information.) There will be seasons where your team sets an NFL record, coming back from a 32 point deficit in a playoff game on the arm of a backup quarterback to advance to the next round. There are those years where your team starts well, then signs their mediocre quarterback to a knee-jerk long-term contract, then loses all of their useful offensive targets due to injury, and then their only playmaker left standing gets benched in the season’s final game because he decided to write “Happy New Year” on his undershirt and show it off after a touchdown.
There are going to be years like that, and they will outnumber the good years.
I was in your shoes on January 27, 1991, watching Scott Norwood’s kick sail wide right of the goal posts during Super Bowl XXV, sealing the Buffalo Bills’ loss to the New York Giants. Like Norwood and “wide right” for me, Cundiff and the words “wide left” for you will always make you shiver, stick out your tongue, scrunch up your face or just give you the bitter taste of burnt coffee in your mouth.
It’s the type of play that either cements your fandom, extinguishes any interest you had in football, or peaks your curiosity and love of sports in general. If it wasn’t for Scott Norwood and the emotional reactions of the people around me to that play over 20 years ago, I don’t think I would be obsessed with telling the layered and nuanced stories that sports create.
The seemingly bad aftermath of Cundiff’s miss (and Lee Evans’ muffed catch the play before) may be just the beginning of your lifelong obsession with sports. And if it is, then welcome.