an opportunity for growth? ok, fine...

*disclaimer--i did not actually watch the bcs national championship game last night. it was on espn, and i do not have cable. if i had cable, i would have been glued to the tv--all by myself, because the rest of my family had other commitments last night. so my blog today is my reaction to the reactions of the outcome, not the actual game itself. which i didn't get to see. because i don't have cable. stupid espn...

so today . . . oregon mourns.

the ducks lost the bcs championship game.

(to be completely honest, i'm sure that not all of oregon mourns. i know that my three nieces are probably ecstatically happy, but that is because two of them attended oregon state university.)

the ducks lost. it happens. everybody can't be the champions. somebody has to lose.

of course, i much prefer it when my team wins, but the nature of a game is that there will be a winner and a loser. and nobody wins every single time. that is kind of the point of a competition--to determine who is the best (at least on that day!) sometimes the best team doesn't win. sometimes the luckiest team wins. or the sneakiest team. or the team who got all the breaks from the referees. but that's the way it goes.

i am much happier when my team wins. and i don't care if they won because they were lucky or sneaky or good. i don't. i just want them to win. and when my team loses, i am disappointed. i admit that i have been known to trash talk the other team for a couple of days (or years) after a big loss to deal with my disappointment. i hold grudges for a looooong time against teams who have the audacity to beat my team (ahem, lakers...) but i also have unending loyalty for the teams i love (which is why i voted for clyde drexler on dancing with the stars EVERY SINGLE WEEK, even though he clearly couldn't dance.)

we have to learn how to lose, because losing is just as much a part of life as winning. in real life the best person doesn't always get the job. sometimes it is the person who is the fastest talker, or the one who knows the boss's nephew, or the one with the most seniority. in real life some of us will always be the last one picked for the softball team. always. in real life sometimes people will trash talk us. that's just the way it goes...

but if we can remember that losing doesn't have to define us, then we can go on to compete another day. we can look at the game tapes, and see where we could have made better choices and then make better choices the next time. we can realize that just because we lost doesn't mean we have to be losers--it just means we need to do something different the next time.

which all sounds really nice. but i still hate it when my team loses.

go blazers!!