Why winning is not always the answer
by alchemistmuffin on Nov 13, 2011 2:24 AM PST
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PrintAfter watching the beavers get trampled by the Golden Bears, I nearly wanted to smash my TV into the ground for very atrocious poor performance. Our defense couldn't stop the Bears and our offense couldn't do anything to move the ball. I nearly wanted to cry and mourn our season and think to myself, “What happened to our football team? Why did we degrees this much? I know the draft took away our star running back, but did our program go this far backwards?”
However, after calming down a bit, having some drinks, and looking back to our only two lonely wins, I finally came to realize that we should be lucky that we won at least two games this season.
First off, we are very, very, VERY young team. Our core offensive line is composed mainly of freshmen, along with a redshirt quarterback who we never heard of his name until that moment in the Sacramento State game. Those combination combined in the FBS team nowadays means we are in full rebuilding mode. Under today's FBS standards, we are not going to win a lot of games, and in my opinion, we were going to have only one win this season. Yes, I have lashed out at our Offensive Line for being very undisciplined and immature, but that before we beat Arizona. At that point, I thought we are finally on the roll.
Then came more losses, most of them ugly, some of them close. Even though we only won one game after the Arizona win, I still could not bear to watch our team suffer like that. Instead, I wanted them put down like a very sick dog, just to put them out of a misery. I had the same feeling as I watch Beavers get mauled and eaten by the Golden Bears.
After yesterday's loss, I decided to watch our team's past win while I drink some "Beverage" to at least put me back into comfortable mood. As I watched, I noticed something that was similar to all of our games: Our Attitude.
You see, our attitude toward every football game is not about winning, it's about having fun. A very basic rule when we learned back in Pop Warner. A game is a game. In the end, whether we lose or win, we had fun, and learned something valuable as a team. Heck, even James Rodgers is still enjoying this year, even if it's not going his way.
In today's age where schools only care about winning, winning, winning, and always consider losing purely unacceptable like in the NFL, our school still has class and attitude like the good old days: Just have fun, and be yourself. When you just focus on winning, you lose some of the identity. This is what I have seen within last few years, with all the schools jumping ships to different conference, because they care only about winning and going to better pasture. We only care about having fun, and nothing else. This has been a blueprint that had lead to our success for last couple of years.
So, even though we are in the huge slump, we shouldn't become fans just only care about our team always expecting to win and go to the bowl game. This only puts pressure on the team as a whole, and eventually demoralize them, or cheat to just meet expectation. Look what happened to Ohio State, and now potentially Oregon. (then again, Oregon is Oregon).
This is why I will stay a Beaver, and bleed Orange and Black for life, even if we are in the slump.
This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of SB Nation or the Building the Dam staff. FanPost opinions are valued expressions of opinion by passionate and knowledgeable Oregon State fans.
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You're not alone in this
“I had one wish for them when we left the team hotel this morning: I Just wanted them to enjoy playing the game again”
- UA Interim Coach Tim Kish
I hope that even in the losing, players look back to the experience and said “I had a great time”.
I could relate to how the experience, and not the outcome, matters. I played varsity basketball for 2 years, and we were never that good. We weren’t as disciplined as we hoped and made a lot of stupid mistakes. Sometimes it was our own mental judgements that stopped us from pulling away in a game.
The same applied in my senior year. We had a PG who was supposed to be in Jr. Varsity and only 1 player with made key contributions last year. We stunk in the regular season, we were even worse in an overseas tournament. In my whole career, I probably lost three times more than I have won.
I look back and of course asked “What if”, but I still enjoyed the experience of playing organized basketball, of bonding with the team and the coaching staff, and growing up as a person in the process. That’s what I took out the most at that time, bar none.
So hats off to you, Coach Kish, and those like you two.
When you think back
After the opening loss, we knew it was a real possibility to go 0-12. Luckily that hasn’t happened, but the things I see happening are painful. How many times have we fumbled or been intercepted right by/in the endzone? Ughhhhh.
But yeah, I don’t even want to punch the TV because: first of all, that would probably electrocute me and break my TV, but I have just come to accept that this season isn’t going to be about wins. Oh well. There is certainly hope and reason to be optimistic about next year.
I think.
(and at least we’re not Penn State fans, yikes)
Nice to hear the team is "having fun" getting outrun, outpassed, outtackled, outkicked, outplayed, outcoached...
en route to a 2-10 season, but his fan is not having fun watching this team. Sure, it’s only a “game” for boys to “play.” But this is not Pop Warner football. This is competition at the highest amateur level — FBS, Pac-12 Conference football. Winning may not “always be the answer” (what was the question, again?), but playing well enough that you and your fans can take pride in the effort ought to be the minimal objective every time you take the field.
It’s fun to play your best football, whatever the outcome, and it’s even more fun to play that well and win. It should NOT be fun to play poorly and lose, or to watch such performances. If I spend $200 taking my family to Reser and the Beavs are getting pulverized on the field, I do not want to see the players and coaches laughing it up on the sidelines.
I know you wanted to write a “feel good” story to make the best of a bad season, Mr. alchemistmuffin, but get real. Nobody who cares about Oregon State football is having fun this season. What exactly did you put in those muffins, alchemist?
Not many from the dark ages "enjoyed" being an embarrassment.
The community collectively said they wanted to be relevant, and they have put their money where their mouth is.
It you openly say you are going to be a mediocre team in a minor conference, when you deliver that, you are at least not guilty of false advertising. That’s not what hardly anyone wants here.
The university has marketed itself as a major program, and priced everything from their tickets to their t-shirts accordingly.
And when someone accepts the privilege of putting on a Pac-12 program uniform, player or coach, they accept the responsibility that comes along with it. If some individuals don’t want that responsibility, they don’t have to sign on. Once they do, they become part of a much larger collective, and assume a responsibility to those that have assumed the responsibility of providing them the opportunity.
Andy Wooldridge, andy_wooldridge@yahoo.com
BuildingTheDam.Com
Go Beavs!
To be the total a-hole and to knock on fanoverboard’s, and other fan’s, grand possible personal offense about the team letting him and his family down, and also to knock on this grand vision of student athlete as someone much like a military solider signing up to uphold their duties as being more important than than their individual needs to have “fun” (which for the military it is essential that one sign on to this duty as a selfless privilege to represent one’s country) I want to emphasize that “collective” part and in a way I think alchemistmuffin brings up important points. YES I agree there is a certain privilege and a responsibility for a college football player in being signed on at a school like OSU (or any school actually). I have argued this position before and will again I’m sure, but also you CANNOT go too far this way either and as a “collective” we fans need to realize that a large part of the “responsibility” for being part of OSU goes BEYOND just winning on the field. They are student athletes and part of the larger campus community this way, they are also young men playing a sport (one of which will not translate into what most of them will be doing the rest of their lives) and part of this entails learning to become adults in our society and I would argue this growing up does not all come from beating the other team on the scoreboard. AND it very much does not mean making us all “happy” and glowing on Saturdays (Thursdays, Fridays, Mondays, etc.).
I’ve said this a gazillion times I know but IF we are really ONLY about these teams W/L records as fans let’s talk about divorcing the big ticket sports from the university.
Look if the team has phoned it in, is just jerking off this season, and riding out their scholarships then I’m on fanoverboard’s side, but I really believe they are not and they are trying hard to learn from this all. Is this about having “fun” though? Now this is where I would disagree with alchemistmuffin’s arguments that the fun part is the main aspect about having an attitude, for I would say that trying to be successful and learning from one’s failures is a very important part of the game too and this isn’t always fun, and I like fanoverboard and Andy want to see a team taking itself seriously and growing in their on the field successes too. For yes I agree that they did indeed sign up for this all as a serious endeavor.
Ok, yet again I have gone off in my long-winded yack yack way. So if you want just skip to this part for I guess just what I want to say is that in many ways I think we ALL are saying the same thing and we want to be a proud OSU athletics fan base, but I just want to also say I think it is too easy to take this all too personally and overstate the arguments about college sports one way or another through our personal lenses.
-RVM
A fun time had by all in Beaverdom, as Dawgs chased out of Corvallis
Beavs played well, earning the right to yuck it up on the sideline during the game. Still can’t bring myself to smile about a 3-9 season, but at least Oregon State managed to beat both Washington teams this season, which is an accomplishment to be proud of.
And this I'm in full agreement with
Both the fun in beating both WA teams, and the not so fun 3-9 season.
-RVM
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| Sacramento St. | Sat 09/03 | L 28 - 29 |
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Wisconsin
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Sat 09/10 | L 0 - 35 |
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UCLA
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Sat 09/24 | L 19 - 27 |
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Arizona St.
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Sat 10/01 | L 20 - 35 |
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Arizona
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Sat 10/08 | W 37 - 27 |
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BYU
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Sat 10/15 | L 28 - 38 |
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Washington St.
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Sat 10/22 | W 44 - 21 |
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Utah
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Sat 10/29 | L 8 - 27 |
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Stanford
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Sat 11/05 | L 13 - 38 |
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California
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Sat 11/12 | L 6 - 23 |
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Washington
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Sat 11/19 | W 38 - 21 |
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Oregon
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Sat 11/26 | L 21 - 49 |
