Editor’s note: This is an article from the Winter 1998 issue of UCLA Magazine.
Sitting in the stands at Pauley, listening to the moaning and whining — sometimes even booing — I feel more like I’m back on an elementary schoolyard than surrounded by educated, supposedly sophisticated adults. Fall a few points behind, and the chatter starts: “J.R. isn’t trying!” “Toby is the worst three-point shooter!” Before the game is close to over, fans are criticizing Coach Lavin’s rotation and his ability to prepare the team: “How can these guys miss so many free throws — don’t they ever practice?”
Absurd comments all.
If those “fans” put half their negative energy into cheering and supporting the team, Pauley might be a louder and more intimidating place in which to play. And it would help inspire our team to victory. Remember last year’s Duke game, when the electricity in Pauley was spine-tingling and the crowd roar deafening? It’s not always like that. Because it’s easier to go negative than positive.
But it’s only a game, right? Not life and death. Not even love and marriage. So why do we feel so much better when we win, when our team wins? Let’s see: When our team wins, that makes us winners. Hmm. Then when our team loses, that makes us losers? Truth is, we all win some and lose some. It’s what makes us human and life interesting. In the end, it’s only a game.
When we’re young, it’s difficult to have perspective on winning and losing. Winning is so strongly emphasized in our culture, especially in the media, that it’s the simple angle to take. And a concept easily grasped by impressionable youth. Good guys vs. bad guys. White hats vs. black hats. But when that mentality is ingrained early on, how can we expect people to ever grow beyond it?
In an essay titled “End Game,” Pete Hamill talks about the disappearance of civility in our culture, from politics to sports and everything in between, and notes that nothing short of annihilating our opponents has become the American way.
“Everybody seems infected by the virus of argument and the need for triumph,” Hamill observes. “No football player can score a touchdown without following up with some taunting dance in the end zone. Baseball players can’t endure a knockdown pitch without charging the mound in retaliation. In all sports, grace is treated like a character flaw.”
Miami Heat and former Laker Coach Pat Riley fines his players for helping an opponent off the floor. What kind of message does that send?
Hearing boos directed at college athletes really rankles me. I wonder if the booers (strikingly similar to boors, isn’t it?) ever consider what the player is thinking or feeling. Do you figure that athletes want to play poorly? Don’t you imagine they feel badly enough if their team is getting hammered? How likely is it that the negative reinforcement of booing will inspire an athlete to perform better?
My perception is that most boo-birds are unhappy in their daily lives and look to release some nastiness at the ball game.
“Sure, people take out their everyday frustrations at a game, no question,” confirms Dr. William Parham, chief psychologist with UCLA’s athletic department. “Fans feel like today’s players are a little bit spoiled, that they’re pampered. There’s this spoiled-brat mentality that the public isn’t liking. Of course, the unattractive behavior fans are identifying in athletes is the very way they’re acting themselves.”
It takes a lot more energy and a dollop of faith to be positive and believe that your team can reverse the tide and rally to victory. Hey, these are 18-, 19-, 20-year-old kids out there. And we all agree, don’t we? It’s only a game.
Viewing sports appeals to us because we get all the classic elements of compelling storytelling: conflict, colorful characters, comedy, drama. We root for the underdog, revel in the us vs. them-ness of it all.
And playing sports provides a multitude of useful life lessons: the value of hard work and goal-setting, the virtues of discipline and teamwork, the interdependence of physical and mental skills, the meaning of competition and the importance of self-esteem. But when pushed to an extreme by overzealous fans, competitiveness can lead to a very negative outcome: We begin to take sports too seriously. A little good-natured trash talk is harmless, but if the windup is knee-jerk sports radio callers screaming for coaches’ jobs or big donors threatening to pull support of their alma maters, then being an overly competitive fan is just plain nuts.
Because it’s only a game. And there’s always another one tomorrow, or next week or next year. Get a grip. Sure you want your team to win, but not so much that you lose your sense of balance.
When I was growing up, like millions of kids across the country, I played sports all day, every day. Thousands upon thousands of games of kickball, football, basketball, baseball, you-name-it-ball. Often a team captain, I used to believe winning was everything. This made me a pretty sore sport when I lost. I yelled at classmates for making errors, dropping passes, missing shots.
In retrospect, my behavior was, well, rather childish. But I’ve mellowed considerably over the years. I now realize that the rush that comes with winning is fleeting and that the misery of defeat is a lower low than the thrill of victory is a high high. True winners, I’ve come to understand, are those who play their hearts out and both win and lose graciously. Over the course of a lifetime of playing games, the outcome of any single contest doesn’t define you. Sports, like life, has a way of evening out. Sure, defeat still stings, especially when I’ve blown the game-winning shot. But winning is not as important to me as it used to be. It’s only a game.
Our societal obsession with being No.1 is unhealthy. Great — set high goals and bust your ass to achieve them. But don’t get so caught up in winning that you lose sight of all you might learn along the way. And for heaven’s sake, don’t forget to have fun. The have-to-win-now concept, dominant in today’s gimme-instant-gratification world, is an example of very short-term thinking. Memories of triumph and joy should be gathered along the way — might as well enjoy the journey.
Doc Parham says that winning is an outcome. When people become obsessed with outcomes, they lose sight of who they are. “When we are caught up in the outcome rather than the process, there’s trouble,” he says. “If you are trained to go the journey and value the process and push yourself at every level, then the outcome really doesn’t matter because good fortune is going to come.”
When you ask old-timers what they remember most about winning a championship, their answers inevitably revolve around the camaraderie of teammates and working together to achieve the goal — very human aspects of the experience. Rarely do they mention the attention or the fame or the glory.
That proves it. What we learn on the quest is more meaningful than the reward we get at the end of the road. Repeat after me: It’s only a game.
Coach Wooden, who has a uniquely principled view of sports and their place in society, defines success as “peace of mind that is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.” He never spoke to his players about winning, only about doing your best. Vince Lombardi is often credited with the line “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” In fact, it was former UCLA football coach Red Sanders who originally coined the phrase. What Lombardi did say was “Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is.” A much better attitude and perspective.
Society’s obsession with winning is just too simple; in many ways it dumbs us down. No room for subtlety. No accounting for the complexity of the variables involved. It’s like bigotry: When all you see are stereotypes, you have no chance of getting an accurate picture. If winning is your only goal, all the telling details get lost. And you’re smaller for it. Rudyard Kipling wrote, “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those imposters just the same … yours is the earth and everything that’s in it.”
Winning and losing — they are only temporary. Just because your team loses, you’re not a loser, and just because your team wins, you’re not automatically a winner. If this unpopular position was taken by many more of us, sports would be a better outlet for expressing our aspirations as fans. Even more importantly, sports would be better for our kids.
So lighten up, won’t you? Enjoy sports for what they are. Pure entertainment. Fun and games. Play hard and fair and respect your opponent. Be gracious in victory as well as defeat. Never give up; always give your best. And go ahead, pour your passion into your team. But if your team doesn’t win, remember they’ll be back to play another day.
Did I mention that it’s only a game?
