Winning at Losing

By BJ Bennett
SouthernPigskin.com

Follow us at Twitter.com/SouthernPigskin.  Become a fan at the SouthernPigskin.com Facebook Page

It isn't always the team with the best wins who claims college football's crown, it's quite often the team with the best-placed loss.

Being a football fan is hardly a pragmatic preoccupation. Fundamentally, there are severe flaws with fanhood. The fact that we overlook such logic as we follow our emotions speak to just how strong the bond between fan and team truly is. As stadium walls hoard us together by the tens of thousands, the blinders that come with expectations keep us collectively focused on an almost unattainable status quo. In that paradigm, the ebb of flow of college football constantly recycles.

A wise man once told me to never let a group of young men I've never met, playing a game mind you, make or break my weekend. He obviously never drove on AL-6 West from Auburn to Tuscaloosa. That kind of talk is sheer blasphemy in these parts and will get you more dirty looks than an order of chowder and iced tea. Start asking yourself should you care so much if your team wins and it's a slippery slope to art interpretation, pink rosato and summer salads. Start questioning the veracity of your team's losses, however, and a powerful new perspective could be next. If, that is, you can wade through the guilt and uncomfortably.

Of the 120 NCAA Division I FBS teams, zero went undefeated in 2011. Two went undefeated in 2010, two in 2009, one in 2008, none in 2007. Over the past five years, just over .008% of college football teams made in through their schedules unscathed. Surprising? No. Startling, though, if you consider we as fans dance around the reality of losses and view success and failure through that incredibly simple of a quantification.

It was legendary coach Lou Holtz who once said that you can't win every game on your schedule, only the next one. The key question is, should you want to?

Looking back at this past college football season, Alabama's home loss to LSU in the "Game of the Century" was initially assumed to have devastating consequences for the Crimson Tide. That stumble essentially eliminated them from the SEC Championship Game picture and made them one of eight one-loss BCS Conference teams in early November. For LSU, the triumph cemented them as the national title frontrunner, landed them a Sports Illustrated cover and fortified their mantra as college football's find-a-way favorites. While it hardly felt this way at the time, the result put the Tigers up a wobbly pedestal. With Alabama coming back down to earth, they actually found their footing.

It took the stars aligning, though not in an unforeseeable fashion, for the Crimson Tide to earn a national championship rematch in New Orleans. Perhaps it was the law of averages, the psychology that comes with a prior-winner trying to beat a team twice and/or the prior-loser looking for retribution and revenge. Whatever the reason, game two left little up to interpretation. The final score, the final chapter read: Alabama 21, LSU 0.

Last season's national championship race, and numerous other instances in the past, are prime examples of the fact that it isn't always the team with the best wins who claims college football's crown...it's quite often the team with the best-placed loss. The deep-seeded justification for this might be best reserved for someone with a clipboard and a white jacket; the layman answer, however, makes sense. With all due respect to Dr. Lou, individual games aren't mutually exclusive to those that follow and precede them on the schedule. Like a book, tales are intertwined into one finished product. At some point, the plot has to thicken. More times than not, see Alabama last year, triumphs are the byproducts of tribulations.

Football is too volatile a game for those participating to open this Pandora's Box. For the viewer, though, well-timed disappointment should sometimes be viewed through a more perspicacious perspective. In summary, the key to winning big might be losing at the right time. In professional sports and even college basketball it is often suggested that a loss could benefit a team big picture. Due to the postseason format, the dynamic for college football is certainly a little different. The sentiment, however, remains.

The nature of competition has produced a hardened comprehension of success and failure since the beginning of time. Winning, grunt, good; losing, grunt, bad. The advocacy of simply rooting for one's team to fail is not at play here. We can find great happiness in delusion, ala spring training. The reality is that a reasonable look at the schedule, a slip-up included, may show us the true paint-by-number path to perfection.

Like wrinkles on a aging body, losses are coming. Where they fall can make or break you. There's not much difference in being good and being great; when you lose, not if, may mark that line of demarcation.

Photo Gallery