--Random House Dictionary
March Madness finally lets go this week after a month of
water cooler talk and Internet chats and bracket blow outs and Facebook hurrahs.
By this week’s end two national champions in college basketball, a men’s and a
women’s team, will have been crowned the victors. THEY WON! “Winning isn’t everything. It’s
the only thing!”, right? Just ask Green Bay
Packers football coach Vince Lombardi, the one who coined that most oft quoted
of sports clichés.
What most people don’t know is that years later, near the
end of his life, when asked about that nugget of gridiron and life wisdom,
Lombardi completely repudiated it. "I
wished I'd never said the thing...I meant the effort. I meant having a goal. I
sure didn't mean for people to crush human values and morality." The
untold story of Lombardi’s life is that more than anything else, his faith in
God most shaped his view of winning and losing.
What most frustrated the coach was not a defeat. It was if his players
did not play to their full God given gifts, did not play fair or play all
out. Lombardi knew the one truth of
sports which so often gets lost in our “win at all costs” sports culture. Winning is not everything.
I know that’s heresy to many a fanatical fan but consider
what happens when winning is that which we demand the most on the playing field.
Take Rutgers University
men’s basketball head Mike Rice. He was fired last week after being caught on
videotape physically and verbally abusing his players. Grabbing them by the
collar and whipping them around. Throwing
basketballs at their heads and bodies. Taunting them with homophobic slurs and
why? Well to win, and at any cost,
right?
Then there’s Grinnell
College men’s basketball player
Jack Taylor. Last November he set a new NCAA scoring record with 138 points
versus tiny and way overmatched Faith
Baptist Bible
College. True grace and class
in sports once held that teams and individuals held back in game blow outs, not
wanting to shame or embarrass an overmatched opponent. But not Taylor, nor his
coach, who played the young man the entire game, a Grinnell victory, 179-105.
GO PIONEERS! They won!
No actually, they lost. And they lost big. Coach Rice, Jack Taylor, and any one else on
fields and courts of competition (players, coaches, fans, and media): when we blindly worship winning at the cost of
everything else, especially human character, we lose. We lose and not just a
game but also as a culture.
Like it or not sports is a huge force for good and the not
so good in our world. Thirty five million children and youth from the ages of 5
to 18 play competitive sports in our nation. Hundreds of thousands of student
athletes play in college. Thousands compete in professional sports. Whereas sports was once a diversion in our
country, best known for entertainment, physical fitness or just low key fun, in
2013 sports dominates all parts of life, from 24/7 ESPN, to tots playing soccer,
weekends packed with games at every level, betting billions of dollars. A generation ago the church or a clergy
person or a teacher might have had the greatest influence on young hearts and
minds. Today that shaper of moral life is just as likely to be a coach or a flashy
professional sports star. How we talk
about winning and losing in sports matters.
To win at all costs? Well
Jesus was pretty clear about this when he said, “What does it prophet a man to [win]
the world but lose his soul?” Fast
forward to a modern day sports prophet, UCLA Men’s Basketball Coach John
Wooden, winner of ten NCAA championships, seven in a row. He’d worship the sports god of winning at any
cost, right? Nope. As he concluded, “Sports do not build character. They reveal
it.”
So congrats to the NCAA champs but I hope we will remember
that winning is not everything. Winning is not the only thing either. Winning, losing, playing: finally in sports
and the game called life, the best win of all is character.
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