I've been a Duck fan since the bad old days when three wins was a miracle season, but I've had enough. I watched every second of last Saturday's loss and read 3 papers online afterward, but I can't do it anymore: too many agonizing losses and knucklehead decisions. Fumbles, interceptions, false starts--it was a clinic on how to lose a football game, and they deserved to lose. The team is poorly coached and shows no progress, does things you can't possibly do and hope to win a football game.
This Saturday they play Stanford, and I'm not watching. I'll bike to Wilsonville and take Roger to Taco Del Mar. I'll do my laundry or send out my forwarding address forms. It's not worth the enormous investment of time and energy I've given it weekend after weekend.
I won't choose another team and I won't change my mind. For 37 years I've lived with the disappointment and the excuses, the woulda, coulda, shouldas, and this season I'm putting it away. Except for three glorious seasons when Joey Harrington was the quarterback, and the team showed true heart and won three straight bowl games and got better every season, Duck football has been an ongoing lesson in hype over substance, reputation over results. Our coaches can't pick a quarterback and can't adjust when things go wrong. And things always go wrong.
Maybe I'll go to the movies, or read a book. But I won't have to watch Jaison Williams drop another pass, or the defense give up another first down on third and long. I'll let someone else yell themselves hoarse screaming at the TV. I've got other things to do.
Monday, November 3, 2008
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This is the Way the Transformation Begins
"Some men see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say "Why not?"
George Bernard Shaw, Robert F. Kennedy
This is the way the transformation begins.
It begins in me.
It begins now.
It begins with small incremental changes and shifts in attitude
it begins with positive action
failing forward
and suddenly I start looking at the world and my place in it in a new way. I speak differently and dress differently and project a different energy, and the world opens up like a glorious pink azalea bush, eight feet tall and blooming like mad.
photo by Kajo123 from the website flickr.com
Good morning!
An engineer builds a bridge and every bolt and weld has to be exactly right; every measure has to be perfect, or the bridge collapses or fails to take its place. Fantastically detailed blueprints have to be laid out. Impact statements have to be filed, sediment has to be studied, years of effort, months of planning, and a man-made marvel rises in the sky. Park somewhere and take a good look at a bridge, and think of all the skill and knowledge and hard honest work it took to create it. Consider how a few thousand years ago we were living in caves.
It is not so with a dream. Some people are remarkable dreamers and dreams spring whole from them, or they can leap up from bed and pages of creative genius flow out of their pen, intricate and perfect. Most of us though are baby dreamers, new at it and tentative to the trust the power of what we wish for.
Start the dream! Whether you want to go to nursing school or college or learn to play the guitar, take a first step, now, even in the wrong direction. Don't wait for the blueprint to come to you, the environmental impact statement, the permits and the 200-page budget and legislative dream approval. Rough it out, sketch it on a napkin, tell a friend, and take action. Your dream begins the moment you step out in first moment of believing, and the result can touch a thousand souls. Listen to Jim Valvano: never give up, never surrender. Believe in the audacity of action and your fantastic potential for change and new opportunity.
It is not so with a dream. Some people are remarkable dreamers and dreams spring whole from them, or they can leap up from bed and pages of creative genius flow out of their pen, intricate and perfect. Most of us though are baby dreamers, new at it and tentative to the trust the power of what we wish for.
Start the dream! Whether you want to go to nursing school or college or learn to play the guitar, take a first step, now, even in the wrong direction. Don't wait for the blueprint to come to you, the environmental impact statement, the permits and the 200-page budget and legislative dream approval. Rough it out, sketch it on a napkin, tell a friend, and take action. Your dream begins the moment you step out in first moment of believing, and the result can touch a thousand souls. Listen to Jim Valvano: never give up, never surrender. Believe in the audacity of action and your fantastic potential for change and new opportunity.
The Hawthorne Bridge at sunrise, Portland Oregon. Photo by Joe Collver, from flickr.com
Genuine happiness and success start with an attitude of abundance
Make it a daily practice to begin your day with five minutes of thankfulness. You can even do it in your car on the way to work. Do it in your own way, whether it's thoughtful reflection or a prayer or singing out loud, but focus on your rich, amazing, abundant life.
Feeling grumpy or resentful or worried instead of thankful? Change direction! Consider the incredible gifts you have--mind, body, spirit, senses, your family, your friends, your clothes, your car, and the breakfast you enjoyed this morning. By the standards of 99% of the world, Americans are incredibly, amazingly rich. You truly have no idea how richly blessed you are until you start thinking about it. Even the heart that beats within you and the lungs that breathe your air are an intricate and amazing miracle.
Some of my favorite movies are ones that feature a once-defeated character waking up to an absolutely new day: "It's A Wonderful Life," the various versions of Dicken's "Christmas Carol" and "Groundhog Day." How exhilarating it is for George Bailey to wake up and realize his life isn't over, it's just beginning, and that today truly is a brand new day.
"It's a Wonderful Life"
George returns home to everything he ever wanted.
3 comments:
Dad---
Ah gee, you poor baby, do you want a cookie, or perhaps some cheese with your whine? I can give you a ride on the whabulance??? No sympathy, ah hello Beaver fan, do we ever win?????
Steff--
I really wasn't expecting sympathy, or really asking for it. The post was really a reflection on the enormous expense of time and energy I've given to that hobby for a long time, and how much better I might have invested it.
I love Duck football and I have for as long as I've been a football fan, but I'm going to put it away for a while, and see what happens instead.
Dale,
Somehow, I think you have it wrong, and as your friend, I need to set you straight.
1. First things first — Either you are a Duck or you aren't. After all those years, it is difficult for me to believe that you aren't.
2. Few are chosen — Outside of the perennial elite programs (USC, Ohio State, Florida, Oklahoma, etc.), most fans are supporting teams that have no realistic shot at BCS bowls, or are very infrequent "guest participants." If you expect to be in a the big-bowl hunt every year, move to Florida.
Let's face it, neither the Ducks nor the Beavers (nor WSU and Washington) are going to be in the hunt for a BCS bowl every year.
3. It's entertainment — Contrary to your claim that football is more important than life or death, football is simply entertainment. We go to movies, concerts, and football games to be entertained. In each case, there are good ones and bad ones. Ones we wished we had not wasted our time on, and those that are truly memorable. The Cal game was a clunker. So what, there is always next week. USC is the only PAC-10 team with annual hope.
3. Get over it — I am a Beaver fan. We lived through decades of 42-3 and 56-12 losses. Yet, I am still a Beaver. So the Ducks played horibly last week. OSU played horribly for about 30 years, and still do from time-to-time (can you say, "Penn State?")
4. Quit reading the pre-season articles — Each August, the PAC-10 writers like to say that the Ducks will battle USC for first place, and that the Beavers will finish somewhere around 6th to 9th place. Over the last few years, Beaver fans have had the good fortune of the team exceeding those expectations.
Duck fans, however, expect way too much. I know that people in Eugene believe that they are way cool, and that Corvallis is just a place for cows and gay sheep. Let's get real. The best players on the West Coast don't want to play in Eugene (or Corvallis, Pullman, and five other locations). They want to, and do, play in LA. If they can't play there, they move north to the Bay Area, or East to Arizona. The leftovers trikle up to Oregon and Washington.
5. You don't have a "real QB" — what to you expect when you have to suit up the waterboy to play QB? Healthy, realiable QBs just aren't happening, right now. Until somebody can stay healthy for a season, it will be difficult to win consistently.
6. There will be another Joey — Sure, it seems impossible. But, I remember thinking that there would never be another Ken Simonton. Then Jackson came along. There would never be another James Newsom, but Mike Haas came along.
7. Tell the truth — How would you feel if OSU wins its remaining games and the Ducks knock them out of the Rose Bowl by winning 42-3? Come on, how would it feel?
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