The Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints will face off Sunday in the 44th edition of the Super Bowl. Less than four hours later, the winners will hoist the Vince Lombardi Trophy, forever claiming the right to be known as Super Bowl Champions.
The losers? They will slink into pro football limbo – hardly anyone remembers the losing team in the Super Bowl – except for the sports talk wags who for the next week will relentlessly discuss, debate, dissect and disembowel every aspect of why the losers fell short.
But is it fair to label them “losers”? After all, they did qualify for the NFL playoffs, won two games to claim their conference championship, and actually reached the Super Bowl – something 30 other teams didn’t do. That’s not wet cardboard, is it?
In his book, The Winners Manual, Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel challenges the notion that the final score should be the sole measure of a team’s success or failure. He observed after the Buckeyes defeated in Miami in double overtime to win the 2002 national championship, “we still needed to work on our academics.”
Similarly, when his teams lost BCS Championship games against LSU in 2008, “I remember expressing how proud I was of all my players…. I couldn’t help but think back on all the hard work and preparation it had taken to get to that game in New Orleans.”
The same will be true for this year’s Super Bowl. It took a full year of preparation, with countless hours of training and practice, to reach pro football’s ultimate game. To fall on the short end of the final score will be a disappointment, no question. But if the players have given it everything they have, leaving it all on the field, they will have succeeded.
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