Thank you Irish

"Men succeed when they realize that their failures are the preparation for their victories." RW Emerson.

This is a tough one, so please stay with me. I have spend many hours depressed, dejected and demoralized after losing. I have tasted of the agony of defeat. I have failed at many things, many times. To this point it has seemed that the things I most want, I can't have. And although I am happy with the things I DO have, and have learned to control my relentless desire for more, this paradox has always provided more than its share of doubt, curiosity and deep introspection. I have tried many ways of dealing with defeat as have most of us. The old baseball saying that we drink to celebrate our wins, we drink to drown the sorrows of our losses and we drink when we get rained out because we don't get to play, comes as close as any.

Somewhere around the time that I quit team sports, many of the reasons behind all this started to become a little clearer. If I wasn't playing any longer for my teammates, my school, my hometown or my livelihood, why was I still so dependent on the outcomes for my definition of self? It suddenly seemed overly pretentious and overtly shallow to be simply happy when 'we' won and sad when 'we' lost. There had to be something more.

And there is. That something more is the game itself. The contest. The battle. The competition. The effort. And the lessons we can learn from them. Makes little difference if its Ironman or college football. You have heard me say this before, and I will keep trying to say it until I get the words right, that the only real winning is losing. Because we get to grow more, mature fuller and become balanced quicker in losing than we do in winning. There are also time and perspective components involved, but those are sub-categories. Combined, losses allow higher, sweeter and longer lasting rewards than simply adding another W to the left side of the column.

Let's take yesterdays Husky/Notre Dame game as an example. You can say that we (UW) got robbed by the officials, by instant replay, by injuries, by penalties, by TD Jesus or by the rain. Or you could say it was the luck of the Irish. That debate would go into OT as well. Why not take the lessons and leave the rest on the soggy turf of South Bend? The lads played well, with heart, with character and with intensity. It was one of the most entertaining college football games I have ever watched (and I have watched many). Yes, it broke my heart to see them lose, but ya know what? They learned a lot of lessons out there yesterday. We will shortly see these lessons manifested as the foundation of a great team, as personified by the growth , maturation and future success of the individuals.

Here is, then, the simple secret to success and Sark knows this as does Holt and Jake: Pick yourself up off the carpet, acknowledge what happened and why, and get your young butts back to work.

There will be many victories down the line boys. And they will be sweetened by the taste of today's agony. Thank you Notre Dame.

Photo: Jake Locker can play on my team any day of the week.