The article is slated for tomorrow morning, but thought I would share it here and now because I will be busy tomorrow. I reflected on the season with a sort of schizophrenic duality of loss and hope through different words. Below is the entirety of tomorrow's Flock Talk
A tough week with opportunity stripped from a team of players desperate to revive a lost season with another trip to the Pac-12 Championship. Sure. It was going to be a difficult task; and it seems unfair that Oregon – who could have made this point moot with a win in either of the two prior weeks – will not be able to defend their Pac-12 title on the field tomorrow.
I read a line from a PEN-Faulkner finalist On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Ocean Vuong) which lends some prescience to this moment. “In a world myriad as ours, the gaze is a singular act: to look at something is to fill your whole life with it, if only briefly.”
This week was the whole life for the Oregon football team. In a season that seems to not matter, the moment mattered to them. Call it a chance at redemption for two bad games; or just another chance to chase perfect moments wrapped in an imperfect game. Either way, the moment is gone and the bad dream that is 2020 continues in agony. The daffodils of Wordsworth will provide little solace to Mario Cristobal and his football team.
But these moments of abject solitude remind me of Spencer Webb. His story still resonates with me as I recall the conversations we had in April of 2017. Back then he told me “It’s tough. My parents left me, skipped town; left me at my 70 year old grandmas at a very young age. I was maybe three or four years old and my aunt stepped in,” he said. “Yeah, I guess it made me feel like they passed away more than they choose to pick substance over raising kids.”
Webb is not the only young man to stare down inherited demons and beat them; he won’t be the last. He has been through much worse than 2020 and carries unbridled optimism and hope. The duality of a football season, one borne of hope and yet destined for most to dreams in total darkness crashes 2020 into what is really a normal reality. Oregon football – aside from the pitiful 2016 season and its aftermath – has been on an incredible arc over the last twenty-plus years. A once moribund program languishing in the lower dregs of football society came out of that darkness. But many fans reading this do not remember those days; they don’t know what it’s like to be Kansas football; or Kentucky; or any other innumerable programs that know only yearly heartbreak.
I guess this is the penitence of the short memory. We can learn something, however, from then 17-year old Webb. “Me and my family; we grind each day on the field, classroom and life topics.” You can be sure that Cristobal is working to keep this team focused on whatever comes next. I know that the university is working hard to find a replacement opponent to keep this team playing this weekend. It seems a dead end, but they were burning up the phones from the moment that Washington paused football activities.
It was said by Johannes Kepler that “we do not ask for what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing. Similarly we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens.” What does that say about the need for humans to interact through shared passions? We are the birds. We sing because that is our purpose. As the 2020 season mercifully comes nearer its conclusion, the shared passions of men and women all across the nation someday return with barbecues, drinks and football. It is in those moments that we can shine our best and those moments which we can cherish.
There will be success and failures on the field. Wins. Losses. Commitments. Decommitments. All are likely to occur between now and next February. But those moments of passion under the lights of stadiums will define us far more than any loss. Those players will find their place, they will play with heart and soul. The coaches will make mistakes, and they will do some things right.
The known is finite, the unknown infinite – T.H. Huxley
Here are my thoughts on this - football is sport; entertainment. Sometimes we take this very seriously; there is a lot of money involved and we care about the sport in a way that can be, at times, unnatural. We dig deep into the lives of teenagers looking to take some pride in something bigger than ourselves. I like this - except when it goes wrong.
Football can be something bigger than ourselves; it can be something worth finding pride and passion, so long as that something bigger is about more than wins and losses.
But for the young men who give their blood, sweat and tears to this game; for our perverse pleasures; there is no mercy to the end of the season. Only loss and longing for another chance. Pessimistic as it seems, sleep will never come that easy. There will always be the bad dreams that define 2020.
With that I have a thought heading into what looks like a bye week. We are not the story; the frailty is not the story. The rehabilitation? That is where the truth of our efforts lay.
We can be the leaders of reclamation. We can change the world; not by tearing down its heroes, but recognizing in them the faults which are at the heart of mankind. I will not test fate and reflect forward the misery of the convoluted 2020 football season for Pac-12 fans.
Instead, I return to the hopefulness of Wordsworth:
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the Daffodils.
[I wandered lonely as a Cloud] William Wordsworth
A tough week with opportunity stripped from a team of players desperate to revive a lost season with another trip to the Pac-12 Championship. Sure. It was going to be a difficult task; and it seems unfair that Oregon – who could have made this point moot with a win in either of the two prior weeks – will not be able to defend their Pac-12 title on the field tomorrow.
I read a line from a PEN-Faulkner finalist On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Ocean Vuong) which lends some prescience to this moment. “In a world myriad as ours, the gaze is a singular act: to look at something is to fill your whole life with it, if only briefly.”
This week was the whole life for the Oregon football team. In a season that seems to not matter, the moment mattered to them. Call it a chance at redemption for two bad games; or just another chance to chase perfect moments wrapped in an imperfect game. Either way, the moment is gone and the bad dream that is 2020 continues in agony. The daffodils of Wordsworth will provide little solace to Mario Cristobal and his football team.
But these moments of abject solitude remind me of Spencer Webb. His story still resonates with me as I recall the conversations we had in April of 2017. Back then he told me “It’s tough. My parents left me, skipped town; left me at my 70 year old grandmas at a very young age. I was maybe three or four years old and my aunt stepped in,” he said. “Yeah, I guess it made me feel like they passed away more than they choose to pick substance over raising kids.”
Webb is not the only young man to stare down inherited demons and beat them; he won’t be the last. He has been through much worse than 2020 and carries unbridled optimism and hope. The duality of a football season, one borne of hope and yet destined for most to dreams in total darkness crashes 2020 into what is really a normal reality. Oregon football – aside from the pitiful 2016 season and its aftermath – has been on an incredible arc over the last twenty-plus years. A once moribund program languishing in the lower dregs of football society came out of that darkness. But many fans reading this do not remember those days; they don’t know what it’s like to be Kansas football; or Kentucky; or any other innumerable programs that know only yearly heartbreak.
I guess this is the penitence of the short memory. We can learn something, however, from then 17-year old Webb. “Me and my family; we grind each day on the field, classroom and life topics.” You can be sure that Cristobal is working to keep this team focused on whatever comes next. I know that the university is working hard to find a replacement opponent to keep this team playing this weekend. It seems a dead end, but they were burning up the phones from the moment that Washington paused football activities.
It was said by Johannes Kepler that “we do not ask for what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing. Similarly we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens.” What does that say about the need for humans to interact through shared passions? We are the birds. We sing because that is our purpose. As the 2020 season mercifully comes nearer its conclusion, the shared passions of men and women all across the nation someday return with barbecues, drinks and football. It is in those moments that we can shine our best and those moments which we can cherish.
There will be success and failures on the field. Wins. Losses. Commitments. Decommitments. All are likely to occur between now and next February. But those moments of passion under the lights of stadiums will define us far more than any loss. Those players will find their place, they will play with heart and soul. The coaches will make mistakes, and they will do some things right.
The known is finite, the unknown infinite – T.H. Huxley
Here are my thoughts on this - football is sport; entertainment. Sometimes we take this very seriously; there is a lot of money involved and we care about the sport in a way that can be, at times, unnatural. We dig deep into the lives of teenagers looking to take some pride in something bigger than ourselves. I like this - except when it goes wrong.
Football can be something bigger than ourselves; it can be something worth finding pride and passion, so long as that something bigger is about more than wins and losses.
But for the young men who give their blood, sweat and tears to this game; for our perverse pleasures; there is no mercy to the end of the season. Only loss and longing for another chance. Pessimistic as it seems, sleep will never come that easy. There will always be the bad dreams that define 2020.
With that I have a thought heading into what looks like a bye week. We are not the story; the frailty is not the story. The rehabilitation? That is where the truth of our efforts lay.
We can be the leaders of reclamation. We can change the world; not by tearing down its heroes, but recognizing in them the faults which are at the heart of mankind. I will not test fate and reflect forward the misery of the convoluted 2020 football season for Pac-12 fans.
Instead, I return to the hopefulness of Wordsworth:
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the Daffodils.
[I wandered lonely as a Cloud] William Wordsworth
