The Burden of Winning

Twenty-four years… twenty-four years of life, love, laughter, and a whole lot of winning. Being born in 2001 and growing up in Massachusetts has made life full of spoils. No matter what team you look at, they’ve won — and winning is all I know. 

But things change when winning is no longer viewed as an option, but rather the only option. 

Now don’t get me wrong, you play sports to win. Whether you are ten years old playing pickup with your friends or there is a minute left in the state championship, you play to win. Obviously, not everyone can win. There are 32 NFL teams and only one Super Bowl champion. So every year about 97% of fans will not win the big one.

Most of these fans are immune or even numb to this feeling of loss at the end of the season. When you lose every single year, you become numb to it. It’s just another season ending the same as the last. Sometimes these fans aren’t even numb. They are actually excited.

Now I know some of you may roll your eyes or even laugh at that, but it’s true! When the Bears lost in the playoffs, fans were obviously not excited they lost. But at the same time, many fans are just excited to be back in the playoffs (shoutout Big Cat). They are excited about the future, and I cannot blame them. Year after year after year of some loss that was somehow more torturous than the previous one. They finally have a coach, a quarterback, and a football team. 

When you’ve done nothing but lose, you will take any win you can get. 

But when you’ve done nothing but win, what happens then? 

When winning is all you know, you do not celebrate the journey — you measure the fall. 

Other NFL fans hope. 

We expect.

Hope makes a playoff loss feel like progress.

Expectation makes it a failure.