Exactly a week ago, I had a minor stroke. You may have heard that my alma mater, the University of Texas, won the national championship in college football. But the Longhorns didn't just win, in 6 minutes and 42 seconds we scored 15 points and defeated what was allegedly one of the "greatest teams ever". A USC team that hadn't lost in 34 games, that had not one but two Heisman trophy winners. None of it mattered though, because in those 6 minutes the UT football team broke through and provided real-live, honest-to-goodness drama. Suspense not even the producers of 24 could top. It was a teeth-gnashing, soul-rendering, pulse-racing, heart-bursting (with joy) 6 minutes. And before the last touchdown, 4th down from the 8 yard line with 19 seconds to go, I think I blacked out.
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Here's what I remember, after Vince Young took us 69 yards on 8 plays, scoring on a 17 yard TD run, USC had to get a first down to try and run out the clock. Our defense, the best the Trojans had seen, had performed admirably in the first half, but in the second the balanced Trojan attack had scored 4 times in a row. Their main weapon was power-running back LenDale White gashing the Horns up the middle. I don't think there's an adequate metaphor for what the Horns D faced on that last Trojan drive. I remember thinking, the only thing, the ONLY thing Vince Young needs handed to him is time, the rest he can handle. We HAD to stop them. Trojan QB Matt "Sore Loser" Leinart passes for a first down (after the game he insisted they were still the better team, that USC had lost more than UT had won, hey Matt, when your supposed offensive juggernaut can't get one damn yard when the national championship is riding on it, you're not the better team). Two White rushes and an incomplete pass later, it's 4th and 1 and if the Trojans make it, they can kneel for the crystal football. So they go for what's worked all game even though everyone and their mother knew what it would be. My heart drops into my stomach and a second later, leaps into my throat. White up the middle and absolutely stuffed at the line. DE-NIED.
My vise-like death grip on the sofa cushion gets even tighter, and I teeter on the edge of the couch, my feet are bouncing up and down like lottery balls in the spinner. My inner voice: If there's anyone, ANYONE, who's perfectly equipped to pull this off, it's Vince Fucking Young . I know this, I've felt this, Vince Young doesn't just lead this team, he inspires it. He infuses and surrounds it with his charisma and confidence. He stands above yet among his teammates, with a preternatural calm to complement his freakish athleticism (and if it sounds like I have a budding man-crush on him, well...) he always, ALWAYS finds a way to win, and he's the reason why I add life-affirming to the list of hyphenated gerunds two paragraphs above.
He drives us inside the 15 with a combination of passes and scrambles. My non-football-fan wife, who normally revels in the chance to needle me when my team is losing, says don't worry, Vince will do it. Sure, but anxiety is still dominating me and I have to shake my head to try and focus, I have to take deep breaths and try to project my (false?) confidence through the TV up the 100 miles to Pasadena and onto my team. Pass to Limas Sweed incomplete. VINCE TAKES OFF!!....5 yard gain. Pass to Limas Sweed incomplete again. 4th down. Part of me says, shit, just get the first down and spike it. Another part of me says, if we lose how devastated will I actually be, I mean does it matter, should I take it that hard, in the grand scheme of life....OH MY GOD HE'S TAKING OFF AGAIN...
I see him a step or two from the goal line, I'm off the couch, in the air and somehow on the other side of the coffee table, the poor sofa cushion flung somewhere across the room, I'm screaming, and here's the thing...I don't remember seeing Vince ever cross the goal line. Sure I've seen it a million times on replay, but in that split second between his last step and the ref's signal, there was too much for me to process. It was like all the adrenaline, all the built up anxiety rushed out of me so quickly, I forgot to actually watch the touchdown. I'm on the phone with Ram and I can't fucking believe it. By the time I look back at the TV, now right in front of me, Vince is walking back towards the field, with the Bevo mascot's arm around him. He's clutching the ball to his chest like if he lets it go, he might lose the moment. And the best part of it is his calm, cool gaze. His stillness. A moment of silence, reflection before giving in to the euphoria.
cue "Touch the Sky" by Kanye West
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I grew up in Dallas, and since I'm not really a fan of baseball or hockey, I was left with the Mavericks and Cowboys as the teams to call my own. I want to compare this championship with the Cowboys first Super Bowl, but it's not possible. First of all, that game was over in the third quarter. And second, I was a kid back then and I never doubted the 'Boys would come through. I was just learning about sports and was growing into being a fan. I didn't know any better. That's why the Horns winning it all this year is so much more significant for me. It's going to sound cliche, but it made me feel that same purity and innocence again. As a married, working adult I have thoughts and concerns about my life and about my future that constantly cloud my brain. As an aware citizen of the world, news of war and scandal shake my faith in man, and news of natural disasters shake my faith in God. I'm so much more critical and cynical towards the world that it feels damn good to not only be able to give my unconditional loyalty to something, but to also have that loyalty rewarded in such an amazing way.
There are probably thousands of different ways people have tried to place sports in our society. As a prism to help understand ourselves, or as a last refuge of traditions and culture, for example. I've compared sport to art, since they are both manifestations of humans making physical reality out of something they imagine in their minds. In that respect, it is the ultimate demonstration of what sets us apart of other animals, our ability to use our minds to imagine and experience things beyond our physical senses. It is our humanity.
In an essay about his love of soccer, Salman Rushdie summed up the relationship between sports and its fans with these two thoughts,
"Continuity is everything, and so is loyalty in times of adversity, and small gratifications offer great emotional rewards."
"If they have won, the weekend feels richer. If they have lost, a black cloud settles. It's pathetic. It's an addiction. It's monogamous, till-death-us-do-part love."
Jeff MacGregor of Sports Illustrated called sports, "the perfection of the unnecessary". But because we pour so much of our time and money and, like any human endeavor, so much of ourselves into it, sports can also reveal things about us, (I'll ask you to excuse the extended quotation)
"...to watch, to simply see it, is a kind of necessary and loving witness to whatever human excellence is...if it is in our nature to make sports important, then it is our bad habit to make it too important...do we ask too much of sports? or do they ask too much of us? we ask that sports not only reveal our character but create it. We ask that athletes not just entertain us but transform us."
MacGregor continues by saying that sports is that one remaining connection we have to our ancestral past, when running and jumping meant survival, not distraction,
"We don't play the games just for glory, or even for the money...we play, as we always have, to remind ourselves that we're here, that we're present in the present and part of the larger life of the world. Insulated from virtually every physical experience but the ones we choose, sheltered and fed by our technologies, we cling to sports more desperately than ever. the packaging and the payouts have changed, the delivery systems are slicker, but the essence of it, the tug and grunt and struggle, remains the same.
Whatever sports were and whatever they become, at the far-away beginning and the impossible end of everything is only the hammer of a beating heart, that pulse drumming and the lungs bellowing, all the deafening, defining racket of life roaring in your ears, that syncopation of blood and wind, legs working and you running , down at last out of the trees, fully alive and feet on the earth, racing for glory or simply for joy, racing for history's bright and unattainable horizon."
Ask football fans in Louisana how much the last second victories by the Saints and the LSU Tigers just days after Hurricane Katrina meant to them. Or ask Iraqis how much it meant that their soccer team competed so well at the 2004 Athens Olympics. Ask them, even if it was for a brief moment, if they weren't brought closer to that horizon by their teams. And ask me how much it meant to see, on a beautiful, clear California night, confetti raining down on a man with one arm raised. His middle and ring fingers are clapsed to his palm, his index and pinky fingers pointed towards the heavens. Years and years from now, when the racket of my life is still roaring in my ears, I can look back to January 4, 2006 as the night my monogamous, addictive love was re-affirmed. When my unequivocal, zealous loyalty wasn't discarded as naive or wide-eyed, but was rewarded in the most inspiring and uplifting way possible.
Hook'em Horns.
"I want to touch the sky, come up in the spot looking extra fly"
"Top of the world, baby, top, top of the world..."
"La La La La Laaaaa La La"