Winning?

The Awkward Stage--"The Morons Are Winning" (mp3)

As a young teacher, I liked to partake in all of the competitions against students--flag football, basketball, etc. It didn't really matter that much that I was expected to block or that I didn't get in much in a b-ball game. We did it because we lived in the dorms, because we knew the boys, because the kind of trash-talking that went on before and after was part of the friendly rivalry and essential camaraderie that we had with our students.

But soon, a certain element of the faculty took over--the ones who had to win. At that point, there was talk of strategy, of recruiting, meaning talking to faculty who hadn't shown up, but who could help the team, of practicing, rather than just showing up for the game. It wasn't too long after that I stopped playing.

Some years later, after the death of Pete Maravich, a group of over-40 faculty members formed a Geriatric Basketball Association, a weekly outing of friendly/competitive basketball that. There were a couple of us who were allowed to join because we "played like we were over 40." What that really meant was that we understood the spirit of the "league." That spirit involved pick-up games where we tried to make the teams even, where we would play for a long time before we even played for points, where we tolerated the guy who drank wine before we played and could clear out the lane just with his farts or the guy who couldn't shoot at all or the intra-departmental rivalry at point guard or music teacher who didn't know the rules of basketball and just blocked people.

After a couple of years, some younger faculty arrived on the scene, and hearing of the weekly game, asked if they could play. Almost immediately, you can guess what happened. The young Physics teacher who still fashioned himself a skilled post player was bashing bodies with an older guy who knew someone who knew someone who let him into the league. And there were heated words and stand-offs and people storming out of the game on at least one occasion.

You see the pattern. It would be too easy and a mistake, I think, to put the blame on the young. This isn't about young vs. old; it's about the need to win, to dominate, to crush one's opponent at the expense of everything else.

I see it even now in my Fantasy Football league. Sure, all of us would like to win, would like to have the $100 that goes to the overall winner, but most of us know that our league was formed as a social league. It is indeed kind of humorous when you think about it, grown men thinking that they "own" a team and getting so fired up about winning with that team that they are no-nonsense at the draft and get into the minutae of league rules and don't really engage all that much socially. It's something that all of us who play, I'd guess, have been caught up in at one time or another. Maybe.

I just feel it a little more right now. Maybe it's the economy (which is a convenient excuse for anything anyone can think of--not having sex? It's probably the economy) and there's someone who doesn't so much want to win as feels like he needs to win. If you get into our league needing to win the $100 first place, you are in the wrong place. Fantasy Football is far more about luck and who you happen to pick up in the middle of the season than in any strategy on Draft Day or whatever research you may have done in preparation for it.

I suspect it's bigger than that. The need to win has become so pervasive in our society that, for many people, loyalty to a sports team or a presidential candidate or a date is unlikely to survive any serious downturn. We're as fickle as the politicians who base decisions on the polls that capture our fickleness. And what we--as schools, as political parties, as participants in competitions--will do to win has long since breached the boundaries of acceptable behavior.

Along the way, just at this school, I can remember softball tournament started by a sophomore leadership organization. In its best moments, it was the all-school tournament where I could play on a team called "The 700 Club," which had nothing to do with the Christian Network show and everything to do with having to have at least a 700 on at least one part of the SAT. Needless to say, the team did not go far, but the fun, the camaraderie, the self-awareness that the team wasn't about winning, that's what the tournament did for these boys.

It became the tournament where a 10th grade student umpire's call at second base caused him to get chewed out by a fully-grown, supposedly-adult faculty member. Where in the same faculty/student tournament, faculty members recruited teams a year in advance, and where faculty members got into shouting matches with other faculty members' wives who were sitting up in the stands. That the tournament no longer exists is now blamed on a shift in the varsity sports alignment, but those of us who have been here know that the fun went out of the tournament long before it died its slow, eventual death.

The funniest, not-so-funniest aspect of having to win is that the drive to get there destroys everything around it, so that by the time everything is in place for the best possible chance of winning, there isn't anyone who still wants to play. Yeah, that makes me sad, in a way, but I like it. It's the revenge of those of us who are not ultra-competitive. I guess it's how we win.