Why We Do What We Do

Hello again people. My apologies for how slow things have been here lately….been travelling a bit for work, and have some more travel next week.

Ugg, what do you say now. Sitting at 0-4. Facing the best tasting tangerines in NYS on Saturday. Full of injury and other issues. Ugg.

I guess it’s good to go back to why these guys play the game first of all. It really does stink to lose. But, if someone would come to me, tell me they’d pay all my bills for a while, guarantee I’d get my job when it was done, and tell me that I could go play on a football team that was going to get rocked week in and week out all season long, I’d do it in a heartbeat. Winning does make it more fun for sure, but I just love playing the game. I guess the situation where I might not do it is if it were a situation where I couldn’t go in and personally be competitive. If I were playing against NFL players, yes, I would be afraid of getting hurt, but moreso I don’t think it would be fun when I couldn’t block a single guy or tackle a single guy or whatever. I’d want to play in a situation where, at the very least, I could show the guy across from me that he was playing against a competitor.

I’ve said this many times in the past, and I know I said it about Deposit-Hancock last year – we whooped them, but they at least let us know we were on the field with some football players. If I can make that statement, then I’m having a good time, and I want to push on with all I’ve got. And, that is the 1^st step to winning ways. Let your guy know he’s playing a real man, win a battle here and there, and suddenly your team starts winning battles, and suddenly your team starts scoring more points than the others.

We are right there in that. We have won numerous battles over every game this year. We just can’t seem to win the war. A couple thoughts on that….

The line between success and failure is thinner than can ever imagine. That’s been one of the biggest revelations of my life. At my work, I’ve been on top of the world where everyone thinks you are stud of America, and I’ve been at the point where those around you think you are a helpless dufus. Those two scenarios are so close it’s frightening. Look at last year – we beat Walton 20-18 (and I thought it was going to be worse to look at the 1^st 3 quarters), and then a few weeks later we lose big. Do a few things wrong and the bottom falls out. Do a few things right, and you end up 17-3 over 2 seasons. Incidentally, we were 8 for 8 over 2009 and 2010 in games decided by 1 TD and extra points or less. That’s astounding. Sometimes a thing some call luck catches up with you, and sometimes it’s just the subtle things that make the difference.

One of those things is just finishing off tackles. We’ve done a great job I think of getting people where they need to go on defense. But, you want to hear an astounding stat? Our opponents have scored 15 TD’s on us this season – of those 15, a whopping 10 have been on plays of 30 yards or more (and another that was 28). That’s just WRONG. If you want to know why we are where we are, that’s item #1. Obviously it would help if we could get near to full strength and if we could score on some more big plays ourselves as well.

So, I hope our boys are asking themselves how much they love playing this game, and I hope they love it enough to just pour into it, and forget about our record. It obviously doesn’t look good for the playoffs, though nothing is out of the question. We will get points for the non-league losses, and it wouldn’t be terribly surprising to see either or both of those teams ending up with 6 or more wins, which will give us more points yet. But, right now, let’s remember how much we love the game and how we want that to affect our play. I hope our guys love this game as much as I do, and are able to dig deep and find stuff they never knew they had. To be honest, they’ve really done a good job with that so far, fighting back valiantly on several occasions, building some great Bulldog pride. Let’s hope that keeps up through the rest of the season.

After skipping a week of picks, I guess I’ll get back to it. In week 3, I was a not so good 14-6 (0.700) for a 31-12 (0.721) season total. Let’s see if I’m learning after 4 weeks….Newark Valley over Trumansburg, Union Springs over Notre Dame, BG over Oxford, Groton over Edison (and Edison is still ranked after a 60-6 beating by Tioga), Tioga over SVE, Candor over Odessa, Waverly big over Watkins Glen (I think I need to watch Waverly soon, their passing game sounds amazing), JC over Dryden, Binghamton over Vestal, Norwich over Windsor, Aquinas over Corning, Sidney over Unatego (upset special), Kingston over Ithaca, Troy over Elmira, Sherburne over UVE, Forks over Seton, Horseheads over Chenango Valley, Harpursville over D/H, Owego over Sus Valley, Lansing over Whitney Point, Moravia over Newfield, Greene over Oneonta, and Maine-Endwell over UE.