[#1]702 You Just Never Know

I don't usually pay all that much attention to college football. It's not that I don't enjoy watching football, and at the college level there is an intensity and excitement that isn't always there in professional sports. But the only reason that I ended up watching the Fiesta Bowl was because my son happens to attend Boise State University.

When the Broncos, the Boise State team, arrived at the Fiesta bowl they were considered the underdogs. Even though they were undefeated, it just seemed like the Oklahoma Sooners would be more than they could handle. But at the end of the third quarter the Broncos were leading 28 to 17, and it was beginning to look like an upset was in the making.

But as the fourth quarter started the Sooners came roaring back with a vengeance. A field goal and then a touchdown and successful two-point conversion tied the game with just under a minute and a half left in the game. When the Oklahoma player Marcus Walker intercepted a pass and ran it in for a touchdown, giving the Sooners a 7-point lead with 1:02 remaining in the game, it began to look like the Cinderella story for Boise State had come to an end.

We called our son on the phone and offered our condolences. His team had fought hard, but Oklahoma had turned out to be the better team. Our son was quick to point out, "This is football." We agreed, yes, and you can never really know what's going to happen, but this did not look good.

So we were understandably surprised, and ready to admit that we had come to a hasty conclusion when the Broncos were able to tie the score in regulation time and force the game into overtime. As the overtime got underway, Oklahoma marched down the field and scored seven points. The only way for the Broncos to win would be to either tie the game so that there would be a longer overtime, or to win the game on their next possession.

As fate would have it, they also went down the field and scored a touchdown. Now came the all important decision: Kick the point after touchdown and tie the game, or go for broke and try to make a two-point conversion to win the game. They decided to go for it.

I have to admit that I was initially as confused as the Oklahoma defenders when it looked like Jared Zabransky was going to pass. I almost completely missed the "statue of liberty" hand-off to Ian Johnson who ran in, untouched, scoring the winning goal.

There are so many times in life when it seems like things are not going our way. When we look at a game like this one, or any competitive sport, we often see the fans giving up hope. Their team seems to be so far behind that it doesn't look like they will be able to come back and win the game. It's at times like that when many fans practice the skill of leaving early to beat the traffic. I remember reading about a game in which the Atlanta Falcons were losing to the Seattle Seahawks by seventeen points at the beginning of the fourth quarter. Over one third of the fans that were in attendance at the game got up and left, only to miss the Falcons coming back, tying the game and then winning in overtime.

When Jim Rohn talks about the need to stay, to stick with something until it is finished, he asks his audience to consider how they would feel if the team would look at the scoreboard, feel like the game was hopeless, and leave before time game was over. The team has to stay and finish the game even if they do go on to lose, so why is it that the fans feel like they can go home early?

I have looked at many of the failures in my life and come to an inescapable, and rather uncomfortable conclusion. Most, if not all of the times that I had failed in some endeavor it wasn't because I had give it my all and that had not been good enough. It was always because I had quit. I had given up and walked off the field even though there was a lot of time left in the game.

In C. S. Lewis? books, The Chronicles of Narnia, there is a line that has stuck with me ever since I read it. In the story the children had either not done something they should have, or done the wrong thing, and the consequences had ended up being devastating. They had then talked with Aslan, the lion who was helping them and guiding them, what would have happened had they done the right thing. Aslan answered, "No one is ever told how things would have been."

There are many times in my life when it would have been interesting to know how things would have been, but I will never know. The only thing that I can do is to make a decision for the future; the decision is to decide to stick with it, to stay until the game is really over.

Because life, just like a football game, really isn't over until it's over. There are problems that we all will face that may cause us to feel like all hope is lost, but there are also a lot of people who, in similar situations, didn't give up and were able to turn certain defeat into victory. And even in those times when the loss was unavoidable, the fact that we stay until the end will help us develop the tenacity we will need, the perseverance, to overcome other difficulties in the future.

In life, like in the world of sports, it's usually impossible to predict the outcome until the final whistle has blown. And if anyone should stay until the end it's the ones who are on the field. So in our lives, we need to make the commitment to ourselves never to give up and to keep trying to win because in sports, and in life, you just never know.

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