FalconBlog--Triumphs and Trials in the BGSU Falcon Nation

Don't look at the scoreboard

On coming back to AZZ.com after my self-imposed leave of absence, things are as the usually are on sports boards. Fans are critical of a poor performance, they are in turn accused of not being real fans. I don't really want to step between those schools of thought, because its just two different ways of expressing the same thing.

I did want to comment on one other way of looking at things, though, and that's the (prior to the WMU game) lines that say:

• We're 4-2. We should be happy.
• We're in first place.
• A win is a win.

etc.

That's what I want to comment on.

John Wooden is as good at motivation and winning as anyone has ever been. And John Wooden had a saying that you shouldn't look at the scoreboard. Of course, it starts with the idea that in competition, your objective is to maximize your own performance. And you can't tell that on the scoreboard.

The example he gives is this: if all you cared about was winning, you'd just watch the scoreboard. Don't look at the field, just stare at the scoreboard. It would tell you what you needed to know.

But you watch the game to see if you are performing at your best. And if you look away from the scoreboard, you could see the WMU game coming. Ball State, OU, Buffalo, all games where we showed the same problems we showed against Western, but were able to pull out wins, for whatever reason. You could see the defensive lapses coming. You could see the special teams failure. You could see the lack of leadership in adversity. They were masked by winning.

Failure is the accumulation of lots of little things into a big thing, and the WMU game was just that--enough of the bad things from the other games came together at once with a new one (Omar) and the whole structure collapsed. But, in retrospect, it can't be that surprising.

If you look at our season, the only game in which we performed as we think we should is against Temple. Our other games have ranged from near disaster (OU-BSU-Buffalo) to disaster (Boise-WMU).

That's why people are so pessimistic about the rest of the season. We didn't have one bad game. We've had almost all bad games, but never had to pay the full bill.