Losing is winning in the big picture

The past week was a rough one for football aficionados, unless you’re a Vandal or Huskie fan, then it was a great week.

In West Plains prep football both the Cardinals and the Blackhawks went down in hard-fought games.

At the collegiate level it was mainly a week of upsets. The Eastern Eagles headed south to the Palouse where the aforementioned Vandal’s took advantage of a hole in Eastern’s defense that arrived with two starting linebackers, a cornerback and a starting rusher all sidelined by injuries. The Vandals orchestrated a 35-27 upset against the 11th-ranked Eagles.

Meanwhile, just over the state line in Pullman, Jacksonville Jaguar quarterback and Washington State University alum Gardner Minshew made a cameo appearance before the game after coming off a Thursday Night NFL Football victory against the Tennessee Titans. Minshew’s mojo didn’t rub off on the Cougars, however, who lost to the UCLA Bruins at home in a 67-63 loss.

Then on Sunday, in a game that started out badly for the Seattle Seahawks even before the kickoff when head coach Pete Carol was hit in the nose by an errant football, leaving a nasty gash on his nose for network TV viewers and commentators to dwell upon, the Hawks allowed the New Orleans Saints — absent an injured Drew Brees — to essentially run over their defense on the ground. While Seattle managed a rally in the fourth quarter, it came up short in the 33-27 loss. Thank goodness Brees was injured.

But it wasn’t all bad here in the Upper Left, USA. As mentioned, it was a great weekend for the Vandals, and Husky fans had a great weekend too after traveling to Utah to chew up and spit out BYU in a 45-17 rout.

So, what’s my point here? It’s that as sports fans we have to taste the bitter to appreciate the sweetness of our favorite teams’ victories.

I was on the sidelines at the Cardinals game Thursday night. This is a team who has won only two games in the past five years — and both of those last year under now second-year head coach Jeremy Bahr — and are hungry for a win, any win, let alone a winning season.

So, the Cardinal boys played their hearts out in their 54-36 loss to the Lakeside Eagles. They never quit, but instead keep gunning for the end zone against teams who are usually much larger than them, supported by a student body and a cadre of local Medical Lake fans who all vigorously cheered the team through thick, but mostly thin. For the Cardinals, the sweetness of even a single victory will taste amazing.

Those boys may not know it yet, but they are winning despite their losses. After all, as Teddy Roosevelt said, the credit goes not to the critic or the person in the stands, but to the man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood from the effort.

The Vandals can attest to the flavor of this sweetness in their upset over the Eagles this weekend, as can the Huskies who have yet to win a season conference game.

All our regional teams — the Blackhawks and the Cardinals, the Eagles, the Cougars and the Seahawks — will come back sooner or later from the bitter taste of defeat they experienced this weekend to sprinkle their fans with the elixir of victory.

And the longer those fans wait, the sweeter it will taste.

Lee Hughes can be reached at lee@cheneyfreepress.com.