UW-UA Post-game Thought

I never got to the Husky predictions on Saturday.  I hope you can trust me in saying that everyone picked Arizona except for Joe.  Sorry, Joe.

This game isn’t worth diving into.  The Huskies were manhandled on both sides of the ball.  There was no push by either line.  There was secondary to speak of.  And the offense was inconsistent, aside from Chris Polk and Jesse Callier.

But my “game thought” is something I will address.  That thought is, how can we, as sports fan tell when a game is over?  I bring this up because this Husky game was clearly over before the clocks hit 0:00 in the 4th quarter.  If you watch sports enough, you can earn this gift of knowing when a game is over.

Take the Mariners home opener this year, for example.  Oakland had scored 4 runs in the 6th inning to take a 4-0 lead.  There was tons of time left in the game but that game was over after they had scored.  This was before knowing that the Mariner offense was historically bad.  The environment was dead.  There was no excitement.  Everyone knew the game was over (except for kids under the age of 12 and adults who watch baseball once a year).

The moment you know the game is over can be devastating, it’s an “oh crap!” moment where you suddenly realize something bad has happened.  But, those moments can pass quickly.  Once you understand the game’s over, without it being completely over, you’re free to enjoy the little things in the game.  You can laugh at the unintelligent conversation going on next to you.  You can focus on certain players instead of the entire game.  If nothing less, it softens the blow of your favorite team losing suddenly.

The “Oh crap!” moment happened to me early in the Arizona game.  In fact, it was when the game was tied.  The Dawgs had taken an early lead but then Arizona drove down and scored immediately.  On that drive, it was easy to see our team was over-matched on this certain night.  The hope after that was the offense could keep up, but they were shut down the next drive and the game was basically over.  It was easy to tell it just wasn’t the Huskies night.  Sure, the Huskies would get within 3 of the Wildcats at 17-14 but there was never any chance of the defense stopping them.

From that point on the pain of the loss was diminished.  I didn’t really enjoy any of the little things but the loss was inevitable and I couldn’t stop it.  I could enjoy the rest of my Saturday night instead of being miserable after the game.  I could watch Braveheart and enjoy being with my family.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m mad that the Huskies are so inconsistent.  I’m mad that they didn’t play anywhere close to their potential on Saturday.  And I’m mad that a bowl game is looking tougher and tougher to get to.  But, my heart and soul didn’t have to be wrapped around the game once I knew it was over and for that I’m thankful.

Andrew