Didn’t Vince Lombardi say something similar about winning? As the first to win a Super Bowl, his thoughts on the matter should carry some extra weight.
There is a quote which is frequently attributed to Lombardi: “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” Having grown up in Green Bay in the ‘70s and ‘80s, I heard that quote a lot, but my understanding now is that he never actually said that (or, at least, didn’t originate it).
Wikipedia indicates that someone else originated the quote, though that Lombardi had made a somewhat similar quote.
I’m usually much more disappointed when the team I’m backing loses the divisional championship. When you lose that game you have to wallow in misery for the next two weeks while ‘not your team’ is in the spotlight for the whole run-up to the big game going on nationwide.
Cause face it, once the Superbowl is over everyone forgets about the season rather quickly except the winning town who has their parade and party which no one really covers except their local affiliates.
Everyone else has moved on Monday morning to talking about the draft.
At a fantasy football-based board from my increasingly distant past, one rare wise soul once observed how logically weird it was that everyone believed that if a QB wasn’t Brady or Manning, then, well, he sucked.
You can extrapolate that viewpoint to a host of issues. In a 32-team league, any team making the final was pretty good.
Without looking, I’ll take a stab at this. So, 2 teams beat the Chiefs and Patriots. And then 2 teams won it against other teams. Hmmm…
Is it… Rams, Buccaneers, Eagles, Broncos?
ETA: wow, surprisingly I got it right! I got Rams and Buccaneers quickly, then after some time I guessed Eagles and was pretty sure that was correct (easy to remember Nick Foles and Philly Philly). Then finally Broncos as a wild guess at the end, and it was correct. I surprised myself.
49: Patriots 28-24 over Seahawks [Pete Carroll, OH NO! I love this!]
50: Broncos 24-10 over Panthers 51: Patriots 34-28 (OT) over Falcons 52: Eagles 41-33 over Patriots 53: Patriots 13-3 over Rams 54: Chiefs 31-20 over 49ers 55: Buccaneers 31-9 over Chiefs
56: Rams 23-20 over Bengals 57: Chiefs 38-35 over Eagles 58: Chiefs 25-22 (OT) over 49ers
Yeah, the Seahawks are definitely not my first thought when it comes to teams who miracle their way to a single championship and then never have a chance at a second.
I don’t think losing in the Super Bowl has the stigma implied in the first post. Of course both teams would prefer to win. More money, more prestige, more opportunities, more respect. Everyone wants their team to succeed. Some fans are Stans. And the US in particular sometimes seem to value winning beyond reason, occasionally denigrating those who came close.
But it’s not like the 49ers actually wish they’d never made the playoffs. It’s not like the Lions would prefer a season where they only won three games, as happened three years ago. Apart from an occasional Bills joke, I haven’t heard anyone mocking the second best team, and would not take it seriously if I did. This game was more politicized than usual, and the beginning of the Chiefs season had some rough spots. This event gets more worldwide attention than most. Still, I don’t agree with the stated contentions. Someone has to win it, and overtime means a much closer game than most of them.
First off…and I stress that I speak as a 100% neutral party with zero rooting interest since John Elway retired…I don’t think the 49ers’ situation is hopeless, or that it’ll ever be. This is one of those ironclad franchises, like the Los Angeles Lakers, that never stays in the abyss for long. I fully expect them to win #6 within my lifetime.
How exactly was this game politicized again? I heard something about this but I’m drawing a blank. It wasn’t a not-standing-for-the-national-anthem thing again, was it?
gnarator - Funny thing about the Vikings…pretty much all the nasty press I hear about them is about how much they’re choking now; I haven’t really heard much about those four Super Bowl losses lately, and certainly not to anywhere near the same degree as the Bills. I’m pretty sure it’s mainly because this franchise has gone through so much BS (Herschel Walker trade, Randy Moss, that “Love Boat” thing) that no one thing stick outs.
The Cubs weren’t World Series failures. They were garbage. When your best shot in decades ends when your star shortstop boots a pillow-soft double play ball that would’ve gotten you out of the inning with just 1 run given up and opens the floodgates, and everyone blames some random schmuck in the stands for the loss…in the flippin LCS…you have no shot.
Dr. Strangelove - I’ve heard about this before, and barring a comprehensive study I have serious doubts that this was ever the case for more than a tiny handful of Olympic athletes. I remember that “You don’t win the silver, you lose the gold” ad campaign that ran in…Atlanta '96, I believe…and everyone immediately tore it to shreds. It was taken down after one week and no one’s ever tried to deliver a similar message since. Aside from blatant corruption or a badly skewed mindset (Aleksandra Trusova comes to mind), I don’t remember a silver medallist being bummed over it, at least not openly.
soloist - I can imagine. Here’s the thing, though: I heard that epic collapse talked about quite a bit in the following season, and after that…nothing. To this day, the only thing anyone remembers that season at all was how much of a moron Dan Orlavsky was (with a defender with a clear shot on him and absolutely no chance of avoiding a safety ). That seems to be the trend in this league, that a long stretch of losing generates contempt but a single horrible season, even unprecedented, quickly becomes a trivia answer.
Atamasama - An inch or a mile, a defeat is a defeat. To paraphrase another favorite saying of mine, you can’t build a reputation on what you almost did. My point was that it may be tempting to brand the Seahawks as failures, as long as they managed it once, you can’t. Or shouldn’t be able to.