The Value of Losers

When did we decide that winning was the only thing that mattered? The Super Bowl is next week, and even though the winner will be declared the greatest team to ever play football (this year) I’m pretty sure the fans from both teams are happy enough that they’re even in the big game. In fact, I’m pretty sure some teams were excited to make the playoffs (Chiefs, Seahawks, Bears,) and I’m also sure that there were plenty that were ecstatic with how this season went even if they didn’t make them (Rams.) But we won’t hear about these teams and players because they “fell short.” Fell short of what? For a team to win a Super Bowl, everything has to be perfect. They have to avoid or overcome injuries to key players, everyone has to be exceptional at their job when they’re required to, they have to be in the exact spot at the right moment, not too late not too early, and the refs have to make calls in their favor. It’s a Herculean and almost impossible task. There are thirty two teams in the National Football League, sixteen in each conference, and only six make the playoffs. That means that over 62% of the League doesn’t make the post season. It means that a team only has a little greater than 3% chance of winning everything. Winning a championship is as much about luck as it is about skill because in any sport, success and failure are only a torn ACL away from each other.

This is why I think we need to step back a bit here as fans. Dallas fans, for instance, I think are screwed every year. Regardless of what the team actually looks like, there are mounds of pressure heaped on the Cowboys every year, even though the last time they won more than one game in the playoffs was over a decade ago. Their expectations are so astronomical that making the second round of the playoffs, an achievement many teams would kill for, is a letdown for Jerry’s Boys. I can’t believe that the only measure of success in a game of inches and teamwork is by rings. Trent Dilfer has more rings than Dan Marino. Kevin Faulk has more rings than Barry Sanders. I wouldn’t take Trent Dilfer over Dan Marino or Kevin Faulk over Barry Sanders NOW. No one’s ever going to say that Dilfer was better than Marino or Faulk was better than Sanders because it’s simply not true. Dilfer’s ring was incidental. Faulk was an important cog in a bigger machine. While both did their jobs, that doesn’t mean that they were the reasons behind the wins. This is the same fallacy people often bring up in the Peyton Manning vs. Tom Brady discussion. But what people forget is that, despite his three rings to Manning’s one, Brady has never played and won with a subpar defense or without a coach widely considered to be a genius. Marino never played with Ronnie Lott or with Emmitt Smith. Team success is not a fair measurement of individual achievement.

This is the same in the NBA. The best team in the last decade for my money didn’t win a championship. The 2004-2005 Phoenix Suns boasted Steve Nash, Amar’e Stoudemire, Shawn Marion, Joe Johnson, and Quentin Richardson, and were coached by Mike D’Antoni. Nash won the Most Valuable Player award and D’Antoni won the coach of the year award, and the team helped reinvent basketball. D’Antoni instituted the seven seconds or less rule, and the Suns flourished. And yet, the team went out in the Western Conference Finals. No team before or since has had the same kind of impact without winning a championship. They are, I think, the ancestor for teams like the Golden State Warriors, Minnesota Timberwolves, and the Los Angeles Clippers who are entertaining despite the lack of wins. They’ve brought fun back to the game despite the sport and they’re probably never going to make the Finals.

Sports are entertainment, but they are also a form of expression. Games are a display of humanity. Seeing a group of men come together for one reason is not only entertaining, it’s inspiring, whether they win or not. You play together or you die alone, and sometimes, even when you play together you lose. The wins and losses aren’t what matter though. The past two years, the best games I’ve seen from the NFL had only one playoff team (Browns vs. Lions two years ago, Packers vs. Steelers last year.) It comes down to the same thing we’ve heard since we read the Odyssey in high school: the destination isn’t as important as the journey. Why can’t we enjoy the ride any more?

Baby Don't Hurt Me

I think the existence of love is one of the biggest pieces of evidence for the existence of God. The fact that there is a force that exists that we all know in some form or another that can transform us all into stammering children is something that I don’t think science can every fully explain. The love between parent and child, husband and wife, heck even owner and pet is something that is so perfect and infallible in its way that I can’t imagine it coming from anywhere besides outside of the flawed world we live in. When we see something like that in action, I think it makes us all feel better. It’s not really something that can be controlled either. I see it when my parents look at each other and hear it when my married friends talk about their significant other. The bond between them reverberates loud enough that even simpletons like me can feel it.

And I feel it a lot, actually. I’ve been fortunate in my life to have been surrounded by love. For example: I’ve been lucky enough to watch one of my best friends grow in a relationship over the past six years and finally pop the question to the love of his life. Soon, they’re getting married, and there’s no doubt in my mind that they will be happy. It’s the little things they do. She smiles a bit wider when he talks. His eyes brighten up when her name is mentioned. They’re the missing piece to each other’s puzzle and seeing them be put together yields a kind of joy unlike any other.

Seeing that happen makes me believe anything is possible. The stuff in movies doesn’t seem as ridiculous now. I can actually believe the stuff in “When Harry Met Sally” now. The film brings us through the relationship of two people who go from hating each other to being friends to loving each other and does so convincingly. After seeing the impact love and the loss of love has in the real world, it becomes abundantly clear that people will, as the great philosopher once said, do anything for love. No other emotion could make that happen. No other species loves its mates. No one can really explain what it is. And that’s what makes it really special.

"Misery on Display"

I’m not a big country music fan. I don’t like the flag waving stuff, just because I don’t think wrapping a song in a flag makes it any better. Often times, there’s just too much twang. Other times it’s just too bland. When country music is done properly, though, it really is a unique art. Merle Haggard did it right. Johnny Cash did it right. And Gary Allan does it right.

Allan is, after a fashion, a student from the Dwight Yoakum music school, who was himself a disciple of the late, great Buck Owens. Interestingly enough, he represents his own niche in country at this point. In an industry dominated by songs about love and beer, Allan almost defiantly sings about the perils of being love sick, alcohol, and pain. Very few would even attempt to cover Todd Snider’s “Long Year,” but Allan takes the song about attending Alcoholics Anonymous and infuses it with the experience and understanding of a man who’s been there, that Snider’s version lacked. He plays against type by taking songs that are anything but uplifting and placing upbeat music behind all of it, giving depression a groove.

In 2005, Gary Allan wrote one of my all time favorite albums. “Tough All Over” was written and recorded after the suicide of Allan’s wife, and his pain practically pours out from each track. Even his cover of Vertical Horizon’s “Best I Ever Had” takes on a different meaning under Allan’s distinctive vocals. The album itself is a departure from Allan’s usual fare, and represents a shift in his usual style. But, of course, it has to. After an event like that, there’s no way Allan could go back to singing good but relatively shallow songs like “Smoke Rings in the Dark.”  This is the point when Allan began to truly flex his artistic muscles as he worked through his pain. Song writing, Allan has said, served as therapy, one of the few outlets he found to keep himself sane in an impossible situation. The end result of his torment is twelve tracks that all deal with his pain on one level or another, and explores his regrets and after thoughts of his marriage. The album moves from callousness to sheer depression to anger to remembrances of the past to redemption to loss to regret to explanation as Allan deals with grief. He notes, almost sardonically, how an object that used to represent love and devotion haunts him. “Ring” is a song about a man who’s left holding his wedding band after his wife left him. “Puttin Memories Away” is about cleaning up the mess left after death. Grief and guilt combine in “No Damn Good” as he tries to figure out life without his lover. As Allan shares his grief, the songs become more and more about us as an audience as much as they are about him. While Allan’s situation is all but unimaginable to most, we begin to see shards and fragments of our own lives on display. “Promise Broken” is as much about Allan’s regrets as it is about our everyday mistakes. In grief, we always look back and see all the missteps we made. I’ve really only heard this type of songwriting done once before, that I remember, with Patty Griffin’s “Long Ride Home,” and for Allan to be on Griffin’s level in any regard means that he must be doing something right.*

After “Tough All Over,” Allan has continued to write and perform songs that few of the glitter country crowd would touch. His first single from his latest album, “Today,” is about a man who watches the woman he loves marry someone else. Allan has continued to grow as an artist, and while I fear he will never top “Tough All Over,” in a way that is how it should be. An album as seemingly perfect (well, in my opinion at least) as that requires an almost perfect storm to occur. There are albums, such as Carol King’s “Tapestry” that are not only great in their own right, but represent a significant shift in the alignment of the music industry. Allan’s album represents a shift from the glib pop rock country that had taken over the radio to a more guttural type. While the industry has slowly but surely wandered back to the confection, Allan has done the opposite, moving more and more away from the accepted topics, tapping into the darkness, pain, and honesty that lie within us all. He may never produce an album as perfect as “Tough All Over,” he’ll certainly never put out an album he doesn’t care about. And, in a world of Justin Beibers and Lady Gagas, that’s saying something.

*Most of Griffin’s songs discuss regret in some way or other, while managing to remain fresh. Griffin, it seems, is concerned with finding new viewpoints to speak from, and regret is a universal theme.