Winning Isn't Everything

The renowned NFL coach Vince Lombardi (the one for whom the Superbowl trophy is named) once said, “winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.”  Though it’s now disputed whether or not he actually coined the phrase, the quote will forever be tied to Lombardi’s legacy as the personification of what it means to compete in American professional sports.  As an edict for how one should prioritize her or his life goals, this quote is problematic at the very least.  But as an observation of the intensely competitive nature of most sporting competitions, the quote is dead on. 

So why the disparity?  Why is it so important to win at these games, which are completely staged, and generally have no functional impact on our daily lives (apart from that which we artificially manufacture through unwarranted emotional investment)?

The reason why winning is so important varies according to the nature of ones participation in the game.  For a manager or owner it’s pretty simple.  The more wins you rack up, the more revenue your franchise will generate, and the less likely you are to get fired.  To an extent, the profit motive can also be used to explain the athletes’ apparently irrational need to win at all cost.  But that’s only a small part of it.

If you’ve ever watched a men’s recreational league playoff game (any sport will do), or even a high school championship match, you’ll find that those players care about winning just as much as the pros, sometimes more.  This is the case even when the only prize to be won is a T-shirt that reads “2010 AAA Senior Boys Intramural Champions”.  Somehow the glory of victory alone is enough to make grown men weep, throw temper tantrums, and even start fist fights.  Part of the reason for this has to do with the way that North American society constructs the idea of sport in relation to masculinity.  Those of us who have ever played anything competitively have at some point undergone intensive psychological conditioning that teaches us that we’re less of a man if we don’t bring home that coveted “W”.  Whether it’s that extra pat on the back a young boy receives from his coach or father after a hard-fought victory, or the quiet, tense drive home after blowing a large lead.  These messages from older male role models have a huge impact on the young male psyche.  Therefore as men, our self worth is tied to our masculinity and, therefore, our ability to demonstrate that masculinity by producing wins.

But what about the sports fans who don’t have anything to prove?  What explains their child-like allegiance to their favourite franchise, and why is their ability to be happy is dependent on the success or failure if these corporate entities we affectionately call “clubs”?

A couple months ago I was watching game 7 of the NBA finals at a downtown pub along with a group of about 15 to 20 friends.  The group was divided pretty evenly between Lakers fans and Celtics fans, so the antagonism naturally heightened the stakes.  As the score see-sawed back and forth in the final quarter I could feel my mood going up and down with it.  At one point I had to remind myself that if my team didn’t win, it would be the end of the world.  In fact, it wouldn’t mean a damn thing since it would have no material impact on my life whatsoever.  Truth be told, there have been times when I woke up the following day after a major victory by my favourite team or fighter only to realize that all of my problems and worries remained in tact despite the previous night’s events.  The feeling was so anticlimactic that it almost made me wish the other guys had won.

Of course this emotional investment is carefully planned and orchestrated by the leagues and the television networks in order to create a lucrative consumer product.  Part of the illusion is to convince viewer that the game is indeed a matter of life and death, because high stakes means high drama and high intrigue.  I would imagine the operating principle is similar to that of a Roman gladiator spectacle, where the athletes really were battling for their lives.  And if present-day social mores hadn’t evolved the way they have, I’m sure some of the corporate powers-that-be would have no qualms about sacrificing the occasional athlete in the interest of higher profits.

This phenomenon also explains why every major sports broadcast is preceded by a half-hour mini documentary that takes you into the lives of the athletes.  They introduce you to the player’s dying father or his little brother who has special needs.  This serves two purposes.  First, it reminds you how important it is for that player to win.  Second, it makes you feel like you have a personal connection with the athlete.  Within your consciousness, the player’s desires are anchored in real, lived experience rather than in the abstract so that his loss becomes your loss, thereby increasing the stakes exponentially.

Of course, for all this to work, we need to believe that the players want it as bad as the fans do.  However, this proposition is far from trivial. Remember, the players are usually millionaires with lavish lifestyles.  This is in stark contrast to the working-class men who comprise the majority of die-hard fans.  After a loss on Sunday afternoon the players return to their mansions and sports cars, whereas the fans return to their dreaded 9-to5’s.

Fortunately there is a sophisticated system in place to safeguard against players maintaining some semblance of perspective.  At the core of the system is the endoctrination of young male athletes that I spoke of earlier.  However, when this fails, the dutiful sports media is quick to take to task any athlete they deem to be too comfortable with losing.  Examples of this abound.  One of the things that sports writers most often praised Michael Jordan for was his almost Machiavellian need to win at all cost, even if it meant playing dirty, which he did often.  Similarly, I recall one instance where Darrell Armstrong, a former NBA journeyman who finished his career with the New Jersey Nets in 2008, was effusively lauded by the play-by-play commentator for the fact that he cries by himself in the locker room after every loss.  On the other side of the spectrum, after the 2004/2005 season when LeBron James failed to lead his team into the playoffs for the second consecutive year, the sports media bemoaned the fact that James didn’t appear sad enough in interviews.  One interview in particular drew their ire when he said something to the effect that basketball wasn’t the be-all-and-end-all of his life and that there were more important things besides winning, such as spending time with ones family.

In any other context this comment would seem completely reasonable, but not in the moral morass that is professional sports.  I can only imagine how all this must look to someone unversed in the inverted rationality of the sports world.  Players being eviscerated because they recognize that family is more important than winning?  Grown men crying because they lost a game?  And being applauded for it???

I don’t mean to suggest that there’s a massive conspiracy designed to control our minds so that we blindly subscribe to the winning-is-everything philosophy.  Rather this is a meme that has endured and thrived over time because it happens to serve the interests of those who occupy the top rungs of the capitalist ladder on which we are all perched.  In most cases, the purveyors of the meme are as much victims of it as the sports consumers. 

So Vince Lombardi was partially correct.  Given that, in the grand scheme of things, most sports victories are virtually meaningless, clearly winning isn’t everything.  But by buying into the notion that winning is everything, we ensure that, in fact, the system in the only thing that actually wins.