When a win becomes embarrassing

I saw a sports item in Yahoo about this Florida HS football team that had to defend its 83-0 win. As the story goes, it appears that they (the coach especially) are being taken to task for winning by such a wide margin. Like it was solely their fault and that their opponents had nothing to do with it. Or, that there should have been a point when they should have stopped scoring so as not to embarrass their opponents.

Anyone who plays seriously in any kind of sport knows that this is simply not possible. A game is a game. It is not an event to score brownie points with your opponent, or to be voted the nicest person on earth. It is not a PR event. It is a competition.

I remember the only tennis tournament I entered in a time long ago and in a galaxy far, far away. After going through several rounds, I ended up at the finals facing – my best tennis mate.

I knew her to be competitive and strong since I’d been playing against her for the longest time. I also knew her strengths and weaknesses as I knew she knew mine. My only prayer was that I would not humiliate myself.

I won, 6-0.

Did she take me to task for it? She ribbed me about it, of course, but she was the first one to defend me when a mutual, non-playing friend playfully asked me how I could have gone and given her a zero.

“There’s simply no other way to play. Even if she wanted to, she couldn’t change her strokes. And I really didn’t want her to. It was one of those days when she was playing great and my tennis wasn’t up to par,” she said in Cebuano.

And she was right. Because my winning point came from her – she hit the ball into the net and gave me the match.

Nevertheless, I really didn’t want to dwell on the points – only that I won. Of course, it would have been better if I’d done it against the trash-talking, all dolled-up, ‘I think I’m so great’ Filipino wife of a foreigner that I’d played against earlier. But that I won at the expense of a good friend didn’t take away my right to rejoice in my win.

As the high school football team has every right to celebrate theirs. Nowhere in the story does it imply that they won by cheating or foul play. In fact, they lost last year to the same team that they’d just outscored.

So it seems funny – this gentleman’s game that they are suddenly being asked to play. And it’s not exactly fair to the underdog either. No losing team, especially one that came up scoreless, wants bread crumbs thrown their way.