This isn’t about football.  It’s about winning and losing.  Perhaps I could say it in another way.  It’s really about losing, but winning in the long run.

Sports are always one of my favorite models in life because they’re usually so black and white – one side wins; the other side loses, and in between are the complications.

In the past month I’ve watched two great Hall of Fame quarterbacks – gods of their sport – lose big games, huge games on the international stage because each of them threw an interception in the closing minutes of the game and caused their team to lose the game.  First, Brett Favre, then Peyton Manning.

ESPN’s summation of yesterday’s game said this:

“With a 31-17 win, the New Orleans Saints are Super Bowl champions, and the Colts have to come to terms with missing out…

The game might have given us the first overtime in Super Bowl history, but on a third-and-5 and the Colts trying to drive for the tying score, Peyton Manning made a poor throw for Reggie Wayne against a blitz. Cornerback Tracy Porter jumped it, grabbed it and took it 74 yards for a touchdown.

It was the only turnover of the game, and clinched it for the Saints.”

I love and admire both teams – the Saints and the Colts.  As I watched yesterday’s Super Bowl I found my own passions going back and forth as each team grabbed the lead.  In the end, the best quarterback in the land blew it and lost.

Two weeks ago I watched the great Brett Favre blow it on possibly the last pass he will ever throw as a pro – a terrible way to end a glorious career.

We’ve all watched the child, who upon losing in the Monopoly game, freaks out and overturns the board ruining the game for the remaining players.  One is supposed to grow out of these kinds of moments, but as we all well know, that doesn’t always happen.

After these losing moments for each of these great men, the cameras mercilessly panned in closely to their faces and gave millions a chance to watch the millionaires lose.  I watched for the human moment – the tear in the eye, the slam down of the football, the wince, the hung head, the uncontrolled blink, the slightest sign of failure.

I got none of it from either man.  Instead, what I got, as the camera focused tighter and tighter, was the grace and poise of a champion, the cold steel of a man moving on to the next moment and leaving the loss behind.

With Payton Manning there was still a chance to win and no time for regret.  Oh, I’m absolutely sure he regretted the moment, but he had a team to lead, men to rally.

With Brett Favre the game was over the instant the interception was thrown – the game over, the season over and possibly the career over.  And yet on his face was the calm of a man walking to the supermarket on a pleasant spring morning.  Again, I’m absolutely sure he was being eaten up inside with disappointment and frustration, but this true champion lost with grace and dignity.

Some of us might say, “Well, after all, it’s just a game.”  Think again.  For these men, it’s so much more.  It’s a lifetime of hopes and dreams and acted out on the greatest of international stages with hundreds of millions of people watching and the cameras zooming in to catch every nuance of the human condition.

I take my hat off to these two men.  To be able to lose so gracefully with so much at stake is a great lesson for us all.  We raise our glasses to the winning triumphs of Johnny Unitas (such a great name for a quarterback), Joe Montana, Tom Brady, John Elway and Dan Marino, but we learn the most from the losing.

This morning I imagine each of these champions waking up in their beds just like the rest of us and lying there in the privacy of their own minds readying to face the day – moments we’d all like to bury our heads in the pillows.  I don’t know their thoughts and frustrations, their human emotions, their regrets, but I do know, that when it mattered most – there before all of us – they each lost with the dignity of true champions.

Congrats to each of you, Peyton and Brett, for being great human beings.

For more inspirational music, thoughts, and ideas from Peter Link,
please visit Watchfire Music.