In Appreciation of the Now

Sports are a future endeavor. It draws excitement not necessarily from what just happened but—rather—what soon may occur. There’s always a special unbearable hunk-of-iron-in-your-chest feeling when watching a reliever work with runners on, late, as he tries to navigate a mess without ruining what took the rest of the team a few hours to build. That’s the draw: the same emotions that make you pace the room and mutter profanities bring you back the next day, hoping that tonight’s conflict and resolution are just as awesome as the one that came before.

As I’m writing this article, the Detroit Lions blew a 24-7 lead in the NFC Championship in truly excruciating fashion. They bungled a 4th down, watched the 49ers enjoy a miracle touchdown drive helped by some Drew Pearson-esque tip drill luck, and then cratered completely when their running back fumbled to set up San Francisco with a field so short they could have fallen over forward and scored. It was brutal. 

Their head coach, Dan Campbell—perhaps the wisest football man to be packed into such a beefy meat suit—offered an insight you don’t often hear from coaches. “This may have been our only shot,” he told the media. “Do I believe that? No. However, I know how hard it is to get here, and it’s going to be twice as hard to get back to this point next year,” he continued.

Campbell gave these quotes knowing that his ace offensive coordinator was gone, in all but physical presence, while his QB will likely double his salary cap hit with a new contract this offseason.

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The common refrain following a finished season for a team expected to lose much earlier is one of faint praise. “They’ll be back next year,” one may declare. “They were playing with house money,” or "this is just the start of their window." These are valiant predictions, offerings of respect meant to soothe the pain caused by a loss no less stinging than it would have been given higher expectations. They rest upon the foundation of sports knowledge that fuels each and every fan: that next year can always be better.

Yet, they forget the other side of that card: next year can always be worse.

Success is—to everyone except the Bill Belichick and Tom Brady Patriots—slippery, even fleeting. A new year brings new people, new vibes. The previous season’s labor is scrubbed from the immediate record books, forcing every player, team, coach, and executive to start at the same place as everyone else: 0-0. The new season cares not for the previous one’s ventures—nor does it offer rewards for its positives. The same pitfalls expertly navigated can suddenly prove impossible to traverse, cutting short a winning line that seemed potentially endless just a few months ago.

It’s as if—after coming painfully close to finishing a challenging platform game—you were knocked back to the start. And now Sonny Gray is a Cardinal. Also, the team has no more money.

There’s an ethos to sports culture that declares anyone but the winner irrelevant. Never mind forward steps and progress; all who fell short must be ignored and treated as lesser beings. This myopia may miss some true beauty: the spectacle of rare, individual successes, the tiny little gifts once only rarely observed by the fans of whatever team finally turned it around. Perhaps their ultimate failures are disappointing, but there should be value in reaching the plateau in the first place. Should we ever believe that Royce Lewis’s postseason homers and Pablo López’s seven shutout in Houston stand as meaningless accomplishments? 

I think these moments have a lot to offer. They represent the tangible, realized finality of a team whose foundation was built some time ago. Their existence isn’t at the whims of the often careless forces that watch and guide our sports through their seasons. Their memories cannot be altered or erased. 

Building optimism for the future isn’t a bad thing. Lions fans could tell you if they didn’t have that critical thought, they likely would have given up years ago and become monks. But always looking forward can cause you to miss the present—and sometime down the road, you may realize the golden future never came. Tomorrow never knows; today is all we can experience.