“Fire in the Belly”
This will be short, not a particularly good trait of mine. Post game interviews are more curious than enlightening. In many cases, there is really little to say. One team won, another team lost. Some individual players had a good game, some had a bad game. One team had more luck, another team had less luck. One team had more inopportune errors and the errors of another team were less at inopportune moments in the game. Then add weather (in some games), injuries (how severe to whom), and the resulting victory is hardly a reflection of individual team member talent. That is why, I guess, sports are so popular and so endlessly debatable. Games like football, basketball, baseball, soccer, hockey, and so on will always be dependent on a whole host of uncontrollable variables.
With all the above it gets a little tiresome to hear grown men, who all realize the above, get so witlessly giddy-headed, shallow brained, in post game interviews. Why would anyone, with the remotest sense of common sense, thank God for the victory? What kind of God do they pray to who would fix sport contests? Apparently they think God cannot find it in His heart to prevent the many awful things that happen to good people, like a child getting raped, etc. but steps in to ensure a particular team or player has an outstanding game. How self-serving is that mentality?
Another one that defies rationality is the term “fire in the belly”. “We just wanted it more than them” On what basis is there for such nonsense? In what way can anyone possibly determined which team collectively wants to win more than the other? People react to stress in different ways. Some stay calm and express little emotion; others act out their emotional state, a perfect picture of effort and wild-eyed looniness. A player may do his best to do as trained, and let his/her body do as it was trained to do, and not let nervousness or overthinking interfere with learned athletic movements. Then at the end, having done just that, some bozo brained ignorant player on the winning team declares to the world that they (his whole team) just wanted to win more than the players on the other team).
Then comes the thanking mom, the better coaches, the better teammates, the better fans. The victory is always claimed to be ‘for the fans’, then a month later the same player may bolt to another team to make a bit more money. Why do so many players, after winning, have to mumble such nonsense as any of the above? Why the necessity to be so disingenuous? A few players are honest enough to say something like: “Somebody had to win and we are glad to be the lucky ones. We gave it our best and sometimes our best for a given day is good enough. I am glad it is over with. I myself feel good about winning, and am glad our fans are happy. It is good to win for the happiness it brings me now and the leverage it will give me at contract time. All this makes me a bigger public somebody, a bigger fish in the pond. My family and friends will be impressed and happy they can brag about me at school or in their own social circuit. So I am just happy, there is nothing else to say. Little is guaranteed in life, and certainly winning this game was not. Right now I am really really happy. With patience there will be time for me to be really really unhappy about circumstances in my life. I wish everyone could be lucky enough to have moments like this in their life. Peace."
