I just can’t see why the fact that one group of college, um, students, not one of whom is personally known to you, scored more points in a basketball game than another group of equally unknown college students should make any difference in your life.
Actually, George, that makes all kinds of sense. It’s the kind of wisdom to which I aspire (season after season after season) but somehow never quite attain…
On the other hand, watching someone or some team achieve triumph can be uplifting. Take Lance Armstrong, for example, or the Boston Red Sox. “Americans love a winner,” Gen. George S. Patton observed. Sports can serve as a great metaphor, a blueprint to success and a source of personal inspiration.
You wouldn’t believe the letters he got from people with real problems — fighting cancer, losing their houses, going through divorces. … It was unbelievable, literally amazing, that because kids won a game that seemingly they couldn’t win, those people said, ‘There’s no reason I couldn’t get my life back together’ — quit doing drugs, stop drinking, whatever.
