Losing Sucks

With the exception of the people who jobs are literally a matter of life or death situations - such as doctors, nurses, police, fire fighters, circus freaks, Tom Cruise, etc. - i can't imagine any job that has the highs and lows of working in athletics and the highs are incredibly high and the lows are incredibly low.

Except for the extreme situations - like when a student-athlete dies - the worse days of my job are the ones when we lose. Losing sucks. What makes my job suck more after a loss than others in athletics, such as marketing, facilities, etc., is that we have to make the athletes and coaches do the one thing they don't want to do after a loss: talk. After a loss no one wants to talk to the media. They'll go see the trainers or meet with a coach, but after a loss all they want to do is crawl inside a hole. It's my job to get them into the interview room.

It's much easier to get coaches into the media room because they know it's their job. They're being paid to be here so they understand it needs to be done. Student-athletes are a different story. The best way to get them into the room is stroke their ego, tell them that players with character are the ones that talk after losses or that if they really want to be a leader, they can chose when to lead, you talk after a win then you're going to have to talk after a loss.

Saturday night the emotional swings that come with athletics were front and center. One of the great parts about my job is that I get to be on the field for the final five minutes of the game. After a poor first half, we fought back to tie the game in the fourth quarter and we had the momentum. Clemson hadn't done much the second half and if we could get the ball back we surely we're going to score. Then it happens. Our defense is caught off-guard and Clemson takes the ball from midfield down to our one-yard line. Ball game. They punch it in and go on the game.

Now instead of celebrating the win everyone's heads our down. Holly Rowe is on her way to the other side of the field to talk to the younger Bowden, not the guy who says "Hey buddy" when you see him in the hallway. The job just got that much harder and the next few days there will be a black cloud hanging over the athletic department. It's a lot easier to stay in the press box until 1 a.m. after a win, but following a loss all you want to do is go home and go to bed or drown your sorrows with a cold soak and that's just the support staff, imagine what the coaches and players feel.

Losing sucks.