Those of you who know me, know I am a sports fan.
I have used this column to talk about running, hockey, baseball, football, the Olympics, basketball, etc. I even suggested a regular boxing column to Sports Editor Tim Miller, but he said I was the only one who cares about the sweet science anymore.
So, the shutdown has been difficult. We’ve missed out on March Madness and Opening Day. The Olympics have been postponed as has been the Boston Marathon and the Memorial Tournament. The Stanley Cup tournament and NBA Playoff is anyone’s guess. The XFL is gone for good, again.
And while we are left with nothing new, sports channels are running old games.
But much as I enjoy sports, part of the enjoyment is the tension. It is difficult for me to get too into a game I know the outcome for. And even if for some reason I don’t remember the specific score, I do know how it fits into the larger piece of that teams’ season — did they or did they not win a championship.
Even so, my sons get into them, so I still watch.
But the replays remind me of my too-short childhood.
As a child, I loved NFL football and was a massive fan of the Washington Redskins. I knew all the players and their positions. My father would take me several times each summer to the team’s training camp, so I had even met many of the players.
I knew what plays coach Joe Gibbs would run. I knew why.
The way some children obsess over sharks or dinosaurs or trains, I was an obnoxious consumer and an even more obnoxious over-sharer of football facts.
In 1983, I was 7 years old. The Redskins were the defending Super Bowl Champions. They went 14-2 in the regular season and had not lost since Columbus Day. They blew the doors off the Rams on New Year’s Day in the opening round of the playoffs. They struggled to beat San Francisco, but that team was more talented than I knew and it would prove itself over the next decade.
That put the Skins in Super Bowl 18 against the Los Angeles Raiders. I didn’t hate the Raiders. In fact, I didn’t know much about them. An AFC team, they weren’t worth thinking about.
But the Super Bowl got out of hand quick and turned into a rout. I remember thinking the Redskins needed help, so I would petition God. Actually, I thought I would trap Him into helping, as so many children do, by telling Him He needed to prove His existence by securing a Redskins win. One play later, literally one play later, Joe Theisman threw screen pass which got intercepted and returned for a touchdown. “Holy Cow!” I thought, ‘Even God can’t stop the rout!’ The Raiders won 38-9. The 38 points still stands as the most points ever scored by an AFC team in a Super Bowl and it is still the largest margin of any AFC Super Bowl victory.
I was devastated. I was heartbroken. As a child, I had put a lot of my identity into being a Redskins fan and the loss shattered me, not to mention God had apparently abandoned me also.
So, imagine my sheer joy, my unmitigated rapture when I learned that summer, there would be a replay of the Super Bowl on television. I don’t know that, short of my wife saying yes and learning I would be a father, I have ever been happier about a piece of news. It was as if the NFL knew it wasn’t right for the Redskins not to be champions and the teams were going to face off again.
I was confident the Redskins would not fall again. I trusted that Joe Gibbs was too good a coach to let his team lose. He would figure out a plan. This time, the Hogs would impose their will. The defense would stand up. The Raiders would learn their win was a fluke. They would go back to the AFC, and report they wanted nothing to do with the Redskins!
Best of all, the wrong of January would be righted. When the Redskins won this time, the Raiders would be stripped of the stolen crown and it would be awarded, rightly and permanently, to Washington.
The replay was set for Saturday night. I arrived at my seat early, but my father was not there. This was unusual, as we loved watching together. As the game began, I realized this game was not going any better for the Redskins. When the Raiders scored on a blocked punt, again, I could not believe the Redskins were making the same mistakes as last time.
I called for my father and asked why he wasn’t watching. He said he didn’t enjoy the game the first time, so he certainly didn’t want to see it again.
Wait! What…? Again? Stop. What?
It was then my father explained the difference between replaying the game, which has never happened, and watching a replay of the game.
I was once again devastated. The sheer ecstasy of minutes earlier had been replaced with anger, disappointment, embarrassment and confusion.
I wept.
A torrent of frustration that the Redskins had not only lost six months ago, but now even the chance to even the score had been ripped from me.
My mother thought that was funny and began to laugh, so I turned on her. All the emotion of the last 60 seconds came out like a volcano.
I stormed from the house. Finally realizing my trauma, my mother followed me and now tried to console me. That only made it worse. She said she wasn’t laughing at me, she was laughing with me. I explained, as best a 7-year-old could, that Redskins football, in those days, was not a laughing matter.
Eventually, my family left me alone in the back yard to sit and ponder what could have been.
To this day, that moment, more than any other — not Santa’s revelation, not job losses by my father, not moving repeatedly, not even the predictable death of my mother a few years later — that moment stands out as the moment I lost my innocence and my childhood died.
-Mac Cordell was a reporter.