Whether it’s genes, or jeans, the focus on the evils of competition and winning grows louder with each passing season. And it boils down to one defining issue. It’s easier to sit and criticize than it is to work.
The attack on ‘winning’ from those who align themselves with the progressive point of view becomes more bold and aggressive with each passing day.
In the wake of recent columns on Marion Local football, their state-record 64-game win streak, and 15 OHSAA state titles in a span of 25 years…and other area schools who are pursuing a return to a winning tradition of their own…there were more responses this week denouncing the priority on winning – one writer claiming the now familiar position of ‘supremacy’, and possibly…American Eagle jeans.
I’m claiming too much beer, a laptop, and a tanktop…in the basement!
“It is time to teach a new perspective in the classroom and on the playing field,” this person wrote. “The need to stress winning is little more than a reminder by one group or individual that it’s supreme over another. It doesn’t work in the modern model of culture to reinforce that I’m better than you.”
Your response that ‘administrators have exchanged what it means to truly excel for idealistic placebos’ is another example of the tiresome obsession with economic and racial advantage.”
It will come as no surprise that I believe none of this. And neither do most of you. If I asked a thousand people in west-central Ohio I might count on one hand those who actually cling to some notion that the worst thing about winning is that someone has to lose. What we once played, and did for fun…because our dads and coaches preached “you play the game to win” is now being threatened by a micro minority growing in volume…whispering into young ears that “they just think they’re better than you.”
And they usually are, but not in the context that fits the narrative!
While there are those who shrink from ideological confrontation – equating winning with supremacy – you cannot pretend that it doesn’t exist, and that it will not continue to grow.
The question…is why?
The answer lies within another cornerstone of American values…that anything that’s good simply comes hard.
For example, winning requires hard work.
Scholastic achievement requires hard work.
Personal fitness is tough. Running a mile is hard. Sitting on the couch, eating Cheetos (I love ’em), is easy.
Character and morality requires an enlightenment and commitment that sets one apart from another.
Financial responsibility isn’t easy…to earn, save, and be responsible for paying your debts.
There is no better life lesson than the example of a person who works is likely to achieve more, have more, and be respected over those that don’t.
Life, dammit, is hard!
What this modern mindset really hates is the issue of competition – I want it more than you do. I’m going to earn it. I’m going to win!
Their doctrine believes no one should celebrate being more than another, sort of like what New York City’s about to find out…but that’s contrary to human nature. There have always been those who lived to work harder, do more, and rise above limiting circumstance.
Publisher Sonny Fulks writes OHSAA sports and Ohio State baseball for Press Pros Magazine.com.
This will never change. This, prior to hugging and handshake lines, is what made us a winning culture, and why people are willing to risk their lives to experience the American dream. And if you get your butt kicked on Friday night, so what? Come back next week prepared to do better.
Sadly, it’s true that administrators and politicians have caved – are caving – to the nonsense of believing that what we see on the playing field with our own eyes is something other than competition. Believing that one wins, and one loses, is evil.
What’s maddening is the ideology that one is predisposed to lose because of economic or ethnic bias, because it’s easier to live with than the numbers on the scoreboard. Marion Local wasn’t always supreme in football. Mysteriously, they got that way after 45 years of pretty much being like everyone else.
Those who were there to witness it say it had a lot to do with work.
Hard work!
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