WINNING IS EVERYTHING...

Winning is Living Fully...until the whistle blows!

It’s Football Season again, and winning is everything…especially for final games.

This week’s movie, watched three times for the inspiration... WE ARE MARSHALL. I believe it is destined to become a football classic, and I couldn’t stop the emotions easily overtaking me as I revisited my final season and game that same year, 1970.

The look and feel of the film, perfectly cast, superbly costumed, music exactly as I recall, and team spirit die-hard football players understand.

We Are Marshall is a spirit of loss and winning. It is a story of tragedy and coping with it. It is about life, and playing what is dealt us, but ever seeking to win...until the whistle blows.

Tears in my eyes each time I watched, I recall the feelings I had when I heard the tragedy on the news that night, November 14, 1970. I had played my final football game as a senior at Simi Valley High School; injured, I was carried off the field, to never wear pads again.

The feelings never leave; those of your final game, and what might have been, and what became of the youthful passion, and friends, and expectations.

That night: I saw “pure end zone,” when the hit I didn’t see coming happened. I recall the little voice, (instinct) was to “cut right” toward sidelines, but the goal was so close. I didn’t see the man clipping me from my left as right knee extended and I crumpled in a heap yards from the score. “Should’ve cut to my right,” I remember moaning as I tried to stand. The defensive player from Newbury Park High said, “Hey man. Come on. Get up!” I thought that was generous and pure class act.

Meyers and another team member saw my dilemma and came to bring me off the field. The player from the other side, I hoped might be there was busy… as teams reformed while I limped off. He probably didn’t even know it was me who was injured. Mike Carlisle was a church buddy, but Newbury Park High was his school and all we talked about for weeks was this match of prowess and wits. I wanted back in, begging for my leg to heal. It was gone, and that was it…my final game. And winning?

Little could I know that three years later Mike’s final game would also come so quickly; played out while serving his fellow man in San Salvador. A lot of final games for a lot of friends since, I still play the game of life and wonder… is “winning everything?”

The Marshall coach tells his team just before they board the plane for the flight that would kill them, “Years from now men, people won’t remember ‘how you played the game.’ It’s winning they will remember.”

Winning takes many forms, as the movie points out. Nothing beats actually “high score wins” in a game like football, but I think there were a lot of winners that night for Marshall, and for Simi Valley and Newbury Park High. And it has never left me.

Should’ve cut to the right! Here’s a trailer from the movie. I know you’ll enjoy.