Are we expecting too much perfection?

One of the standard tropes you see a lot is that we don’t teach kids how to win anymore. Everybody gets a trophy for “participating” and winning is so meaningless the point of keeping score is lost. Excellence is not rewarded.

But is that really the case?  I wonder if we, collectively as sports fans, are shifting to only rewarding perfection, to tilting the table to where most champions should end the year undefeated if they are really a “champion.”

Look as college football, where there is a national rending of garments if it appears that at least one team entering the national championship game isn’t undefeated.  The debate over who is number one used to revolve around debating what 2 or 3 loss team had the easiest schedule, but now unless the match-up is between an undefeated team and a one-loss team, it’s seen as illegitimate.  

Arguing against this is the fact that—by adopting a four team playoff system—the NCAA is giving a team ranked as low as #4 a shot at the championship, something that happened the first time out when Ohio State, which had been ranked as low as #22, made the playoffs as the #4 team and ended up winning the national title.  I would reply that Ohio State was a one-loss team and the fact that it was rated so low proves how much perfection is valued; a single early loss makes a team appear unworthy of a championship.

And let’s not even talk about how major programs schedule "cupcakes” to play during the season, all the better to approach the post-season without a loss.

Look at college basketball, where the NCAA playoff was seen as mediocre coming in because there was no undefeated team like 2015’s Kentucky having a chance to win the tournament and end the year undefeated.  Of course the two teams playing in the final, Duke and Wisconsin, only had three losses in the regular season, but compared to zero, three is a big number.  As with football, an single loss early in the season can send a team’s ranking plummeting.

My suspicion, for which I am too lazy to collect any evidence, is that increasingly college, high school, and pre-high school sports are increasingly tilted to where the champion in any league or division is likely to be undefeated, or very close.  If you think about it, if every favorite defeated every underdog in the NFL, then every season would see one 16-0 team and one 0-16 team.  This rarely happens, but that doesn't mean we don't expect it.

Of course this doesn’t apply to baseball, where, as the old saying goes for the pros, every team wins 60 games, every team loses 60 games, and it is how the other 42 come out that matters.

I think the result of this trend towards expecting perfection of winning sports teams is that the best players are not exposed to losing, and are ill-equipped to handle it.  Look at Kyle Lowry of the Toronto Raptors, whose team was losing to the Cleveland Cavaliers and instead of playing harder he had to go to the locker room DURING THE GAME to “decompress.”  After he left the game the Cavs went on a 12-2 run and the series was effectively over. Lowry played college basketball at Villanova, which lost only three games in his final season, but he had some experience with losing with the Memphis Grizzlies.

Look at Cam Newton, who last year finished a nearly perfect 15-1 season for the Carolina Panthers, a record built on the fact that they didn’t play a single team with a winning record at the time of the game.  He was so upset at losing in the Super Bowl that he couldn’t speak with reporters after the game.  He expected to win; he was wrong, and he couldn’t handle it.

Look at Russell Westbrook, who (when the Oklahoma City Thunder had a 3-1 edge on the Golden State Warriors) was asked if he thought Steph Curry was a good defender, and he laughed.  He’s probably still laughing as he watches poor defender Steph Curry and the Warriors take on the Cavs in the NBA finals.

OK, I get it, athletes have to have confidence. I can even forgive the kid on the Detroit Pistons who insisted he was “in LeBron James’ head” as the Pistons were swept by the Cavs.  But no one is perfect.  No one is invincible.  No one wins every game.  But that is what it seems like an increasing number of players believe.