The Eagles Were Accused of Winning Ugly

People are accusing the Eagles of winning ugly. David Murphy, Sports Columnist for the Inquirer, wrote that is what makes them great. That statement is surprising coming from a sportswriter as sports writers in Philly are notorious for giving teams an abundance of negative criticism. It was great to see a sportswriter turn the ugly to great.

I know little about other sports, but I do know something about football as I have played it and coached it. In fact, winning ugly is proclaimed by sportswriters is true in all sports particularly the ones tied so close to the end of the contest. Calling the win by the Eagles ugly has the downside of saying that the team was lucky to win. Sure, the offense of the Eagles had their troubles, and the defense was beyond criticism.

Let me apply this concept of winning ugly to two other aspects of life that I believe are important. In religion we have a concept called grace. Grace is God’s unmerited favor, kindness, and loving benevolence toward humanity, a gift that is freely given and cannot be earned. In essence, it means to suspend judgment over what another person or group expect rather than judgment.

Ugly assumes that expectations of one team over another were not met by an outside observer.

Grace is at the heart of what creates positive change in another person. This is true in counseling as well. The person expects the counselor to judge them, but the counselor relates to them in a different way that is not judgmental and is empathetic and has unconditional positive regard for the person. That is what makes the change occur. Technically, it is called transference breaking old patterns of judgment.

In sports, the team that wins would expect that the win would be good enough. What good does it do the team to hear that their win was ugly? The team knows what they need to do to improve their performance.

Grace is giving someone the opposite of what people expect. Ugly is something that is a pejorative statement. This is not to say that the team is above reapproach. There are plenty of ways to inform another in life or in counseling to communicate that a change is needed, but it is the way that is communicated that counts. Would a counselor say to a client, “You are gaining great insight, but there are some parts of your personal growth that, for a better word, are ugly demonstrating that you don’t have your act together.

I have often counseled “injustice collectors” where they are not aware of their approach. They constantly frown upon anyone who has done something wrong. They look for the bad so that is what they see. They don’t see the glass of life as half full but choose to see the world as a glass that is half empty.

Does this mean that people in general and the Eagles in particular should not be judged? An attitude makes all the difference. I believe that if someone is going to be affected by a decision, they should be part of that decision making experience. That is why so many people who voted for Trump are angry for they got the opposite of what they thought they would get and the way the Trump Administration would act or behave.

I think that all of us particularly in life in general and sports writers in particular should be familiar with the words of Theodore Roosevelt who wrote “The Man in the Arena.” It is a quotation that guides my life and reduces that part of me that is judgmental. It is as follows:

“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deeds, who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Injustice collectors or those Monday morning quarterbacks should read the above quotation before they write or speak so their words have more grace and acceptance than harsh judgement. We have heard the aphorism many times that it is not only what you say but also the way that you say it. That is true for our interpersonal relationships and sportswriters and other professional critics of movies, food, or other experiences, et al. IT IS NOT THE CRITIC THAT COUNTS.