Having clichés materialize before your eyes never gets old

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/10/2010 (5808 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

We have heard them all this season. The “tough times don’t last, tough people do” mantras, the “adversity doesn’t build character, it reveals it” proverbs. Yet finally, after 15 weeks of football, we saw at least two examples of individuals paying these clichés more than just lip service in our overtime victory.

It was the fourth quarter and we were down 32-11 and, in my mind, on the cusp of writing off the 2010 season completely and turning off our 25,000 remaining fans in attendance possibly once and for all. Our special teams had not executed the way we had hoped, our offence was not moving the ball like we needed them to, and our defence had just given up a couple of uncharacteristic quick scores against a team we had lost by only two points to the week before.

At this juncture I was sitting on the bench next to Deon Beasley and over walked our defensive co-ordinator Kavis Reed to have a chat with our freshman corner. I had no idea what had transpired up to this point, how Beasley had been playing, where he had been playing, or even if he had gotten dinged up. Most of the time I’m facing the wrong way during the game so I don’t necessarily get a good feel for what’s going on in the back end.

But when you are down by 21 points in the fourth and your co-ordinator comes over for a sit-down, you expect either a “lets go get ’em next time” talk, or a hair-melting evaluation. Deon received neither. My brain was a little rattled at the time but I could have sworn Kavis walked straight up to him and said, “I’m going to put you back at the field-side corner for the rest of the game and you’re going to make the pick six to win it all for us down the stretch.” I immediately looked over for evidence of the drug paraphernalia I now suspected my defensive co-ordinator had just sampled from.

I’m all for staying positive and optimistic and I’m good with that “it ain’t over til it’s over” jargon, but we were down by three majors and we were a 3-10 team. Who does coach Kavis think he is? Babe Ruth calling his shot or Joe Namath guaranteeing a victory? At that point, I would have been less surprised if coach had asked safety Ian Logan and I to switch positions for a series to give the B.C. Lions a different look in the game.

Granted, true professionals are consistent and play the same way whether you are up by 21 or down by the same margin, but telling a corner he was going to seal the deal with so much work still in front of us was too much of a stretch for even me to buy into. Yet this is just how some coaches lead their troops and show us how they believe in you. No matter what the score, situation, or obstacle in front of us, the right ones have the ability to inspire their players and give them the confidence to understand that anything is possible. Kavis Reed’s defence had already given up 25 of those 32 points, had been on the losing side of 10 games thus far in the season, and he still believed enough in his players that they could pull it out. The rest is merely prophetic.

On another part of the bench sat Steven Jyles, starting quarterback for more games in 2010 than any other pivot on the roster and recently relegated to backup status for our last chance at extended life support for this year’s post-season hopes. Steven was called into action at a time when almost half of our fan base had written off the game as an exercise in futility. He did not mope, sulk, or play like a scorned lover who felt he had been betrayed. He came into the game with the moxy of a practised veteran, rallied his boys on offence, and for the first time this season took the team on his shoulders and won the game for us.

The clichés are everywhere and abundant when you are 4-10, but they never get old when you get to watch them materialize in front of you.