Column:

Less talk, more wins

By Jacob Houska

Published Jan. 29, 2009

You can learn life's most valuable lessons in the places you'd least expect. Elementary school taught me how life is better when you keep things simple. High school football taught me how a good season can come from hard work, even if you suck. College taught me that those who show up run the world.

But I sure as hell didn't expect intramural sports to teach me anything besides the fact that Stankowski Field has a tendency to destroy peoples' knees.

I recently played on a flag football team composed of nine people who, for the most part, barely knew each other or didn't know one another at all. Everyone was quiet, everyone showed up, everyone played hard and, not coincidentally, our team kept winning. It seems that people show more respect and work a little harder when they are under the scrutiny of strangers.

It didn't really hit me that we were going places until seven games into the season we became the team of the week for having perfect sportsmanship and an unblemished record, standing proudly at seven wins, no losses. There were other undefeated teams out there, but one thing they all had in common was a big mouth and a narrow mind. What can sometimes make you look better than the rest of the crowd, I realized, is doing the opposite of what everyone else is doing.

We weren't the most talented -- even though I must admit we were pretty damn good -- but we were without a question the smartest team on the field. It's hard to use thinking power to excel in athletics, but it seemed we were doing exactly that. It wasn't rocket science, but you'd be amazed at how stupid people can be, and I realized how much more important it is to have a capable mind than it is to have a capable body.

Things didn't stay as easy as we had hoped, though. Eventually people started figuring out the crafty offense we ran that was engineered by two brothers on our team, one a medical school student, the other in physical therapy school. Other teams didn't quite understand the offense's intricacies, but they knew well enough how to run it. And we had no idea how to stop it. After a game in which we were up somewhere around 32-0 after the first half, and we nearly blew our commanding lead in the second half when they started running our plays, I quickly understood that if you're doing something that causes others to suffer, you had better be ready for them to do it right back to you.

After that little hiccup, everything started working in our favor. We played the fastest, most athletic team in the league, and an ice storm occurred hours before the game. It turned out spending $40 on turf cleats wasn't such a bad idea after all. We blew out yet another team, this time due to a combination of a great buying decision, terrible weather and sheer luck. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.

In the championship game, everything appeared to be turning around. Five players on our team had five games in a row leading up to the championship. We were tired, cold and missing one of our key players who was a casualty of Stankowski Field's hatred of healthy knees. We requested to reschedule, and the officials were on our side, but the other team was eager to play, with one of their players wisely blurting out, "We're pretty good, so you might want to just get it over with."

We ended up winning that game too. It felt pretty good winning against a group who griped every chance it got. I guess they learned a pretty valuable lesson too.

Sometimes it's not such a bad idea to keep your mouth shut.