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Transcript

Honorable Competition Still Exists · Check with Chip

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Check with Chip, brought to you by Operation
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Blue Dot Red, turning the blue dot red one podcast
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: at a time. As I mentioned on Friday, I was
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: part of a contingent of Maxwell's that attended the Big
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Red football game at Michigan State this past weekend. I've
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: been to road game wins and road game losses. Winning
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: is better. Spartan Stadium has concrete corridors that Similar to
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Lincoln Memorial Stadium and other big old battleship stadiums of
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: college football, Nebraska, of course, won. And as jubilant Husker
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: fans streamed through the corridors after the Nebraska victory, the
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: corridors reverberated with thunderous repetitions of the signature call-and-response chant,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Go Big Red! Go Big Red! It's a risk going
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: to a road game. You block out a weekend of
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: your life and spend hundreds or thousands of dollars. For
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: my 60th birthday gift four years ago, my two oldest
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: sons took their Irish Husker fan father to the game
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: in Dublin. I was simultaneously touched and terrified. Touched by
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  Speaker 1: the gesture by my sons, yet terrified again. that I
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: would travel back and forth across an ocean to watch
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: my team once again lose a winnable game, which is
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: exactly what happened. In many ways, it was the trip
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  Speaker 1: of a lifetime, but we lost the game. I'm a
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: competitive person. If my team loses, that leaves scar tissue.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: I did not pay for that trip to Ireland, and
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: yet I still felt ripped off by the dysfunctional play
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: of the team. Then head coach Scott Frost would be
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: fired a few weeks later. I said Friday that I
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: was briefly stepping away from turning the blue dot red
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: to help turn Spartan Stadium red. There was not as
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: much red as I thought there would be. There wasn't
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: as much green either, the color of Michigan State. The
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: official attendance was 68,000 plus. There may have been 68,000
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: tickets sold. but there could not have been more than 60,000
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: people in a stadium that holds 79,000-plus. Red ruled by
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  Speaker 1: the end of the game after the Spartan fans had
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: filed out and the Husker fans remained to relish the
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: victory and celebrate with the team. I'm doing a podcast
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: on this because there were several occasions where Michigan State
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: fans made a point of saying they, or people they knew,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: had attended a game in Lincoln, and it had been
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: a great experience. They wished us the same in East Lansing.
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  Speaker 1: It was a very enjoyable experience. The Spartan fans in
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  Speaker 1: general were very hospitable, even after their team lost. One
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  Speaker 1: Spartan fan, he may have enjoyed a few adult beverages,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: came up to us outside our hotel and said, Are
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: you going to apologize? I thought he meant apologize for
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: benefiting from some of the controversial calls by referees during
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: the game that went in Nebraska's favor. Before I could
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: generate a diplomatic response, my daughter simply said, no. The
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: man held out his fist for a fist bump and
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: congratulated my daughter for giving the proper response. He said
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: he had run into numerous Nebraska fans who were apologizing
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: for winning the game. He said you won fair and square. Congratulations.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: This is important for our society. Honorable competition, ennobling competition
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  Speaker 1: that raises the character of all participants is crucial to
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: the health of American society. America has been built on
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  Speaker 1: honorable competition. It manifests itself most prominently in sports, business,
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: and politics. The challenge of competition can make people and
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: things better if it happens in a live-and-let-live spirit. It
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: can destroy people and things if it is hate-fueled blood
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: sport in which competitors view each other as the spawn
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: of the devil with no redeeming value. In politics, it
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: leads to a situation in which some consider okay lethal
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: violence against competitors. It was good to see that the
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: spirit of ennobling competition is still alive and well in
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  Speaker 1: college football. May it become the norm again in politics.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: That's Check with Chip. I'm Chip Maxwell. Thank you for listening.