“I told them that I wish that I could take the pain away. I wish that…all that stuff would work out in the end.”
That was Baylor head coach Dave Aranda after his Bears just lost a 29-28 stunner to No. 4 TCU on a literal last second field goal.
The pain was visible on all the player’s faces; and you could hear the pain in the silence of 40,000+ Baylor fans at McLane Stadium last Saturday.
As a Baylor fan, this loss has been the toughest to get over since probably the 28-3 blown lead to Oklahoma in 2019 or to Michigan State in the 2015 Cotton Bowl. To be so close with ‘The Sign’ in the stands made it that much emotionally painful.
Not going to lie, I welled up on the drive home and have had recurring Baylor-TCU nightmares this week. But I don’t want to talk about the game and the pain; I already did that here, here and here.
I want to talk about perspective.
Perspective
Two weeks ago, after Baylor got sandblasted by Kansas State 31-3, fifth year senior one backer Dillon Doyle spoke about keeping perspective. About how he loved the game and his teammates, and how he had cherished the opportunity to line up and play alongside them for three more games.
Twenty-four hours later in Charlottesville, Virginia, however, UVA football players Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr. and D’Sean Perry were shot and killed on a charter bus after returning from a class field trip in Washington D.C.
They were killed by a former teammate, Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., who brought a gun on the field trip to see a play and then shot five people, killing three, when they arrived back on campus.
He shot Chandler while he was sleeping.
It has been an unfathomable and unconscionable scene in Virginia for the past two weeks where the entire state, campus and team have morned. The team has canceled their last two games of the season against Coastal Carolina and Virginia Tech, their traditional post Thanksgiving rival for the Commonwealth Cup.
Is it a conicendence that my 11th High School reunion is this week where so many from my class either went to UVA or VT?
The 2007 Virginia Tech mass shooting—the highest at the time— was right before our freshman year and arguably the beginning of this 21st century mass shooting era that has defined our lives. And now 15 years later, a shooting at Virginia.
There is no way to rank these atrocities, nor would you want to, but with each news repot there is no denying that the numbness spreads.
In truth, there have been 607 mass shootings in the U.S. in 2022, which is dangerously close to the record of 638 from just a year ago.
Yet, no politicians have been unable to get the job done of changing legislation to help their constituents live in safer communities and nation. Despite the lengthy timeline of massacres in America.
So yes, Baylor lost in one of the worse ways imaginable. And yes, it was painful and in a vacuum it hurt.
But with the events of what happened to the UVA football team it is important to keep perspective.
That in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I am thankful for my friends, family and the luxury to have sports hurt so much.
To understand that those in power are incompetent, incapable or unwilling to make change for the better, which makes going to school—from elementary to college—a daily lottery of survival.