sister-kissing

"Winning isn't everything. Men, it's the only thing!"
-Coach Red Sanders
"A tie is like kissing your sister."
-Coach Eddie Erdelatz

It would be hard to overstate the impact that the culture of sport has had on american society. Particularly among white men, whose voice was for so long America's only one. Having myself been a white male (the five longest minutes of my life), i ought know of such things. Our national values are those embedded in the turf of our fields of play. And nowhere is the essence of those values more revealed, than in our attitude toward tying. There was once a time when a tied game was an acceptable result of a well-played contest. A round of handshakes, with no chins held low. We gave our all, and found ourselves and our foe not lacking!
Seen many ties lately?
Like toll booth collectors, they've done disappeared.
Even as a youth, i could see the writing on the wall. Despite our zeitgeist's one nod toward a more noble philosophy of competition, journalist Grantland Rice's "It's not that you won or lost but how you played the game", it seemed from an early age that i was the only one among my peers taking those words to heart. I also had the good fortune to have a father who set an excellent example of how not to act. His hyper-competitiveness made backyard family games a fascinating study in people surreptitiously scrambling to NOT be picked for the winning side. The short-tempered dressing-down that was sure to follow any slip-up by one of his teammates, was a treat no one wanted. I can't recall him quoting Sanders directly, but Erdelatz's words sprang readily from his mouth. To this day, if he plays a game that ends in a tie, but has no provision by which a single winner may be then decided, he'll quickly invent one.
Why has the tie disappeared? Why is America more uncomfortable with tying, than outright losing? Is it something to do with the Vietnam war? We pulled our last soldier out in 1973. Was it a coincidence that in 1974, as football was eclipsing baseball to become our national sport, sudden death overtime arrived, heralding the end of all that tying nonsense? I remember murmurs as a child, that we didn't LOSE Vietnam - we tied. Losing was that alien to us. Did the seeds of our national disgust with anything other than winning start there? Was our nascent superpower ego so fragile? Or was all of it simply a reflection of the superpower mentality itself? As our nation was on its way to becoming as powerful as the rest of the world combined, did we have to tweak our national identity to rationalize that?
The winner must be crowned. The loser must be shamed.
How good does winning feel in this world? At the risk of putting too fine a point on it, Nobel winners and sports hall of famers live an average of two years longer than their non-winning peers. Oscar winners live four years longer than nominees.
A study of olympic athletes' facial expressions on the medal stand found that only two of the three medalists regularly register as "very happy". Gold and silver, perhaps? Try again.
The winning sickness isn't confined to America, of course. The world over, males have made tie-aversion a central part of most games. And they're ever so clever at coming up with ways to avoid that unseemly result - overtime, rematches, penalty shootouts...even something ominously called "aggregate point difference". Do you suppose there's a cheerleading squad somewhere with a kickass aggregate point routine? We got aggregate point difference, yes we do...
And if all those methods fail, some sports ties are decided by, well, coin toss. I apologize for calling males clever.
But to be sure, the american obsession with winning runs singularly deep (The pre-eminent world sport, soccer, is still a veritable hotbed of tying activity - damned commie socialist sports pinkos!). I originally thought i would cap this article with a list of history's most memorable ties, but then i realized that you, the reader (and even i, the writer, mayhap) might be tempted to decide which was the BESTEST, COOLEST TIE EVER! Are we that far gone? Of course we are. Never mind that any sensible person knows you learn more about yourself when you lose. Never mind that losing is immeasurably more character-building.
As i grew, i kept my spirit vigilant against the sickness. I knew i was swimming against the current. Trying to live by Rice's credo in this society is a little like trying to save a wet moth from the ocean. It can't fly, so you hold it with one hand above the water as you swim for shore. Society is the twenty-foot wave that suddenly appears. The funny thing is, somewhere along the line, i became an ardent competitor. I think most sensitive people react to the winning sickness by washing their hands of it. Avoiding the competitive arenas, eschewing hyper-competitive games. But i've adapted by becoming a fierce competitor...who cares not one whit who wins. Perhaps i need to prove to the world that excellence needn't care about victory. On the sporting field or gaming table, it may seem like i'm pushing you. But i'm only pushing myself. And yes, i realize this paragraph is overflowing with water metaphors. That's just me challenging myself (or another writer) to pen a single organic paragraph with even more! Do it, i dare you.
There are also plenty of contexts though, in which my disinterest in winning is blatantly evident. With many games, i'm the one who suggests ditching the score-taking altogether.
Many enmeshed in the winning sickness, or disgusted by it, interpret my often spirited play as a sign of competitiveness. When i explain my actual focus, some refuse to believe, not wanting any worthy competitor to be a traitor to Hemingway's bullshit machismo. Others just can't trust any kind of competitiveness. Some think i'm fooling myself, and that deep down i want to win as urgently as anyone.
Tain't so, i promise.
There is no more joyous result for me than the roller coaster of a dramatic, tightly-competed game...that ends in a tie. The more winners, the more i like it.
Sometimes you win.
Sometimes you lose.
Sometimes no one wins. Or everyone.
Sister-kissing has nothing to do with it.