Tampa Bay as I have said many times is a place, I consider to a be a second home.  I love the football team there, it’s been that way for years.  I love the Tampa Bay Buccaneers every year, even when they lose a lot like they did last year where they had a 7 and 9 season.   I think sports are important because it creates a nice little microcosm about life, what works as a culture and what doesn’t for people to see and cheer for.  As I said, most of the results fall far short of any big prize, but its fun to watch and root for something that you can share with other people.  This past season for the Bucs I was more upset because the general manager had pulled off some great contractual miracles in signing Tom Brady and some other big names and it looked to be just the thing the Buccaneers needed, veteran leadership that could finally take them over the top.   But that is if there’d be an NFL season at all.  The NFL got a lot of criticism for going so far woke, in allowing players not to stand for the national anthem, in allowing Black Lives Matters to imprint messages in the endzones, but I was more forgiving not just because I like the product, but that I appreciate the bigger game for what it is.  Roger Goodell managed to keep the NFL viable and the lunatic health people found a way to have the games even if the entire preseason was cancelled.  So the football season started, even though at first it felt as if the whole thing might come crashing down in a moment.  But up to that point, Covid was bigger than everything and I was really worried that if that ever happened to American Football, that we might never recover as a country.

Our nation needed it, the weekly games, the highlights on the news, something else to think about besides Covid lockdowns.  The Bucs did well, but not well enough.  They lost some key games to the Saints, to the Chiefs and Bears that I thought were going to ruin the entire season.  But by December Tom Brady showed why he’s much more than a quarterback by getting the team functioning on all cylinders as they continued to win the rest of the games for the year on into the playoffs.  And it was a thing of beauty to watch, even if you weren’t a Tampa Bay Buc fan.  It was good to see that part of our culture come back to life.  By the time the Bucs went to the Super Bowl in their own stadium, which has been talked about in Tampa for so many years it was so good to watch so many big gambling efforts come together perfectly only to have the Bucs beat the Chiefs so convincingly.  Really it came back as investments of the team owners, the Glazers had made into their own organization which were paying off now in a perfect storm of unlikely circumstances that just felt good.  It reminded me that with all the seasons and hoping that often go into any kind of sports support, that sometimes you do get a payoff and it is worth the effort when it does.

I couldn’t help but think of Donald Trump and the state of Republican politics through all this, because honestly, it’s a very similar game.  As hopeless as things can sometimes appear, a good play here, a good play there, and suddenly you have something to cheer for again.  As exciting as it was to see the Bucs win another Super Bowl I could see it clearly where I would feel even better about future wins in the House and Senate culminating in a new president in 2024.  That the hopeless situation of today is largely a manufactured reality that has a shelf life and our hopes, needs and dreams will outlast them easily.   I approach every season of the Bucs with enthusiasm but by the last week I’m already looking toward the next year.  And its been that way for decades.  They went to the Super Bowl in 2003 before going again this past year and every year in between I went through the same ups and downs that everyone goes through only to end up disappointed with the end result.  However, it is worth it when you invest yourself in these kinds of things to see it all come together in a nice, beautiful package of success.  And in politics, we will smile again, we will have hope again, we will have revenge for what has been done to us.  We will have revenge for the debts, we will have revenge for the wokeness, the censorship, the massive expansion of government overreach.  We will have options again and it will feel great to see those victories.

With all that value, I’m not one who just writes off sports as anything short of a important social value.  If the rest of the world could organize their sports the way we do in America, they certainly would.  But they don’t have the kind of culture that creates the circumstances.  Sports therefor becomes so reflective on the kind of values we truly have as a culture.  And its good to see that winning is still one of the most important attributes that we all still share.  Winning is still important enough to drive the sporting market and push through all the government nonsense just to play a game and see what happens.   In a year where it looked like a fantasy for anything to become bigger than Covid, the NFL managed to stay open long enough to complete a full season and to show us all that life could return to normal, somewhat.  And that people like me who have rooted for the Buccaneers every year for decades could see happiness again even if it came from unlikely places.  The lesson is that the games of life are worth playing.   Victory is just out there often with one good try here and there.   Eventually, when its due to us, we’ll get it, and we’ll love it!

Cliffhanger the Overmanwarrior

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