Did you enjoy the season?

Small sample size!

 

Blame my coaches.

 

Ohio State coach Ryan Day has talked about national championship or nothing. He seems to embrace it. When the Buckeyes went to the Rose Bowl a lot of stories were about motivation for the players since they didn't make the playoff.
I'm sure Alabama and Clemson fans feel the same way.
Which is a shame, because there were a lot of Buckeyes who played in the 90s who would have dropped a nut to play in Pasadena.

 

Which is why everyone who isn't a fan of those schools takes glee from their failures.

 

There is that. No doubt about it. But I still think that your team thinking "championship or bust" is more engaging to a fan rather than thinking that bowing out in the first round ... well, it provided some warm-and-fuzzies at times.

And you have a lot of fans who agree with Dale Earnhardt's credo that second place is the first loser.

I'll fully agree that such an outlook contributes to dumpster fires like a lot of AAU and travel ball. I'm just saying that's the natural tendency.

 

I’m gonna guess the NY Rangers and their fans don’t see this season as a success right now. Same for the Bruins and Avs.

 

This was me last year with the Orioles. Young team wildly exceeded expectations and got me interested in the sport again. I certainly didn't see it as a failure.

As a Suns fan, this season hasn't been particularly enjoyable, between all of the DA drama to start to watching Chris Paul crumble into dust in real time. They've run into a better team. I thought before the playoffs that anything short of a WCF run would be a failure, but that was before I realized they were 100 percent locked into the 4 seed and that Denver would be there in round 2 for a de facto WCF.

 

It's all about perspective. The Lions didn't make the playoffs, but their season was seen as an unqualified success. The Bengals got within a game of the Super Bowl and I'm certain most of their fans (and probably most of their players) view their season as a failure.

 

Remember when Cowboys fans went apopleptic after Dallas was crushed by Philadelphia 44-6 in the last game of the season and missed the playoffs and Tony Romo uttered this quote in his postgane press conference?

"If this is the worst thing that will ever happen to me, then I've lived a pretty good life."

 

Oof. As a player, you can think that, but you gotta know that wont play with a lotta fans. I mean, fans riot even when they win titles, so that oughta tell ya how well adjusted they are.

 

I think we are going to start to see more players walking away from sports at all levels because mental health is being taught at great lengths and people are understanding it’s effects.

I imagine there are a lot of travel and AAU coaches who are not hearing what Giannas is saying.

 

I have gotten better at finding joy in watching my teams even when they fail, but I'm still not great at it. As others mentioned, context matters quite a bit. The Penguins and Steelers both just missed the playoffs in their most recent seasons, but they left me with very different feelings. The Penguins simply needed to win two games against the dregs of the league at the end of the regular season and failed. They did so with an aging roster, including three Hall of Famers who are nearing the end of their careers. It is difficult to find any joy in that. The Steelers, on the other hand, had the youngest offense in the league. They had a rookie quarterback. They won some entertaining games late in the season. Even though those two teams' seasons ended the same way, one feels better than the other.