There's more to it than just losing it

Don Huntsinger said, "Oh sugar," when he saw Oberlin's football team in the news. Sugar and spice and everything nice? Not quite.

As you may or may not have heard, Oberlin's Yeomen/Crimson Thunder have an infamous losing streak that is making the team famous. Well, famous among a few select groups of sports fans and curiosity seekers. And not to chide Oberlin students, but we are not among the curious.

This whole predicament is eerily reminiscent of Rocky or any football movie within the last 60 years. The team has no support, isn't any good and sees no hope for future victory parties including champagne and phones ringing off the hook. Somehow, within a space of an hour-and-a-half or so, the rugged group of men pull themselves together and win. After all that comes the support and the attention.

Movies are completely unrealistic sometimes, aren't they?

Realistically speaking, Oberlin's big draw has probably never been it's sports teams. People think more of scholastics than football when they consider Oberlin. Sports are relegated to an extra- curricular activity, an important one for some, but on the sidelines for most.

Oberlin, thankfully, does not fit among the ranks of schools that, while they may have many dedicated and focused students, have reputations for their great parties and sororities, fraternities and, yes, football victories. Because those words all go together. They sound right. And they represent everything Oberlin is not. We care about more than winning and losing football games.

But before this sounds like football can't be important, there is another dimension here. Team efforts in football build confidence and community just like any other team endeavor does. And if people want to play that game as opposed to some other activity, then that is their choice.

Often at the top of the food chain in college budgets, football is in the middle of the pack, maybe even the back, here at Oberlin. Maybe that's why our players have sound minds as well as bodies.