Winning isn’t everything

VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor

I’m sure you’ve heard that expression before, but you may not realize that the full quote, by legendary coach Vince Lombardi, is actually, “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.”

Sort of takes the thing in a whole new direction, doesn’t it?

Now, I get all sorts of emails here at the paper and a lot of them are just spam or sales pitches or news items that simply don’t fit the scope of our audience, but I came across one today, sent out in the spirit of March Madness, I guess. The title was “Study: Half of Americans Admit to Being Sore Losers.” After reading that, I was like, “In other news: Sky blue, water wet.”

But I decided to read the little intro paragraph and it ended up offering a breakdown, by state, on where the sorest losers were. Reader, I did not even need to see an infographic or a statistical breakdown to know wxactly who was going to come out on top

See VIEWPOINT, page A5 VIEWPOINT

From page A4

on this one but I’ll let you read it from the nice folks over at Growth Leads Ltd.

“Participation is more important than winning? Yeah, right! A whopping 49% of Americans typically get upset when they lose a game, as revealed by our recent study.

But who plays their cards right when it comes to handling their losses? We investigated which state copes with defeat the best and can be crowned the real winner in the game of losing.”

Some of their key findings:

• Arkansas tops the list with 83% of residents getting upset after losing a game.

• Residents of Iowa and Utah stay the calmest, with only 17% losing their temper.

• 15% of Americans have found themselves in a fight after losing a game.

I’d be willing to bet that you can ask any Arkansas Razorbacks fan out there and he or she can share with you at least one specific occasion in which the Hogs were “cheated,” “ripped-off,” “screwed over,” or otherwise, usually by the officials. If yo believe my Dad, Arkansas has never played a game in any sport where they did not have to overcome biased officiating to win.

I guess the survey wasn’t all bad sportmanship, though, as 57% of respondents confessed to occasionally letting their kids win when they play against them. Not my Mom!

You had to earn that victory…