Okay… I’m sure someone out there was expecting it sometime soon. A football article.

Coming from one of the biggest Crimson Tide fans AND Dallas fans, it’s safe to say that the last couple of weeks have not been fun.

Now, sure I am a ginormous fan of these two teams, but I also decide to broadcast my interest for these teams all over social media. Why? Great question. I can’t help it.

After Bama’s devastating loss on January 9^th, I deleted all of my social media, unable to look at all of the ‘Clemson tweets’ and forcing me to not be able to open those ‘are you sad?’ snapchats.

A couple of days later, after 24 hour, non-stop, thinking about this game, I decided to relax and sit on that idea of “It’s just a game.”

With the help of my dad, I learned to not focus so much on that loss.

Growing up around sports, playing sports, watching sports almost every day of my life, I have easily developed such a strong passion for them. I consider myself very lucky to be able to watch sports as much as I do, and share this passion with my friends and family.

“It’s Okay To Lose.”

Is it?

What do you think?

Is it really ‘just a game’?

Why do people get so upset about a loss?

I believe it’s love. It’s love, and compassion, and competitiveness. I mean, come on. If I wasn’t as competitive as I am, I one hundred percent would not have taken these two losses this hard.

I’ve never been fond of that saying, “It’s just a game.” Because I disagree with it. I believe it is way more than a game. Think of falling in love. When you fall in love do you sit there and say, “Eh, it’s just a person. It’s just love, who cares.”? Plenty of people out there, including myself, have fallen in love with sports. I can truly say, I am in love with the sport of football. And just as devastating as it is to end a relationship, to break away from someone you love, it also hurts to watch your team not make the cut, to fail.

You root for someone for months and months out of the year. You want to watch them be successful. You coach from your couch (I do it all of the time…get it from my dad), you buy merchandise, you may even go to extremes and dedicate rooms, cars, etc to this one team.

Just because it is ‘just a game’, doesn’t mean it isn’t important to you. This passion you and I share with sports, in this case football, is so strong and has such an impact on us, and there is nothing wrong with that.

It is easy to say, “it is just a game”, when you’re grieving over a loss. It sometimes helps to lessen that pain. Another common saying, “there’s always next year. Next year is going to be our year”, comes into play. And yes, that may help in the long run, and like me, you may already be excited for the next football season to begin, but it is not a bad thing to spend some time thinking about that loss.

So what if it’s “just a game”? Must have been a damn important game if people are telling you that.

Take your love and passion for sports and keep it. Hold onto that. Share it with other sports-lovers. It’s a beautiful thing.