Risk and reward go together like yin and yang. Low risk generally has low potential for reward. Conversely, high risk typically carries with it the potential for tremendous reward.
For those of us who live in southeast Wisconsin, Sunday’s much-anticipated match-up between the Bears and Packers was a real high risk-reward prospect. Every Packer fan had his heart on the line, to be sure, but for those of us who do our cheering within a hundred miles of Chicago, it was an especially tense Sunday.
Just as our friends along the northwestern edge of the state are surrounded by purple, here in the southeast, we have a lot of Bear fans mixed in among us. And, as you might guess, they are pretty annoying when Chicago does well, and unbearable when they beat the Packers.
First, Lovie Smith arrived in Chicago and declared that the first goal was the beat the Packers, and then he promptly achieved it. I like Smith a lot, but it exacerbated the naturally obnoxious tendencies of Bear fans. And then they traded for Jay Cutler a few years ago, and all “da Bears” fans acted like they had found the missing link. Now they were a Super Bowl team! Now they had the best QB in the NFC North!
Ha!
The high risk of living so near to Chicago and cheering for the Packers is that a loss on Sunday would have been painful twice over: the sting of the loss itself followed by the salt-in-the-wound pain of having to hear about it.
The high reward, meanwhile, is that we are near enough to eavesdrop on Chicago angst. And, my, are they angst-ful down there!
Of course, on the day after, it turns out that everyone can listen to the angst because of the great national furor over Jay Cutler’s performance -- or non-performance -- on Sunday. The news, and the talk surrounding it, are ubiquitous. Here is one particularly thorough link, but there are a hundred other good candidates out there.
Of course, there are other, simpler, less diabolical pleasures for Packer fans these days.
For example, the Packer interviews. We’re seeing and hearing a lot of our players interviewed now, with many, many more interviews to come in the days ahead. And every time I hear or see one, I am proud. These are good guys, you know? Good attitudes, likeable, funny. It’s a team we can be pretty proud of off the field, as well as on the field.
Also, for those of us who love football, we hate to see the season come to an end. And for 30 teams now, it has come to an end. But not for us. We get to keep enjoying it for two more weeks. Moreover, we get to enjoy seeing our team in the national spotlight for two more weeks.
Also, there is the sweet taste of satisfaction. The expectations were so high for this team coming into the season, but right from the start we got hit hard by injuries. We struggled. We were 3-3 at one point. Rodgers got hurt. We lost to the Lions. The Lions! The Bears just kept winning, and as the Division grew out of reach, we had to settle for Wild Card hopes. Finally, at the very end, we clinched the sixth seed -- bottom rung of the NFC playoff ladder. And now, all those other teams -- the Vikings, Lions, and Bears; the Saints and Falcons; the Cowboys, Giants, and Eagles -- they are all looking up at us now, the 2010 NFC Champions. What’s more, we lost to 6 teams during the regular season, and at this moment every one of those teams has cleaned out their lockers, while the Packers keep on playing. Very satisfying, indeed.
And, finally, there is the simple pleasure of hope. Hope for Super Bowl Sunday, of course. And hope, too, for the season yet to come, when the NFC Champs will likely be even better!
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