Losers and Winners - it's all in your perspective

The following is an excerpt from my memory book I am writing for the grandchildren.  This chapter is from my college days as a scholarship track athlete who wasn't supposed to play intramural sports. Intramural sports was a good release from the grind of intercollegiate athletics and the pressure of engineering classwork.  I was a member of Alpha Chi Sigma professional fraternity, a bunch of chemistry and chemical engineering geek, who loved sports and lived in a house that should have been torn down.  It wasn't quite Animal House, but it was close.

I hope you enjoy the twist in this ending, called "Winners and Losers."



Winners and Losers

As a scholarship athlete, I was not supposed to play intramurals without coach’s permission, but, being the break-the-rules kind of guy, I was, I did not bother asking permission.  I decided to ask forgiveness instead.  I was a star on our touch football team and played occasionally with our basketball team as a junior.  We had a 6’8” chemistry grad student playing for the fraternity team, who lived in the house, but wasn’t a member of the fraternity.  The team was formed around him and several other ringers.  

My senior year, the team wanted to call themselves the AXE Holes, but the Intramural program would not allow a team nickname unless there were two frat teams in the House.  Since the first team was all about winning, I recruited a bunch of frat brothers that just wanted to have fun and we formed the AXE Losers so that the first team could be the AXE Holes.  We didn’t have to work very hard to lose the first five games of our six game regular season schedule.  We were playing far superior teams even though we were in one of the lowest leagues (D or E League).  The A League consisted of highly skilled athletes who were on scholarship for football but had been high school basketball stars.  The AXE Holes were in the B League and were mildly successful.  I sometimes played for both teams, but we had more fun on the Losers team.  We would often take turns shooting so that everyone could get some points on the board.  It was a lot of fun but we also had a vision for our team.

One of our goals was to make the Losers tournament.  At the end of the season, all of the teams that lost all of their six league games were put into a consolation bracket and the winning division teams into a championship bracket.  Our last game of the regular season was with the dental fraternity that was located on Oak Street just south of our frat house.  I don’t want to sound anti-Semitic, but this was a Jewish dental fraternity, and by their own admission, consisted of a bunch of short, inept players. They were well known around campus.  They were a highly “successful” basketball team, with a reputation for losing all of the regular season games the year before and “winning” the Losers tournament by losing all of their games in the consolation tournament.  They were proud of their accomplishments and their notoriety on campus.  They were also fiercely covetous of their fame on campus. Both teams were winless going into the last game of our league schedule and we needed to pull out a defeat against the “best” losers at the University of Minnesota.  In fact, I don’t think these guys had won a game in quite a few years. 

It would be a tight game and we were fairly well matched.  I can’t say that we were trying to dominate them.  We were winning the game by four points with about five minutes left in regulation.  I called timeout and benched one of our players who had just stolen a pass and made a layup.  He was totally messed up.  He didn’t understand our team goals.  After our inept opponent turned the ball over again in our end, I set up a play under our basket.  I would pass the ball into my teammate, Fred Cornforth, and have him make a basket in our defensive basket, thus giving the dental frat two more points.  I figured we would need to score three baskets on ourselves and then play a four corners offense to keep them from getting the ball back.  I hadn’t really thought the entire scenario through.  I didn’t realize how complicated this tactical delay offense would become.  I threw it in several times for a basket on ourselves, before the dental guys realized what had just occurred. They were now leading in the game and about to be eliminated from their dreams of continued post season glory.  Their reputation on campus was being sullied by their neighbors.  Our houses were only a couple of doors apart, although their house was brand new and our house should have been condemned and torn down.  They protested vehemently to the refs.  Their season and their reputation were slipping away because some crummy chemistry students were purposely throwing the game to oust them from the consolation tournament.  They were pissed. 

This is the point in the game that I hadn’t fully thought through; where the game became complicated for both teams and the referees.  They started to press us on the next possession, and we were called for a 10 second backcourt violation.  They now had the ball in their offensive court and immediately took the ball into their backcourt for an over and back violation.  The refs were slightly confused by our shooting baskets into our own basket, but soon were back to making the right rule calls, even though both teams now had a totally different goal than normal; scoring in the wrong basket!  With about three minutes left, we now had the ball in our offensive court and employed the four corners delay.  The dental frat guys began to foul and soon we were in the one and one situation.  This became a very dicey situation as we had to not only miss the free throw, but we also had to get the rebound and avoid them scoring into their own basket to tie the game.  Somehow, we managed to keep them from scoring a basket on themselves.  I don’t remember if we had to foul them before they shot into their own basket or whether we shot very hard free throws that bounced back to us, but we controlled the ball and the game and “won” by losing the game 26-28.  Obviously, there were no handshakes after the game, and they protested to the Intramural counsel but lost their protest.  When we started the Consolation tournament, the Intramural officials did issue new rules on purposefully trying to lose a game.  If a team obviously tried to throw a game, the referees could declare them the winners, thus eliminating them from the tournament, so my strategies for the dental fraternity could not be employed in the Consolation tournament.  While the AXE Holes were out of tournament play and looked on with envy, we managed to lose our first game to a football team by 60 points and then a second game by 15 or 20 points.  The third game was a nail biter, but we “lost” our chance to “win” the tournament by winning our first game of the season.  It was a very successful season.  We had fought hard and had a great amount of fun.  It was one of the highlights of my college athletics and I had learned some good leadership lessons at how to lose and have fun.