A “Voice of the Fan” article by Mahunashizzle
I dont like using the term Choke in a team sense or any sense for that matter. Because more often than not it’s not an entire team playing under their game or anything like that. It’s often an individual makes a mistake and often times, in a close game those mistakes are costly. People saying someone choked because they didn’t make a play or make the game winning shot, or kick the game winning field goal have no concept of what the game is about in my opinion.
First things first, nothing is EVER guaranteed in sports, if they were, they wouldnt play the games and it’d be Oregon and Bama playing tomorrow for the national championship while everyone else sat around and hoped their name was called for next years game. To use a basketball example, did the teams that Played and lost to Florida Gulf Coast in last years NCAA Tourney choke? Or did FGCU win those games by playing their brand of basketball and (to steal zduckfan’s words) impose their will on those teams. If you said the latter you’d be correct (ABC Sports image).
Maldonado missing the kick last year doesnt mean he choked. He just missed the kick. Kickers miss kicks all the time. But nobody calls David Akers a choke artist if he misses a kick in the first quarter. The kick was still missed, the points stayed off the board, but because of the timing of the play it’s all of a sudden misconstrued as something entirely different than what it is. If we’re calling Maldonado a choke artist, then certainly we’d also have to call Barner, DAT, Mariota, Ifo, and all the rest chokers as well. Barner didn’t have a great game rushing the ball against the cardinal last year, DAT missed a block the would have allowed Mariota to score on that looooooong run he had, Mariota went three and out in overtime to allow Maldonado to miss the kick in the first place. Ifo allowed Ertz to catch that Touchdown in the endzone to tie the game. The list goes on and on as to why the Ducks didn’t beat Stanford last year, and not a single one of those plays holds more importance than the other.
The Pac 12 blogger Kevin Gammell said it best in one of his recent mailbag posts. Someone said something about a Heisman moment, and Gammell shoved it aside, stating that there is no bigger fallacy in sports than the one that claims that a single play won or lost a game, or a single moment won or didn’t win an award. Obviously I’m paraphrasing but you understand my point.
Sports, and really almost any game in general is about the body of work towards one goal. There are high pressure situations in sports there is no denying that, but like Coach Helfrich said during the conundrum that was Mariota’s 4th quarter “experience level” Coach said every play, every moment, every down of the game is a high pressure situation. And he couldnt be more right. Each and every play has a determining factor as to whether or not your team wins or loses. Thats reality. You can’t ‘choke’ on every play. It’s just not possible.
But for the record, anytime Johnny Manziel messes up, that punk CHOKED. =P
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Tv4yWeOyins
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