The Immaculate Reception

Dear Reader, please be sure no sacrilege is intended by applying this term to a play that is renown in the sports arena. There is a good lesson for life here and I hope you will glean it as you read this addendum to today's blog.


If you can't accept losing, you can't win. Vince Lombardi

Playing hard, playing to win, are definitive traits of individuals who attain a high level of success in any endeavor. In no other arena do we see the playing out of this combative element more than we do in professional sports.

Vince Lombardi, for example, never had a losing season as a head coach in the NFL, compiling an impressive regular season winning percentage of 73.8% (96-34-6), a preseason winning percentage of 78.6% (44-12), and 90% (9-1) in the postseason for an overall record of 149 wins, 47 losses, and 6 ties.

While competition is an identifiable element of professional sports, while it is an extremely necessary component of each athlete’s emotional make-up, so is the willingness to accept defeat. Every contest will have a winner and a loser. Every player is required to give the game his best effort. But although he enters every contest to win, he must be prepared to accept defeat. He cannot allow a loss--even if it's the Super Bowl--to diminish his enthusiasm for the next game.

One of the most outstanding things about a lop-sided game is the fact that the players on the team that is being trounced still give it their all, still play hard, even when it appears that loss is certain. They subscribe to the truism, "It ain't over till it's over." And that's how we must view life. Each day is an opportunity for another victory to our personal account, but each day also holds the potential for us to make the misstep that will reduce us to failure on that day.

We can't allow ourselves the option of giving the game less than our best effort, even when our defeat seems inevitable. A great example of this attitude at work is the football play that has virtually gone down in the annals of sports history. Forty years ago this week, the Pittsburgh Steelers were losing to the Oakland Raiders in the final seconds of the game.

The Pittsburgh quarterback, Terry Bradshaw, threw what would be the final toss of the day. He was hit as he released the ball toward its intended receiver. He missed by a mile because the football bounced off one player and into the arms of Franco Harris, one of Pittsburgh's greatest all-time players, who ran it in for the winning touchdown in the final seconds of the game! That play was dubbed by the Myron Kope, the famous Pittsburgh sportscaster, as the "Immaculate Reception."

I'm sure Franco was prepared for defeat when the last seconds of the game were ticking away, but he played like a winner to the end and his winning spirit snatched the victory from the Raiders and put the Steelers literally 'on the map' as a football powerhouse--which they had never been before. And that's the winning spirit YOU have to carry into today. That's the way you have to play the game today. You can't indulge the attitude of failure even if failure seems inevitable.

As Vince Lombardi said, as Franco Harris evidenced in his last-second miracle play, you (me, every player in this game of life) must be prepared to accept loss--but in doing so, it is merely part of our strategy for winning! You are "more than a conqueror," (Romans 8:37), you are more than victorious, because your Team Captain, your Jesus, is the 'winningest' player to ever suit up for the game of life. Play hard for Him today, play hard for yourself today. And no matter how today’s game turns out, be prepared to do it all again tomorrow.