The Year of the Comeback

by Bo Hayes February 06, 2017

Man, what a year for championship games it has been. Almost every single one came down to the last second or the last game. It started with the NCAA tournament when Villanova made a go ahead 3 at the buzzer to break the tie and beat North Carolina for the men's basketball national title. Following that we had Cleveland beating Golden State in the final seconds of game seven in the NBA finals. The Cubs then proceeded to take the Indians all the way to game seven of the World Series before finally winning their first world title in 108 years. Clemson then proceeded to knock off heavy favorite Alabama in a rematch for the ages, scoring a go ahead touchdown to go up by 4 with 1 second remaining on the clock. And finally, last night we had the first ever overtime in Super Bowl history when the Patriots came back from what was the biggest deficit in a Super Bowl, to beat Atlanta.

To me though, how a couple of these teams took it to the last minute is what made the past year so special. The Cavs were down 3 games to 1 to the Warriors. Chicago was also down 3 games to 1 against the Indians. Alabama jumped out to an early 14-0 lead over Clemson. And finally, Atlanta was up 28-3 at one point over New England with the 3rd quarter winding down.

If you were to go onto social media after any of those games, you would probably see the words "choke" or "blew a (so-and-so) lead" more often than the alternative. What I'm saying is, did Golden State blow a 3-1 lead? Or did Cleveland come back from a 3-1 deficit? Did the Indians also blow a 3-1 lead, or did the Cubs do what the Cavaliers did? Did Alabama blow a decent lead or did Clemson not give up? Did Atlanta blow a 28-3 lead, or did Tom Brady put his head down and lead the biggest comeback in Super Bowl history? You get the point by now. There's two different ways you can look at all of the outcomes of these games, depending on what type of person you are. I choose to look at them in favor of the comebacks because after all, who doesn't love a good comeback story? And the way you viewed all of these games would probably also tell me what kind of person you are when you face your own adversity in real life.

The beautiful thing about life is that you get a choice. A choice of how you view different things that you're faced with now, and in the future. I challenge you to be one of those who always loves the story of a good comeback. Be one of those people that knows you're NEVER out of it, no matter how impossible of a deficit you may think you face. It's never over until you choose for it to be over. That can either be when you give up or when you grind through it until you finally come out on top. Whichever one it is going to be though, just know that you'll always have the choice. Is it really too big of a mountain to climb? Or are you too set in your own comfort zone that you fail to realize what you're really made of? I'll let you decide.

-BH

 "In the middle of a difficulty lies opportunity." - Albert Einstein