Where's the Fun in Winning Gracefully?

Every Christmas, Canadians get around their TVs and watch the World Junior Hockey Tournament. It’s where teenage hockey players from the CHL, NCAA, and the European leagues come together to compete against each other. Americans know Boxing Day for the shopping; Canadians know Boxing Day for facing the Americans at the World Juniors. Almost every year, Canada faces the United States on Boxing Day––if not, the meeting happens later in the round robin. The annals of the World Juniors are filled with historic clashes between the States and Canada; Jonathan Toews’ shootout heroics in 2007, John Tavares’ gold-medal game hat trick against the Americans, and John Carlson’s 2010 overtime dagger to quell a three-goal Canadian comeback all brought about heartstopping moments regardless of your allegiance. 

This year, the Canadian/American game occurred in the Gold Medal round; led by Trevor Zegras, the Americans defeated Canada 2-0. In their pregame interview, Zegras challenged the undefeated Canadian squad, “I honestly don't think they've been tested with a real team yet.” It’s a chirpy comment from a top-end player, the kind of comment that receives attention if they don’t back it up––but Zegras did. Tied in points with Canada’s Dylan Cozens, Zegras scored the first goal and assisted on the second––securing the gold medal, the tournament MVP, and the tournament scoring title. As Elliot Teaford wrote following the game, “Trevor Zegras’ swagger was impossible to miss Tuesday in Edmonton.” Zegras’ theatrics brought something special into the tilt between two hockey superpowers, something that would have been explicitly been missing without his comments. A number of hockey analysts took issue with Zegras’ comments, but I tend to disagree. His comments infused the game with life. Hockey fans know that almost every intermission interview will include a “We gotta get pucks deep, get pucks down the ice, and get shots on net.” There’s hosts of interviews devoid of passion or anything meaningful, but Zegras issued a challenge to a tournament rival that gave both sides extra incentive to play their best hockey. The sort of trash talking and gamesmanship, I believe, creates meaning in sports arenas and stokes everyone’s competitive fire in a way that we often look to diminish.  

Electrifying the professional football universe, Johnny Manziel caught my eye during his 2012 college year––a year in which he would go on to win the Heisman trophy, the most vaunted award given in college football. With his mobility as a quarterback, Manziel would time and time again orchestrate mind boggling scrambling plays and ultimately rushed for over 1400 yards. Every game, Manziel extended plays with his legs and made off-balance throws beyond the pocket that turned him into a national sensation. “Johnny Football, as Texas A&M fans would dub him, popularized the “show me the money dance” every time he scored a touchdown.

That fall, while Manziel tore up college football, I began playing quarterback for my local Adventist school––the “legendary” athletics program of Parkview Adventist Academy. I idolized his game, not necessarily for his mechanics or athleticism, but for his knack as an entertainer. He’d slice and dice, cut and carve through a defense’s linebackers and secondary in a seemingly endless series of jukes and turns–all of this to end up celebrating in the endzone. He’d look into the camera and rub his thumb and first two fingers together, a provocative allusion to the NCAA’s investigation regarding Manziel signing autographs for money. The NCAA is a billion-dollar industry that pays its athletes nothing, but Manziel isn’t sending a deeper message. It’s his brash celebration as he ran up scores against other colleges: A&M Football outscored their opponents by more than 19+ eight times, and of those, five were victories where they scored more than 30 points more than their opponents. 

In a flag football tournament, I replicated Manziel’s antics in the championship game. I’d run for three rushing touchdowns, each time doing his signature celebration and each time being penalized fifteen yards for excessive celebration––worth it. It felt good to rip into one of our biggest rivals - we’d lost the last two tournaments to them. It’s one of my favorite sports memories. 

Professional sports struggles mightily with defining, enforcing, and fundamentally explaining why or why not particular celebrations seem acceptable. Curbing a player’s passion harms the experience for fans and onlookers alike, allowing athletes to become fully invested into the competitive atmosphere makes for better sport and observation. The hostile relationships between different teams and players seems to unlock a deeper competitive drive, it adds the metaphorical “skin in the game” when two different teams face off. 

The lines between friendly competition, healthy competition, and being a downright miserable competitor appear quite nuanced. To what extent should we allow gamemenship to heighten the dramatic and competitive tension in sports? Fans enjoy their team’s excessive celebrations and love to hate their opposition’s antics. Fan interest should not be considered in some utilitarian matrix where one team’s fans receive ‘X’ amount of happiness from a goal and subsequent celebration while taking away ‘X’ happiness from the opposing team’s fans. Sure, opposing fans don’t enjoy watching their team be beaten, but the opportunity to genuinely dislike a rival player brings something in-and-of-itself––the classic adage in sports: “the player you love to hate.” Likewise, this experience only becomes heightened in close games with more at stake, teams trading blows––in some sports, literally and figuratively, as each team continues to battle against the other. Excessive celebration in those moments seems to further draw everyone present into the collective sporting experience: players, coaches, and fans all breathlessly absorbed in the competitive richness of observing competition where something feels at stake. When it’s not only about a victory of a dozen-odd players, but an entire fanbase, city, or nation, you begin to reach the superlative nature of sport itself. 

Works Cited

Cameron, Steve. “The NCAA brings in $1 billion a year — here's why it refuses to pay its college athletes.” Business Insider, https://www.businessinsider.com/ncaa-college-athletes-march-madness-basketball-football-sports-not-paid-2019-3

Spiegel, Trevor. “World Juniors 2021: Trevor Zegras backs up bold interview with golden production vs. Canada.” Sporting News, https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nhl/news/world-juniors-2021-trevor-zegras-goal-assist-gold-medal-game-against-canada/w8wxepjc95pn1uf1uy21v4225

Teaford, Elliott. “Ducks prospect Trevor Zegras set gold standard at World Juniors.” Los Angeles Daily News, https://www.dailynews.com/2021/01/06/ducks-prospect-trevor-zegras-set-gold-standard-at-world-junior/