Week 8 Humble Pie: Victor Borge, oversized playing cards and concrete perfection

Perfection, as an abstract, is unattainable.

We can come close. We, as humans, have the inherent ability to produce excellence and beauty. Paintings, sculptures, poems, or even blog posts can be beautiful and amazing and breathtaking. But perfection, due to and restrained by its definition, is unreachable. But that’s as an abstract.

Football rarely concerns itself with abstracts. Because of that, in football perfection is not only attainable, it is measurable. As long as the number of losses a team has is zero, it can be “perfect.” The abstract symbolism that artists strive and fret and go mad over, knowing they’ll never reach it, is concretely symbolized by one solitary number in football, the number that shows the number of losses a team possesses on the season.

The concrete finality of a football score is unforgiving and unsympathetic. One team wins and one team loses. We can’t even call ourselves equals if we finish the game with the same number of points. Not enough American finality in a tie. That’s why we have overtime.

The point?

We throw around terms like perfection all too often in the football world. I’m sure one of the thoughts that went through your head when you heard the final score of the Sheridan-Natrona game — 18-17, Sheridan — was like one of the first that went through mine: “Well, there goes Natrona’s perfect season.”

In a purely American sporting sense, that’s true. Natrona doesn’t have a perfect record anymore.

In an artistic sense, though, Natrona was never perfect to begin with.

And, really, Friday’s  final score doesn’t tell us anything we did not already know: Both Natrona and Sheridan have excellent football teams. The inherent inflexibility of the interpretation of a final score doesn’t change how we can look at the teams abstractly. We can’t measure adversity or guts or pressure or confidence the way we can measure a final score or a season record. The final score, in a way, is the concrete manifestation of all these abstract, emotional factors that go into a football game.

Weird.

So what comes out of 18-17? Well, I give the Broncs some abstract “mad props” for a concrete victory and for “ruining” Natrona’s “perfect” season. I talk about how it was Sheridan’s “special” teams and a “gutty” two-point conversion that “saved” the game late in the fourth quarter for Sheridan. I mention playoff seedings — Natrona still “No. 1,” Sheridan now “No. 2” — and the possibility of a rematch.

Maybe what goes unmentioned is how “perfect” the game was in an abstract sense. Two great teams play a game decided by one point. Forget David. That right there is the upper reaches of perfection in my little abstract world.

Ruminating over….

Second mad props to Greybull, which secured a tie for first in the 2A West by dominating Lyman from start to finish in a 24-0 shutout victory. It jumbled up the 2A West standings up top — Greybull, Lyman and Lovell all finished with 6-1 conference records — but the Buffs’ victory on Friday proved to be the deciding factor in deciding who got to stay home in the first round of the playoffs. Now, Greybull gets to stay at home and host Newcastle, while Lyman has to hit the road to play at defending 2A champ Thermopolis. In a 2A bracket full of parity, that is is a huge deal.

Speaking of home playoff games, third mad props to Southeast for beating Lingle 27-22. I’ll admit that after Southeast’s loss to Sundance back in Week 2 (a loss that was followed up by a 40-point loss to Lusk), I lowered my hopes for the Cyclones. But Southeast has come back like gangbusters, winning its final four games to secure a home playoff game in the first round for — get this — the 14th consecutive year. Now they’re a team with high hopes and a great chance to make it back to Laramie.

Fourth mad props to Riverton, which beat Wheatland to secure the No. 3 seed in the 3A East standings. Riverton, for its efforts, earns a rematch with Powell — a team that beat the Wolverines 13-10 all the way back in Week 1. Wheatland, meanwhile, has to go face 3A West champ Cody in the first round. Neither team has it easy in the first round, but Riverton does have the advantage of knowing its opponent a bit better than Wheatland knows its foe. In the playoffs, that might be enough to pull off a victory.

Fifth and sixth mad props to a pair of teams that won for pride on Friday, Moorcroft and Riverside. Moorcroft beat Glenrock 20-14, marking the Wolves’ first victory over the Herders since 1999. Meanwhile, Riverside overcame Wind River’s 25-point second quarter to win 26-25 — proving that you can give up one bad quarter and still win, given the right circumstances. In both cases, playoffs and postseason thoughts were not a concern for either team, so pride and heart and wanting to end on the right note were all the motivation these teams needed to win. And it worked.

And I’m spent. Whew. The regular season is done. How about that? Any playoff games you can’t wait to watch? Any games in Week 8 catch YOU by surprise? Any random thoughts about perfection? Post below and let’s chat.

This week: 21-6 (78 percent). This season: 209-51 (80 percent).

–patrick