I don’t know how to start this, or end this, or explain this, other than to apologize, ask for forgiveness and move on.
The only way I know how to start is to say I’m human. I make mistakes. Just look at the site updates category on this blog and you can see I’ve made my fair share of mistakes in dealing with games, dates, locations, players, coaches and a myriad of other pieces that come from 22,000-plus contests over more than a century. Several other mistakes may still exist on the site.
My most recent mistake, though, affected more people than I ever anticipated a mistake on this site could reach.
In short, I messed up. And I let a lot of people down.
The story goes something like this: Tonight, I received a call from my former colleague at the Casper Star-Tribune, Jack Nowlin, who was working on a follow-up to his solid work the past week with the Rawlins football team. His quick comment sent me lurching — he was counting, and he saw only 34 losses in a row for Greybull from 1978-82, not 35 as I have been listing on my streaks page and pimping on this blog.
So I counted, again. This time, I only came up with 34, too, just like Jack had.
The instant ramification is that now Rawlins alone has the state record for the longest losing streak, as the Outlaws broke their 35-game losing streak by beating Torrington last week.
The bigger fallout is that Jack — as well as a ton of other people, including you, the people reading this — was depending on me to put out the right information. Several other media outlets reported in the past few weeks about the streak and about Rawlins’ attempt to avoid breaking it. I wrote about it, too. A ton of other people read those stories and assumed those guys — and, through association, myself — had their information right.
Those other folks did. I didn’t.
To that end, I failed. And I’m sorry.
Sorry to reporters like Jack who were depending on me; sorry to editors who based their coverage decisions on the info I had posted on my site; sorry to the readers I misled; sorry to the players and coaches in Rawlins who thought they were only tied, not alone, with the longest losing streak in state history; sorry to the Greybull teams for needlessly adding to your misery and not allowing you that moment of relief when you knew you were no longer alone at the top; sorry to everyone, absolutely everyone, who was misled. You have a right to be upset with me, just as I am upset with myself.
Even though my mistake was unintentional, that does not justify the mistake, or the ramifications that arose from it. My only promise is to do my best to never allow it to happen again.
–patrick
Nice write up. Bummer mistake.
Did you pull all of the scores during Greybull’s streak from newspapers or did you have other sources? If the former, did the newspaper articles make much mention of the streak as it was happening in the late 70s-early 80s?
Got my info from newspapers, as the sources on the games indicate. I did this research in 2004 and don’t recall if there was much on the streak, aside from small mentions. I do not recall reading papers in the northwest corner of the state for this research, though.
–patrick
I think you’re being too hard on yourself Patrick. If people have never scoured through papers and microfilm that has words on it written 80 years ago with no real guarantee that you’ll actually find what you’re looking for, then they don’t know how hard it is to do what you’ve done.
It is much easier to come through and comb through the archive you have created, and so hats off for that, but I don’t know that you owe the wyoming football research world anything. I know I’ve had my share of glitches and that’s just with one program. The fact of the matter is, without your extreme amount of work, it would have been hearsay and nobody would have been talking about Rawlins setting a record at all.
I second Dahl’s sentiment.
I’m the sports writer in Rawlins, and have been reporting based on your research, but you know what? I’ll live.
You know what else? The kids will live, too, and the coaches.
None of them were with the team when the losing started, but I was on the field with them when it ended.
To a man, they weren’t worried about Greybull’s record. They were worried about their streak, more importantly that it was over.
So don’t worry about having done anyone a disservice.
You have made my day Patrick. I was part of that Greybull team, and glad to know that Im no longer part of the longest losing streak in Wyoming high school history. I have no problems with mistakes, we all make them, and at least you stepped up and admitted it. Keep up the good work. Go Wolves!!!!