Doomed to Mediocrity
Adam J Locascio
Friday May 5, 2006
My mom did. She thought it was a huge deal. So much of a huge deal she took away my skateboard and my Nintendo (the 8-bit Super Mario Brothers version) until my next report card came out… in six weeks.
I remember saying to her, "What’s the big deal? A C is passing! It even says in the student handbook that a C is average!"
My mom stared me down to the point that I felt as if I was one inch tall. Her gaze, which I will never forget (and will someday try to duplicate for my unfortunate children), stabbed me right in the chest as she hissed, "You… are NOT…. AVERAGE."
So why tell this story now? Here, of all places?
Well, there are a whole lot of C-students floating around the AFL and I flat out don’t like it.
Someone call Oprah because my mother deserves some kind of award. She kept me off drugs my entire life and she beat into my head that being average sucks.
Right now, heading into the final weeks of the AFL season, there are several .500 and even some sub-.500 teams vying for playoff spots. I’ve heard fans complaining that "everyone’s getting into the playoffs this year." Guess what? There might not be enough room for everyone.
No wonder the games aren’t on NBC. Who wants to see two 7-7 teams drop every other pass en route to a 35-28 win? Maybe we shouldn’t be complaining about lack of coverage.
What is .500 exactly? It means your team couldn’t decide if it was good or bad. Sometimes it came to play, sometimes it took the night off and collected frequent flyer miles. It’s a coin toss-evening for the fans. Maybe good, maybe bad. Not dominant, not lousy - just there to take up space. Maybe they put up a fight and upsetting a better team, but maybe they roll over and play dead for the bottom feeders.
"How could they lose to them!" Sound familiar?
It’s winning $2.00 in the lottery on a scratch-off ticket, taking the dollar profit and sticking it your pocket and leaving the convenient store.
I’d rather go 1-15 than 8-8. At least you’re consistent. Plus, playing bad enough to go 1-15 means that there was some blooper-quality irregularities happening between the hashes. It is possible to swing around on the "entertainment meter" so far that your inadequacies become the fodder for good humor. Heck, look at the LA Clippers.
The playoff field is supposed to be the culmination of a regular season where the good and bad are separated, but it seems that this season, the fans are going to see the good, the bad, and the "eh, they never stole a freight train."
But in the AFL, when you finish mediocre, you don’t get grounded for six weeks. You’re humiliated on national television and then sent back home to think until January. Ouch.
I learned one hell of a lesson that year. You can’t be "just" good enough. To be great means you aren’t average. You didn’t "just" get in. You didn’t "barely" make it. It means you dominated. The bell rang, and you came to fight, and you don’t let up until the other schmoe is laying bloodied in need of an ambulance. And even then, you try and follow him out to the parking lot to get a few more licks in on him.
When I see that a sub-.500 or .500 team is going to the playoffs, I can feel my ears get hot as my mind is transported back to that bedroom in 1987 with the two twin beds and me, with my feathered spike and bleach-blonde rat-tail studying my pre-algebra with tears in my eyes because I can’t play "Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!" or take my skateboard off the little two-inch drop at the end of the sidewalk on Burnham Lane.
This is dedicated to my mother, Maryann Locascio. Happy Mother’s Day.
Adam J. Locascio is a financial advisor in the Tampa Bay area and a Board Member of the Tampa Bay Storm Surge Fan Club. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Phoenix and is a six-year season ticket holder for the Tampa Bay Storm.
