Choke, the Worst Word in Sports

June 1, 2016

I've heard this word a lot lately, and personally, the label is cheapened and overused. If your team or the team you bet on loses, choking gets thrown about. If you are tagged as a choker, you are also called a loser, the double whammy. You will live with this moniker the rest of your life while the whole world will never forget that time when you didn't bring home the trophy, the blue ribbon, or the big award. Such is life, and such is sports.

The Oklahoma City Thunder, The Washington Capitals, Cam Newton, Jordan Spieth have all been tagged and will wear the big dunce cap for a long time. Some will be labeled forever, and others may find redemption when they finally win something special. This can be a brutal lesson or an unfair comment because some of these are team sports, but it's hard to shake once you get branded. Phil Michelson and Greg Norman, who share tribulations in their storied careers, can tell you all about the heaps of criticism they have had to live with by coming up a little short in a handful of big golf tournaments.

Through the years, I try to separate being a good fan from a die-hard fanatic of sports. Sure, it hurts when your team comes up empty-handed in the big game, but when you throw the television out the window after they lose, you really must consider some form of therapy. All one has to do is look at the fanbase of the Chicago Cubs or any franchise in Cleveland and see how they handled it. I find Cub fans as some of the most loyal in sports considering over a hundred years of coming of short. Even when they have a good team and a chance to advance into the playoffs, they stay grounded and hope for the best. When they or any Cleveland franchise wins, watch out, those cities will perform some severe pandemonium running amok.

The way I like to think about choking is that if it wasn't for unexpected comebacks or dramatic finishes, why anybody would bother to give a damn unless your team was the favorite. If someone is called a choker, then someone choked them or forced them to choke. Take, for instance, the OKC Thunder. They are being hammered in the media and by fans for losing to the top squad in basketball, the Warriors, after having a 3-1 series lead. I watched plenty of Warrior games, and they are riding on the talent of great shooters that are also some of the greatest of all time. The Thunder got beat by the best, so let's not throw the "C" word around so cheaply, which is not fair to either to the Thunder, and it diminishes the Warrior's efforts.

Lastly, the words choke, choker, and choking are used as pacifiers to help fans cope with a disparaging loss. If the fans can somewhat shift the disappointment, they feel onto those who inflicted this pain, it somehow justifies their behavior. I can't imagine being in the shoes of Jordan Spieth, who held the lead at the Masters this year for most of the tournament. He had two awful holes on the back nine that costs him the victory. His failure to win this tournament was called a choke by many. I cringed and felt terrible for him. Fortunately, Spieth, only 22, handled his demise with grace and humility and did not shy away from reporters' questions. He excepted the tough defeat like a master that we all could learn from.