A year ago, I had the great honor, privilege and luck of being able to fly with the Green Bay Packers to their game in San Francisco (my dad won a contest at work and picked me over my mom). Sometime between the crab dinner and the personal police escort to the game, I remember thinking how nice it would be if the Packers could win a few games down the stretch for Brett Favre and send him out on a winning note.
The Green and Gold did just that, defeating the 49ers to improve to 5-8 and then winning the final three games to finish 8-8.
The point of this lengthy introduction is this: If you would have told me a year ago that the Packers would win 15 out of their next 17 games, I would have praised you for your blind faith to the Pack and then told you to lay off the Old Thompson.
Then again, if you told me the Missouri Tigers and Kansas Jayhawks would play a pivotal role in the college football national championship picture, Illinois would be playing in the Rose Bowl and a two-loss team would be playing the BCS title game, I probably would have said the same thing.
It's just not supposed to happen, but I'm sure glad they did.
As the college football world and, at times, the NFL, have been rocked by wild upsets during the past few months, there's been a lot of talk about parity and whether it's a good thing or not.
Those who say it's not good argue that as the number of upsets increases, a little bit of the luster from each upset is lost. In other words, when upsets do occur, they're not as shocking or enjoyable because they happen all the time.
This argument makes perfect sense. If I made chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast everyday for an entire month, the thrill would eventually wear off and I'd probably go back to my usual morning meal of bran flakes sprinkled with prunes.
You cannot tell me that Arizona fans were less psyched about beating then No. 2 Oregon simply because a whole host of No. 2 teams had fallen in previous weeks.
Nor would I believe that Notre Dame haters were getting tired of watching the Fighting Irish struggle each week. While the Notre Dame losses were certainly not upsets, having the most storied program in college football history finish with its worst record since 1963 is pretty crazy.
Upsets and surprises are the reasons guys and gals who partied way too hard Friday night drag themselves out of bed Saturday morning to make the trek to Camp Randall. Inevitably this journey will take place about a half hour after kickoff, but hey, it's the thought that counts, right?
Surprises give Cubs fans hope that this will be the year they finally break the curse and give Rex Grossman the faith to throw the majority of his passes into triple coverage - This one might make it without getting picked off.""
In short - unless you're a Yankees fan - upsets and surprises are why we watch sports. No matter how many times David slays Goliath, we want to see him build up the courage to do it again next week.
Think back on your own life over the past year. What moments do you remember? More often than not, it's going to be the surprises, for better or for worse, that we recall.
It's that test that you were 100 percent sure you failed, but got an ""A"" on. It's that party that you thought would be totally lame that turned out to be a great time. It's that team that you thought would finish in the NFC North Cellar that is somehow 11-2.
It wasn't supposed to happen. You don't know how it happened. But you're sure glad it did. It all made sense in the year of the underdog.
If you're going to be weeping tears of sadness because you won't be able to read Ryan's column until January, e-mail him at reszel@dailycardinal.com.
