Quote of the Day | October 20, 2008: That Instant Validation

Former Raiders All-Pro tight end Todd Christensen from Charlie Jones' 1997 What Makes Winners Win:

In sports, the clarity is there. You win or you lose, there are no philosophical, moral, subjective victories. There's a scoreboard.

The thing that's unique to football is that the films don't lie. You look at the films, and the players know. The films don't lie. At a certain point on the field, the films don't lie. Either you can play or you can't play.

So many times when you come from that very real world . . . I resent it when people don't talk about it as the real world, because believe me, you drag your sorry ass out there even when you have a broken bone in your foot. Don't tell me that's not the real world. That's hard. Yeah, it's well compensated, but it's hard.

What they're talking about in terms of the real world is that the clarity that exists within sports does not exist in other fields. Certainly not with the marked lucidness that it does in sport.

I'm an applause freak. I don't necessarily miss that, and I don't miss the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, but I do miss the clarity of success, that instant validation. "Man, we won!" That's the frustration for the athlete trying to make that transition, that loss of clarity.

Tags: What Makes Winners Win, Todd Christensen, Charlie Jones