Staff Editorial: It feels good to hurt again after a loss

Oct 6, 2009, 12:00 AM

This used to be a football school. As hard as that might be to believe for those of you who are still undergrads - hell, the grad students, for that matter, too - the student body here used to live and die with the football team. Guys like Marques Tuiasosopo and Steve Emtman and Napoleon Kaufman ruled the campus. Conference standings mattered. People cleared room on their schedules to make bowl game travel arrangements. And a 2-3 start to the Steve Sarkisian era doesn't mean that the glory days are back and you can make your Rose Bowl reservations any time soon. But, you know what? There was a feeling after Saturday's 37-30 loss to Notre Dame that hasn't existed in a while around here. That feeling, quite simply, was pain. It was a punch in the stomach. It was a loss that stung and stung and stung, the kind that ruined your day as soon as you woke up the next morning and remembered what had happened. But to suffer a loss like that means that first of all, there had to be a point during the game at which you thought the Huskies might win. There had to be hope first for it to be shattered. There was no hope last season. There were no gut-punch losses - save for maybe the infamous BYU celebration penalty game early in the season - because the team was so resigned to its fate that losing was a given. So yeah, after watching a team sleepwalk through games for four seasons under Tyrone Willingham, it feels good to hurt again after a loss. This is how it's supposed to feel. This is what it feels like when you care. I'm not sure anybody did last year. Let's lament the missed opportunities that two goal-line stands can bring. Get mad at the officials for making two crucial, controversial calls that had a direct impact on the outcome. But also, let's understand that the mere fact that those opportunities existed is evidence that we're free to start investing our emotion in this football program again. I asked a colleague in the newsroom the other day about the last time he actually felt pain after a loss. We both had a hard time answering. And so it's a little refreshing, even in defeat, to know that this school is still capable of feeling the sting that only a loss like that can bring. As high as this place was after the USC upset, it might have been just as low after watching what happened in South Bend, Ind. Here's thinking that as Sarkisian continues to turn this thing around, those kind of losses are going to happen less and less. And here's hoping that it still hurts just as bad every time they do. Reach Sports Editor Christian Caple at sports@dailyuw.com.

Stay up to Date

Subscribe to our weekly newsletters covering the news, arts, and sports.

Staff Editorial: It feels good to hurt again after a loss

Disruptor interrupts Psych 210, professor and students chase man on to Red Square

2025 Seattle and King County primary election endorsements

UW mechanical engineering students are now required to pay $250 quarterly fee to participate in department-affiliated RSOs

College Inn Pub reopens under new ownership