Pride After The Fall

It was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. Truly.

I was watching the latest installment of ESPN’s fantastic “30 for 30” movie series — a group of 30 films commissioned to celebrate the 30-year anniversary of the station’s birth. As a NY Giant’s fan, this one had special interest for me. You see, this latest movie was called, “Four Falls of Buffalo,” and those with some football knowledge will remember that the Buffalo Bills, remarkably, made it to four consecutive Super Bowls in the early 90s. Perhaps even more amazingly, they lost every one of them. The first defeat was against the NY Giants, and it famously ended on a missed field goal by Bills kicker Scott Norwood.

This incident was so well known it became a core part of the plot in Jim Carey’s “Ace Ventura, Pet Detective” where the lead character has a life-long hatred of the kicker whose last minute miss resulted in a Super Bowl loss (Read “In Popular Culture” section of Norwood’s Wikipedia page above). In such a movie, it was fun to lay the loss all at the feet (so to speak) of Norwood, when we can pretend he’s not a real person, with a family and real feelings, but the 30 for 30 movie stripped away that fantasy and showed him to be anything but a caricature. In fact, in watching him repeatedly tear up when discussing how he’d let down his teammates, we wish to reach through the television, put an arm around his shoulder and tell him that it’s going to be ok, that it was just a game.

So, watching the footage of the fatal kick, we see it sail right of the uprights. The time ran out and the game was over. But watch closely and we see more than a few of Norwood’s teammates come over to pat him on the back, show him support and let him know — through their actions and words — that the TEAM lost the game, not him.

Now all that was great and touching and wonderful, but then came the part that I never heard about, expected, or have seen anything like. When the Bills got back to Buffalo (after losing the game, remember), there were tens of thousands of fans in the streets to cheer their accomplishment of getting to the big game and fighting to the finish. You see, this was their team, the team of a working class city that hadn’t always had good times, hadn’t always won, and could surely identify with its sports heroes who had fought, but returned home just a little short of victory.

And who on the team epitomized that ethos? It was the obviously the crushed Scott Norwood. Now remember, in many countries around the world (especially when it comes to soccer) we see the player who ostensibly caused a loss targeted for death, literally. But when the Buffalo Bills stood before their fans after losing the Super Bowl, they chanted this player’s name. They demanded he come forth, not to be murdered or even harangued, but, astoundingly, to be raised up, to be forgiven to be absolved.

“We want Scott!”

“We want Scott!”

“We want Scott!”

And when he did come, it was to an applause you would have surely thought saved for heroes. I could not believe what I was seeing. What a city! What an illustration of how kind we human beings have the potential to be.

And so I thought about leadership, and how every person in that crowd had the makings of a CEO, for is absolution of failure not one of the greatest leadership traits? Anyone can flog and destroy, but when the effort was shown and the pain at coming up short is obvious, it is our duty as leaders to not only forgive but absolve, to raise and heal.

Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” (A Farewell to Arms, 1929) That day, the crowd in Buffalo helped Scott Norwood become strong at his broken places. Perhaps someday you will have the opportunity to do the same.