Utter Futility

Trey Smith

In something you don't see every day, a mid-major college basketball team -- Northern Illinois University -- scored a total of 4 points in the first half and a whopping 25 points for the whole game. They made only 1 field goal in 31 attempts in that disastrous first half. Talk about utter futility!

Their leading scorer for the game registered 7 points. That's almost unheard of!

But I can relate. When I was a freshman in college, I played intramural basketball for one of the worst teams in the history of intramural basketball. In our 10-game season, our record was 0 wins and 10 losses. We never came anywhere close to winning a game.

At one point in our ill-fated season, we played the team that eventually won the league title. I was our team's leading scorer with 6 points. Actually, that's not completely accurate. The truth of the matter is that for that game I was my team's ONLY scorer. We lost by a score of something like 65-6.

We couldn't shoot. We couldn't pass. We couldn't rebound and we couldn't dribble. We were as terrible as terrible gets. But, you know what? We didn't care. We KNEW that we weren't athletes. We KNEW we would be hard-pressed to win ANY game we played.

We did it for the fun and the camaraderie. After each game, we would laugh and laugh at our own futility. We would razz each other about all the bone-headed plays we had messed up.

Mind you, we weren't trying to lose -- we played to win. It's just that we really had no hope of winning.

For me, it served as a great life lesson. Whether a person has any hope of winning or succeeding in any given situation in life isn't all that important. Regardless of the situation, you put your best foot forward. If you win or succeed, great. If not, you smile about it and keep moving forward.