If you lose nowadays, you still win

The debate continues. If you remember I tackled this subject last year and here it is again.

I have always believed that nothing is ever given to you for free unless you worked for it. My father was old school and believed you don't get something for nothing. This week Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker James Harrison rocked the sports world when he gave back his 8- and 6-year-old sons' "participation" trophies because they hadn't earned them.

"While I am very proud of my boys for everything they do and will encourage them till the day I die, these trophies will be given back until they EARN a real trophy," Harrison said in a post on Instagram. "I'm sorry I'm not sorry for believing that everything in life should be earned and I'm not about to raise two boys to be men by making them believe that they are entitled to something just because they tried their best."

Good for you Mr. Harrison.

The New York Times puts losing into perspective.

"To be successful in baseball and softball, you need to learn from failure and losing, more so than the act of winning. Perfect games are a rarity. Even some of our World Series champions have had to fight back from a tough defeat earlier in a tournament. Striving to win is important …"

I mean let's face it, how many people went out for that promotion and expected it because "we did our best."

I have done my best many a time and I never got the prize job or I did my best and was still laid off. Kids have got to learn that doing their best, they can still lose out.

What Harrison said went around the sports world like a cannonball.

I know when I was growing up (in the 1960s) if you played Little League and even Pee Wee League baseball and finished in last place, the team got nothing, squat, zippo, but a handshake at the end of the year. Did we feel lousy? You betcha. And that was supposed to teach you that there will always be someone better than you and life goes on. You win some and you lose some, but that won't destroy you.

Don't you think kids are smart enough to figure out when things are just given to them? When are they supposed to learn to lose?

I have relatives that teach their kids that even if they lose out on a job, the government will give them money for free. Where do you think they learned that from?

Really, not getting that trophy is the biggest learning experience I had growing up.

I learned to lose despite giving it my all and despite doing my best. I just learned that my best was done and I was not always going to win.

I had talked to high school coaches about this last year and they were pretty much in agreement that by the time the athlete is in high school, he should know what losing is all about. Some of those coaches said that the kids should learn this by 10. Why 10? Kids are reading at four. Why prolong the mystery? Teach this lesson at six or seven. The Spartans had kids beating up each other at five. Let's not coddle our kids.

When you think about it, if a person is not accustomed to losing and what it entails, how does he survive in the world?

The problem is, they don't. These are the people that are shooting up the movie theaters and high schools.

A young man blew away several of his friends because he lost a girlfriend last year in Washington. Now some of you are saying, "Losing a wife or girlfriend is nowhere near like losing a game." But is it?

Being a winner means coming home with the girl of your dreams and losing her can decimate a lot of people.

So kids must learn to lose before they can learn to win.

In the end, I think we do dumb down some of those lessons if we do give out the trophies without earning it.

I know for a fact that if they did that to me, I would not have valued it much as I did the championship trophy that said first place. I remember looking at those championship trophies with pride, and the third place trophies, not so much.