Jim Govatos: UCF's lessons in getting back up

How about those UCF Knights? I watched most of the game against Brigham Young on Oct. 9, and was it ever exciting! I was thinking about a couple of things I learned from that engagement:

1) It is easy to let success slip away. The Knights were leading 10-3 going into halftime and looked dominant. But then they found themselves down 24-17 at the end of the third quarter. This is not a sports column, so I am not going to do an analysis. I simply wanted to say that great accomplishments can prove tenuous if we do not hang onto the details of what got us there. This is true not just in football, but in all of life. I remember an ancient philosophy course I took in college. I nailed my first paper and then began to cruise. Let's just say that the cruise control didn't work so well and I found myself struggling to keep up by the end of the semester.

2) It is possible to bounce back. All failure is not final. UCF managed to make the right adjustments and come back to tie and then win the game. It is very easy to give up when we feel like we've "blown it." We feel the momentum slipping away and can't imagine how it will ever turn around. But applying ourselves to the small things bit-by-bit sometimes reverses the momentum imperceptibly and then significantly. When we feel things going in the wrong direction we can either hurry the downward spiral along or put the brakes on one inch at a time.

In a former parish, I had the opportunity to help organize a summer camp for at-risk boys. Some days we felt like we were making progress; at other times we didn't know whether we were moving ahead or not. About a month ago I learned that two very successful academies for at-risk kids had emerged out of our stumbling starts.

As a Christian, I follow the man who made the greatest comeback of all time: Jesus. When you're in the thick of things that is not always easy to remember. But the only other alternative is to let the spiral continue downward.

3) To move ahead you have to take risks. UCF attempted two fourth-down conversions and made both, helping to lead them to victory. Most of the time coaches opt to play it safe and punt on fourth down, but when the game hangs in the balance it is wise to take a calculated risk. Not all of our attempts will make it, but the ones that do often pay off big time. I never cease to be amazed at how risk-averse we have become. But as I look at the great moments of history, most of them have involved risk. When is the last time you took a risk?

4) Many victories involve a touch of mystery. I looked at the stats for both UCF and BYU and they were pretty even. The deciding factor might have been a throw here or a toss there. Some people may call it luck, and in football that is what it is. However, this mystery in life is called grace or undeserved favor.

When your spouse decides to forgive you, that is grace. When you get a phone call from an estranged relative, that is grace. When you close a deal you thought was shaky, that is grace. Often times we don't get exactly what we deserve, and that is grace. If you've ever been the recipient of that sort of brow-wiping gift of undeserved favor you know how good it feels. Did you know that the person who franchised that undeserved favor was Jesus of Nazareth whom the Bible says was full of grace and truth (John 1:14)?

You can learn a lot watching football. Isn't that great to know, guys?