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Posted in Sports

The games you remember are played in November

I first heard this phrase to describe college football as a teenager. I’m not sure who originated this saying, but I’ve seen him play year after year since. We just completed the first weekend of games in November and have already witnessed BCS #1 ranked LSU defeat BCS #2 Alabama 9-6 in overtime on the road, BCS #3 Oklahoma State beat BCS #14 Kansas State 52-45 at home and BCS #7 Arkansas topped BCS #9 South Carolina 44-28 at home.

Next week features the game between current BCS #4 ranked Stanford hosting BCS #7 Oregon and the weekend of 25 BCS #1 LSU hosting BCS #8 Arkansas. Besides all those games with national implications that depend on them, November is the month when most rivalries take place in the state and most fans don’t soon forget which teams won those games and have all the bragging rights heading into the following season.

Despite their importance and the memories created by the games played in November, one must remember that for those games to be significant, the teams involved have to win most, if not all, of their games leading up to November. This is best accomplished by staying in the moment each week and focusing on your own improvement. If LSU was thinking about their next game with Alabama in November when they opened the season against Oregon, chances are the outcome of that game wouldn’t have gone in their favor.

Too often, teams get ahead of themselves and focus more on where they are headed than where they are now. This is how upsets and disappointments tend to happen. The teams that control what they can control, which is their own improvement and beat whoever they face each week, are the ones that are likely to play those meaningful games in November.

For example, Florida State and Texas A&M were in nearly all of the preseason top 10, ranking 6th and 8th on ESPN’s preseason top 25. But as we entered November, none of them were listed in the BCS top 25, in fact Florida State only received 12 votes in the poll that came out yesterday and Texas A&M received no votes at all. Now imagine how big Texas A&M’s game against BCS #6 Oklahoma would have been last weekend if they had taken care of business in all their previous games.

Good teams avoid getting caught up in all the hype around them, knowing that every game counts the same on their record. Teams that aren’t constantly improving usually find that the only games they remember, which were played in November, other than the aforementioned in-state rivalry games, are sadly games played by teams other than themselves.

Posted in The Mind Side Blog Supertao.com
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