Usually, the week after the Super Bowl is a big let-down. The closest thing we have is D-I spring football practices, but they're just a poor substitute that holds us over until the NFL starts back up in September.
In the post-Super Bowl hysterics, as my roommates and I watched Frank Mara receive the Lombardi Trophy, one of the most prestigious awards in football, I thought back to the award's namesake, Vince Lombardi.
"Winning is not a sometime thing, it is an all the time thing," Lombardi said. "You don't do things right once in a while...you do them right all the time." For Lombardi, attitude was the key to being successful. Attitude is contagious. Winning is contagious, but losing can be too. But Tom Coughlin and the rest of the Giants' coaches refused to let their season be dictated by detractors.
Lombardi was a stern coach who ran on "Lombardi Time," a system based on extreme punctuality. If you weren't 15 minutes early to practice, you were considered late. His demand for perfectionism and selflessness for the team are values that aren't often found in today's sports world.
I think that sort of attitude fosters the best kind of team, and those teams were on display this past Sunday. Watching Eli Manning lead the G-Men to victory showed that the past doesn't have much of an impact on current success unless we let it.
In the middle of the season, the Giants looked like an average team that couldn't get its act together; now they are national champions. And as a Bowdoin athlete, I am taking a lot away from the Giants' victory.
Being a member of a D-III team is about earning success on the track as well as in the classroom. Since the start of the semester, I've tried to keep Lombardi's values in mind in the hope that I can maximize this semester.
I'm not just talking about getting good grades and running fast times. There's no point in being one dimensional at a place like Bowdoin, an institution that calls us to excel in every facet of life and gives us the opportunity to do so.