Dallas Cowboys Competition

Earlier this week, the Dallas Cowboys faced the New York Giants on the football field, and the Giants narrowly defeated the Cowboys by a margin of only one touchdown. As could be expected, many Cowboys fans were upset with the result, and results like these have led many to ponder whether competition is healthy by nature. It is healthy if one accepts that perfection cannot be achieved, that someone is always better, and that competition leads to self-improvement. In sports, players may have goals or even dreams of becoming the “perfect player,” never making mistakes and always playing their best. However, part of being an athlete is realizing that mistakes will happen. David Ortiz doesn’t hit a home run each time he goes up to the plate, Eli Manning doesn’t throw a scoring pass each time, and Serena Williams doesn’t hit an ace on every serve. If they can accept that they cannot achieve perfection, competition is perfectly healthy.

This was mentioned in Alfie Kohn’s essay Why Competition?, where he stated that, “someone is always one step higher,..., I am thus perpetually insecure.…” Roberta Vinci, a professional tennis player ranked 43rd in the world, was in the semifinals of the US Open, and she drew Serena Williams, the world number one women’s tennis player, as her opponent. Her odds of winning were 300 to 1, and no one, not even herself, thought she could win. However, she knew that Serena was better than her, so she told herself that she would just try her best and not worry about who she was playing. She ended up defeating Serena, and surprised tennis fans everywhere. Therefore, if people can accept that someone is better than them, competing will become less about who they are competing with and more about giving complete and total