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Sunday, November 05, 2006


What some people could learn from Roy Riegels

I wouldn't be surprised if most readers haven't heard of Roy Riegels, but his story holds a surprisingly important lesson for today. Riegels was a football player for University of California (Berkeley) in the 1929 Rose Bowl, who managed to pick up a fumble and run 65 yards with it. Alas, he was running in the wrong direction, and although he was actually tackled on the one-yard line by one of his teammates, his team suffered a safety on the very next play. Since they eventually lost the game by one point, his bonehead play essentially lost the Rose Bowl.

And what better image for the Iraq war, a war which the vast majority of Americans, even many politicians and military officers, acknowledge "shouldn't have happened" but, which, despite that recognition, most of those same people still persist in the bizarre idea that it has to be kept going. So we can presume that these same people would have been cheering on Roy Riegels as he ran the wrong way, in the misguided hope that their team would "win" if only he kept going.

But it didn't work that way for Roy Riegels and Cal. And it isn't going to work that way for the U.S. in Iraq either. Continuing to do something that is wrong will never turn out right.
