Sports Analogies

As a child I participated in just about every sport available to me. Baseball, basketball, track, swimming, and football kept me busy and to some extent out of trouble and out of my mother’s hair.
I learned and used a lot of sports analogies over the years including a few about my marriage. I heard often when I started dating Suzy that I had moved “up in class.” “Out of my league” was another often used phrase that still applies.
Another that seems to apply is “I out-kicked my coverage.” For those of you who don’t follow football it means the kicker actually kicked the ball too far. The receiver of the punt has time to gather in the ball and set up his blockers to return the punt for a score.
I think when someone used it to apply to my marriage they mean I really went out on a limb in trying to convince Suzy to go out with me. I was in danger of a disastrous result. Fortunately they were wrong.
A disaster doesn’t always occur when we out-kick our coverage. Sometimes extending ourselves beyond a safety point is healthy. We challenge our teammates to run a little faster, and we challenge ourselves as we go a little further to also go a little bit higher with our goals.
There is an excitement when a punter out kicks his coverage. We know something extraordinary for one side or the other is going to happen. Maybe, we should apply the same philosophy to living.

About the author

Webb Hubbell is the former Associate Attorney General of The United States. His novels, When Men Betray, Ginger Snaps, A Game of Inches, The Eighteenth Green, and The East End are published by Beaufort Books and are available online or at your local bookstore. When Men Betray won one of the IndieFab awards for best novel in 2014. Ginger Snaps and The Eighteenth Green won the IPPY Awards Gold Medal for best suspense/thriller. His latest, “Light of Day” will be on the bookstands soon.

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