Scott Norwood - Not a Goat, a Winner

I just got through reading my new Sports Illustrated and it had a great series of "Where are they now?" articles. My favorite one is on Scott Norwood, remember him? Scott Norwood is the Buffalo Bills kicker who is famous for missing the game winning kick in the '91 Super Bowl. Remember "wide right."

Us Florida Gator fans always think of FSU kickers who lost games against Miami by being wide right. (We'll talk about that, we don't want to talk about all the times they have beaten us). We have a joke - did you hear about the plane carrying the FSU team home from a football game, how it missed the runway? It was wide right. FSU has had a few famous "wide-rights" but none can match the Scott Norwood wide right.

After that miss, no one remembered all of Scott's successes, the Pro Bowl's, the fact that he was the leading scorer for the Bills. All people remember is "wide right." There was even a movie made about the incident, and in the movie, the guy who misses the kick becomes a real loser.

The SI article shows that it took Scott years to deal with the miss, but he has done so and has done so admirably. Thankfully, Scott is still very well thought of in Buffalo. Neither the team nor the fans blame him. But there is one comment in the SI article that I love. Here it is:

Then, over a few seasons - but he no longer calls them seasons, they're years now - thanks to the continued good health of his children and the love of his wife and family, he begins to understand that without that failure, that defeat, he might not have everything he now has. It is an obvious truth but one that comes to him with a most unlikely feeling: gratitude.

"I like the people we've become," he tells his wife at one point, not smugly, but in wonder. How can you measure the health and the happiness of three beautiful children against a field goal? Three kids versus three points? "If everything always worked out for you, then you don't have that sense of appreciation," Norwood says.

I gotta admire this guy - he's no goat, he's a winner.