Forecasting, Failure, and Football

The “Third Saturday in October” was a wild one this year, pitting #6 Tennessee vs #3 Alabama. For those who haven’t watched it with the family yet on your favorite streaming service, I’m about to spoil the ending. In what was a crazy back and forth game, the Volunteers took down the Tide, snapping a losing streak that dates back to my college days. #Success

As a Vols fan, why talk about failure, then? Let me explain…

I love analogies about as much as I love football. They resonate with me and help me learn and remember important ideas. They also help me get an idea across to others, hopefully in a more down-to-earth, practical kind of way. As I watched the field fill up with fans in Knoxville, I thought of failure and adversity and how that often precedes successes. I also thought about the importance of how we handle failure.

Failures come in all shapes and sizes. A tornado going unwarned is a big deal. It’s very visible, it can be costly, and really stings for both the person on radar, and the office team as a whole. It’s like a fumble in football. Then you have what I would consider small failures. For example, highs only reaching the 40s when you were forecasting 50s. It still matters, but it’s not as “visible” as a fumble.

For years, the Vols have put together some decent seasons with mixed success, but they could never get over that hump that was Alabama. They came close some years, but momentum has a way of knocking the wind out of you, and Tennessee has often struggled to not make mistakes and to not lose momentum. What struck me with this year’s game was how calm and collective the 2022 Volunteers squad was, even amid some significant adversity and failures. They played a great game, but there were some costly miscues. They squandered an 18-point lead in the first half, then late in the game, they fumbled the ball at their own 4 yard line giving Alabama momentum and an easy scoop-and-score. Vols fans everywhere thought ‘here we go again…’. But Tennessee didn’t go there again.

In the midst of several failures, the Vols never seemed to feel the weight of changing momentum. They picked themselves up and kept playing as hard as ever. One of the most poignant examples of this for me was when their QB (Hendon Hooker) got a rare sack. As he was being rushed, and with the pocket collapsing, he just sat down, almost as if to say, “You got me this time fellas”. He didn’t fight it, he didn’t scramble around trying to fix it, he just sat down. Then, he got right back up and went back to playing as if nothing happened. The late-game scoop-and-score gave the Vols another chance to get discouraged and lose heart, but they didn’t. They got right back on the field and returned the favor with another TD.

The Vols had a mix of big and small failures, but what set them up for success was how they handled the miscues. Like in football, momentum plays a big role in life. One small forecast mistake here and there probably won’t have a big impact on you. But one big mistake, or a series of consistent small mistakes? That can be a game-changer.

In my early NWS years, I came in all passionate about lots of things. I wanted to have an impact, and I thought my way was the best. The problem is, I let passion get ahead of people, and I burned bridges, some of which may never get fixed. That was a fumbled-the-ball moment (or really, several fumbles in a row) for me, and it still stings to this day. Like UT after the fumble return for a scoop-and-score, I’ve had to work hard not to let that mistake define my “game” (ie. my career). I hate that I made those mistakes, but I’m not doing myself or my NWS team any favors by dwelling on it. That mistake has taught me to better balance passion and people, but the only way I’ve been able to improve is to not camp in the past.

Then I think of the times on radar where I missed a storm, or warned on a storm that didn’t go on to be severe. Sometimes we just have to take a sack, then get right back up and keep doing our best. Tennessee’s QB getting sacked was a failure, but it doesn’t mean a lack of success. The real failure would be if Hooker gave up and stopped trying the rest of the game. Same goes with warnings. Where I’ve had to rethink my approach to success and failure is to realize that a missed warning due to laziness is not the same as a missed warning due to mis-reading the environment or a storm. When I mentor others on radar, I try to encourage them to focus on doing their best and to not stress about missed events. Craig Manning reminds us that “When you focus too much on winning, you’ll start worrying about losing.” ("The Fearless Mind"). We don’t want missed events or bad warnings, but we have to be careful not to beat ourselves up in an unhealthy way when we gave it our best shot, but a mistake still happens. 

I see success as trying your best, but also being aware of where you need some additional training or experience. I recently took more of a leadership position within the NWS. I know that I will make mistakes my entire career as a leader, but I’m setting myself up for failure if I worry about those mistakes. What sets me up for success is not fearing mistakes, but addressing them with myself and with others, honestly, as they come up. Mistakes give us an opportunity to improve if we let them.

Easier said than done at times, I know. Those big mistakes that sting can be really tough to come back from. Recently, the #4 Vols lost to an unranked South Carolina team. This loss hurts all the more because this essentially eliminates the Vols from a playoff opportunity. That failure is tough to swallow. While I still hold to the importance of not camping too long on mistakes, I also believe we have to give ourselves time to process them. You can’t pretend a fumble didn’t happen. It happened, you need to process it, then try to move on. Sometimes it takes a shift, a week, or a year, to move on. One way to help process mistakes is to think back on the successes. At minimum, the Vols will have their first 9-win season since 2016. That’s progress. Progress is filled with failures AND successes. We have to remember that.

Sometimes we need to have teammates come alongside us and help us get through a tough mistake. I have seen countless times where a teammate will come over and pat a guy on the helmet or shoulder after a costly mistake. 

Sometimes that player will still be slumped over on the bench for awhile while they process it, and we need to give people room for that, but they need to know others are there. We need teammates like that, and we need to be teammates like that.

I think about my young kids (we have 4!). I can coach them or I can yell at them. I’ve done both. I regret the latter when it happens, because it doesn’t help them, it only makes the mistake worse. If you are in a leadership position, are you coaching or yelling? How we handle personal failure matters, but it also matters how we handle the failures of others.

I’ll end on this. Success is great, but how we handle success matters as much as how we handle failure. We’ll have strings of mistakes followed by strings of successes. Those strings of successes are wonderful! But we have to guard against pride creeping in. A quarterback running around taunting his success, not the team’s success, isn’t healthy for the locker room culture. We can celebrate each other’s success, but in a way that doesn’t put all the attention on us.

Life is going to throw us some scoop-and-scores, sacks, and unanswered points. We are going to make mistakes. Some will be more subtle, while others will be as visible and as costly as a fumble. The lesson we can learn from the Tennessee / Alabama game is that how we respond to, and view, mistakes matters. To be the most effective at whatever we set our minds to, we have to play to do our best, instead of playing not to lose. Acknowledge where you’ve failed, improve where you can, and don’t get too hung up on where you dropped the ball. As we get better at responding to failure, we find freedom, fun, and less fear. And, that, sets us, and our team, up for long-term success.