choke

I was watching the women's curling Gold Medal Game live. Canada was up two in the final end and they had all the rocks in the house. This was over. They had time to give us all the backstory about Olympic trials, and how this particular Canadian team had a reputation of never being able to win the big game. And how great it was that they were finally going to win Olympic gold.

And the person who's been making all the clutch shots, the skip Cheryl Bernard was just two throws away from winning it all. And then she blew it. I mean she CHOKED like nothing I'd ever seen before.

Not only did she miss hitting the Sweden rock she was aiming for, but she knocked her own out, setting up Sweden for an incredibly easy final shot to score the two they needed.

I tried to think of a bigger choke.

All I could think of was Brett Favre in this year's NFC Championship game. But let's make this a football analogy to see how terrible this was.

First off, it's the Super Bowl. Canada is up 7. There's 35 seconds left and the play clock is on 5. Sweden is out of timeouts. Canada has the ball inside Sweden's 10. They don't need to score, just run the clock out. And they hand it off, and and FUMBLE. Sweden picks it up and is going the other way and Sweden is pushed out on the 1-inch line with 5 seconds to go in the game. All they have to do is do a sneak to send the game to overtime.

AND THEN

(For this analogy we have to imagine the NFL using the current college football overtime rules)

In overtime, Sweden scored a field goal on their possession. But Canada will get the ball back. They've got the hammer and on their final play, interception, game over.

Just the worst choke ever.

- - -

Also, I don't want Brett Favre or the Vikings to be off the hook here. When I see him all I think of is he how's a selfish prick and how he continually blows games. When you choke for a decade I can't remember anything else.

And the Vikings...who still want him to come back.

It's like you're entering an auto race with no pit stops. The race is 100 miles long. You're looking at a car that only has 97 miles worth of gas in it's tank. But it is pretty fast.

The other cars that you have aren't nearly as fast. But you don't know the size of their gas tank, and there might be ways to make them faster.

Or you could try and buy a new car, or even build one from scratch.

But no because the care you have is pretty fast, you want to stick with it, even though it doesn't have enough gas to cross the finish line. At least you'll be "in the race" for almost the whole way.