Thoughts on refocusing after losing

Sep. 17—Legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi is often quoted as saying, "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing."

While Lombardi is the person most often associated with that quote, former UCLA football coach Henry Sanders said it several years before him.

Whoever said it, those words capture the drive to always win that great coaches and great athletes have.

But nobody wins them all. Oregon's 35-28 win over Ohio State last Saturday was a painful reminder of that for the Buckeyes.

It was Ohio State's first regular-season loss with Ryan Day as coach and its first loss at home since 2017.

So, what do coaches tell their players to try to get them past the hurt of a tough loss and focus them on the future? Are there things they can say?

College basketball coaching legend John Wooden didn't have a lot of experience with losing, but he did have some thoughts on it.

Wooden reportedly once said, "Losing is only temporary and not all encompassing. You must simply study it and try hard not to lose the same way again. Then you must have the self control to forget about it."

Pat Riley, who won four NBA championships as the Los Angeles Lakers' coach and another with the Miami Heat, reportedly said, "You have no choice about how you lose but you do have a choice about how you come back and prepare to win again."

When former Notre Dame football coach Ara Parseghian died in 2017, a friend recalled in a story in the Chicago Tribune that if he lost a game on Saturday it took until the next Thursday that he got over it.

Parseghian never lost back-to-back regular season games in 11 years at Notre Dame. So maybe slowly getting over it works, too.

Reach Jim Naveau at 567-242-0414.