What if the Glass Slipper doesn’t fit?

"Wait, Wait." The young servant girl runs down the stairs calling for the grand duke. "I'm here. I want a turn. Let me try on the slipper please."

The duke turns from the door and looks her up and down as reaches the bottom of the stairs. "You'll do." He says and he reaches in his pocket for the slipper. The girl sits and extends an unshod foot. The duke pulls out the slipper and tries to wedge it onto her foot. It doesn't quite fit…..

This is what happened to the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday. They were the Cinderella story. They were the underdog. They were the team that was absolutely not supposed to reach the biggest sporting event of the year, The Super Bowl. While they put up a valiant effort and made a remarkable fourth quarter come back, the still lost. And losing sucks….

Believe me, I know.

Saying that I'm a competitive girl is like saying the Mona Lisa is a masterpiece. It is something that goes without saying. I absolutely, positively loathe losing. I'm not exactly a bad loser. I don't spend my time crying or pitching a temper tantrum instead….I seethe. That's right, I churn, boil, foam, bubble with regret and recriminations. That is what I'm doing now.

If I'm going to lose, I like to know why I lose. What did I do to cause myself to lose? Was it the other team was better than me? The athlete and gamesman in me say that if I know why I lost, I can do better next time. That athlete and that gamesman are going crazy now that I'm in the Friend Zone. I must know what caused this state of affairs…and guess what I'm never going to find out so now I must do the hardest thing that one can do in sports after a bad game.

I must put it out of my mind. That's right. Put it out of my mind and move on to the next game.

Yuck.

Who wants to do that?

Kurt Warner doesn't want to do that. Larry Fitzgerald doesn't want to do that. Anquan Boldin doesn't want to do that. I imagine that none of the rest of the Arizona team wants to do that either. They lost the Super Bowl. They lost the biggest game of the year. They lost the biggest game in that poor, poor franchise's tangled and tumbled history. Yet, as athletes, they know the only game that matters is the next game….even if the next game is in eight months.

So, I think that it is up to me to follow that example. I'll spend the next few months training and slimming down and trying to make myself into a pre-season favorite and the next time that the cannon goes off and the ball is kicked into the air, I'll be ready to go.