We’ve all been there before. Swallowing tough losses involving your favorite teams, whether college or pro sports, are never easy. Circumstances change the degree of defeat, but for a true hardcore fan, every loss takes a tiny bit of your soul with it.
Bill Simmons wrote a classic piece many years ago while with Page 2 of ESPN called “The 13 Levels of Losing”, which I relate very well to. As a longtime Rutgers fan, I attribute any difficult loss to the second worst kind that Simmons accounts for, the Level II stomach punch loss. Every soul crushing loss that Rutgers suffers in football or men’s basketball, for me, always feels like a stomach punch type of loss.