There are days when sports feel incredibly important, and there are days when they remind us just how unimportant they really are. Every once in a while, those two realities collide in a way that makes you appreciate both a little differently.
Saturday was one of those days for me.
I learned that my friend, lifting partner and brother Travis Jackson had passed away earlier this week. Even writing those words feels strangely disconnected from reality. There are people who become such a familiar part of your life that you never really contemplate a world in which they no longer exist. You might go months or even years without seeing them, but somewhere in the back of your mind, you know they’re out there. You know that if you picked up the phone, the years and miles between you would disappear within the first few minutes of conversation.
Travis was one of those people.
We met at what was then Gold’s Gym in Wilsonville. He started as my spotter, but somewhere between the sets, the conversations and the countless hours spent pushing ourselves physically, he became one of my closest friends. He was there for me during some of the most difficult periods of my life, offering the kind of friendship that doesn’t require constant explanation or carefully chosen words.
When he eventually moved away from Oregon to be closer to his family, I was sad for entirely selfish reasons. I was happy that he was going home, happy that he would be surrounded by the people he loved, but I also knew I was losing something that had become an important part of my everyday life.
I never imagined I was losing the opportunity to see him again.
And then, on a Saturday when I was supposed to be immersed in one of the great experiences of covering college football, I found myself carrying a grief that no football game could possibly erase.
An Unexpected Tonic
There is something almost absurd about admitting that a football game provided a measure of comfort on a day when I learned that someone I loved had died. The rational part of me understands that the outcome of Oregon’s game against Ohio State had absolutely no bearing on what had happened to Travis or the emptiness left by his passing.
But human emotions rarely operate according to the rules of rational thought.
I have spent much of my life around sports, first as a fan, then as someone who made a career out of writing about them. Over the years, I have experienced the remarkable highs and occasionally crushing lows that come with caring about something over which you have virtually no control. There have been games that stayed with me for years and others I would just as soon forget.
But Saturday felt different.
When Ohio State raced to a 14-0 lead, I could feel the familiar frustration of another disappointing Oregon performance beginning to settle in. Given everything the Ducks had endured this season, it would have been easy to accept that the afternoon was headed toward another painful conclusion.
Instead, something remarkable happened.
Dan Lanning called a fake punt from deep in Oregon territory, Teitum Tuioti threw a pass to Matayo Uiagalelei, and suddenly the entire personality of the game changed. Oregon began playing with the confidence and aggression that had been missing for much of the season. The defense found its footing, the offense discovered its rhythm and the Ducks turned a seemingly hopeless afternoon into one of their most memorable victories.
For a few hours, I found myself smiling again.
Not because the grief had disappeared. It hadn’t. Not because a football victory somehow made the day better in any meaningful or permanent sense. It couldn’t.
But because there was still something in the world capable of bringing an unexpected moment of happiness into an otherwise heartbreaking day.
And perhaps the most fitting part of it all was that Travis would have loved every minute of that game.
He was a Penn State University alumnus, whi despised two teams - Michigan and Ohio State - as much as he loved Penn State and would have thoroughly enjoyed watching Oregon dismantle Ohio State in the Horseshoe. I can imagine the conversations we would have had about the remarkable turnaround, the audacity of that fake punt and the sight of more than 100,000 Buckeye fans slowly realizing their afternoon was not going to end the way they expected.
I wish I could have had that conversation with him.
The Weight of Ordinary Moments
As I have gotten older, I have found myself thinking more frequently about how we measure the importance of moments in our lives. We tend to remember the obvious milestones, the weddings, births, graduations, promotions and extraordinary experiences that become the landmarks of our personal histories.
But I wonder how often we recognize the significance of the ordinary moments while we are actually living them.
When Travis and I were working out together, I wasn’t thinking about creating memories that would someday carry enormous emotional weight. We were simply two guys in a gym, spotting each other, talking about life, challenging each other and enjoying the companionship that comes from a friendship built on mutual trust.
I couldn’t tell you how many workouts we shared or how many conversations we had. I couldn’t begin to reconstruct the countless little moments that, collectively, made him such an important part of my life.
Yet those are the moments I find myself wanting back.
Not some extraordinary celebration or grand adventure, but another ordinary afternoon at the gym. Another conversation between sets. Another opportunity to laugh about something that probably wouldn’t make sense to anyone else.
It is a peculiar cruelty of losing someone that the moments we most desperately wish to revisit are often the ones we never thought to preserve.
We spend so much of our lives looking forward to what comes next that we sometimes fail to recognize the extraordinary value of what is happening right now.
I don’t think that realization means we should spend our lives anticipating loss. That would be a miserable way to exist. But perhaps it should encourage us to be a little more deliberate about appreciating the people who make our ordinary days meaningful.
Because the truth is that most of our lives are lived in those ordinary moments.
What a Comeback Can and Cannot Teach Us
There is a temptation, particularly for someone who writes about sports, to turn every remarkable athletic performance into some larger lesson about life. We celebrate perseverance, resilience, and the refusal to surrender when circumstances seem hopeless.
Oregon’s victory certainly offered all those familiar themes.
The Ducks had every reason to fold after falling behind by two touchdowns in one of college football’s most intimidating environments. Instead, they found a way to change the circumstances confronting them, one play and one decision at a time.
There is something inspiring about that, particularly when you consider how thoroughly this season had tested the team’s confidence and resolve.
But I am also conscious of the limitations of those comparisons.
Life does not always offer a comeback. There are losses that cannot be reversed, circumstances that cannot be changed and moments when determination alone is simply not enough. No amount of perseverance will give me another workout with Travis or another opportunity to tell him how much his friendship meant to me.
And that is where the easy sports metaphors begin to fail.
Perhaps the more meaningful lesson is not that we can always overcome adversity, but that joy and sorrow are not mutually exclusive experiences. We can carry profound sadness and still find reasons to smile. We can mourn what we have lost while appreciating what remains. We can recognize the fragility of life without surrendering our capacity to enjoy it.
Saturday’s game didn’t teach me how to deal with losing Travis. I suspect that will be a much longer and more complicated process.
But it reminded me that even on the darkest days, life can still offer moments worth embracing.
The Walk Ahead
This morning, as I think about the game, the experience of being in Columbus and the extraordinary transformation I witnessed on the field, my thoughts keep returning to Travis.
I think about the years that have passed since we first met and the strange, unpredictable paths that our lives followed afterward. I think about how fortunate I was to have someone who stood beside me when life was particularly difficult, and how inadequate the words thank you seem when I consider everything that friendship meant.
I also think about the conversations we never had and the ones I assumed there would always be time to have.
There is no profound wisdom I can offer that makes those thoughts easier. Grief is not a problem to be solved or a challenge that can be conquered through sufficient determination. It is simply part of the price we pay for allowing other people to become important to us.
And despite how painful that price can be, I would never trade away the friendship to avoid the sorrow.
Oregon’s victory over Ohio State will become another memorable chapter in the program’s history. Fans will remember the fake punt, the 38 unanswered points and the remarkable sight of the Buckeyes being overwhelmed in their own stadium. They will debate what the victory means for the playoff race and whether this is finally the team everyone expected to see when the season began.
I will remember all of those things, too.
But I will also remember that on one of the saddest days I have experienced in a long time, a football team gave me a few hours of happiness when I desperately needed them.
And I will remember a friend who would have enjoyed sharing that happiness with me.
There are victories that mean something because of what happens on the field, and there are victories that become part of our lives because of what happens away from it.
For me, Saturday will always be a little of both.
Rest easy, Travis. I wish we could have watched this one together.
Very touching article Scott. I am sorry for your loss but glad that what happened yesterday helped to ease the pain for a few hours.