Yesterday, the Seattle Seahawks football team defeated the Dallas Cowboys by one point, 21 to 20, in a playoff game for the Super Bowl. The turning point in the game occurred when Dallas had the ball on the 19 yard line with 1:19 left on the game clock. A field goal would have won the game for Dallas. Given the skill and success of the Dallas kicker, this would have been an easy kick and victory was virtually assured. But, the Dallas quarterback, Tony Romo, took the snap for the place kicker and while trying to put it on the ground for the kicker, fumbled the ball. Romo began to scramble for ball loose on the ground, picked it up and made a run for the goal line, but was tackled 2 yards short. His fumble cost Dallas the game and eliminated them from the playoffs. After the game, 26 year old Romo sat by his locker crying. "I don’t know if I ever felt this low" he said. "I cost the Dallas Cowboys a playoff win. This will sit with me a long time…It hurts real bad to think about." Newspapers had leads reading "Romo forced to deal with failure" and "Wins and loses come and go, Romo, but infamy is forever." One sports writer wrote "Romo, as you know, is the poor sap who let Seattle escape…Romo dropped the snap that would have won the playoff game…" Sports writers across the country wrote about Romo’s fumble costing the game.

While Romo sees this as a historical blunder that is unique in sports history, the fact is that it is only one of hundreds of errors, many far more embarrassing then his. In fact, it is only a passing unfortunate event which fades in comparison to other mistakes in history. Take the January 1, 1929 Rose Bowl game when California played Georgia Tech. The game was scoreless in the second quarter when the Bears had to turn the ball over to Georgia on the 25 yard line. On the next play a Georgia player fumbled the ball and Roy Riegels, Cal’s center and captain of the team, scooped it up and began running. Unfortunately, he was running the wrong way, back towards Cal’s goal line instead of Georgia’s. Teammates pursued him yelling at him to turn around and finally caught him on the 1 yard line. Cal couldn’t move the ball and was forced to punt, but it was blocked and Georgia scored a safety. The paper reported that Riegels was so embarrassed he put a blanket over his head in the locker room and cried, saying he had ruined everything. Georgia won the game. From that time on, Riegels was known as "wrong way Riegels" and the story was retold for the rest of his life

Then there is the 1993 Super Bowl game where Dallas Cowboy defensive tackle Leon Lett recovered a fumble and rushed down field, but began celebrating before he crossed the goal line. When he slowed to celebrate, a Buffalo Bill player caught up with him knocked the ball out of his hands taking the ball in for a touch back. The following season the same Leon Lett fell on a blocked Miami field goal attempt, but it shot out from under him into the arms of a Miami player. This allowed a second field goal attempt which won the game for Miami.

Lets also remember that Boston Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in 1919 only to have Ruth become one of greatest home run hitters in history. The trade has been referred to ever since as the dumbest decision in baseball history. In the 1986 World Series Red Sox first baseman, Bill Buckner, allowed a slow grounder to go-between his legs allowing the winning run. Despite 21 year career in baseball, this one play is most remembered blunder in World Series history.

But, these are just sports blunders. The list of blunders far more significant than that of some sports activity is. Take the 1958 Ford Motor Company putting on the market the Edsel automobile. The failure of the car to catch on with the public cost the company many millions of dollars and the name Edsel became a synonym for dumb mistakes. In 1985 the Coca-Cola company decided to sell a new style coke, but the product was such a failure that due to the complaints of Coke drinkers wanting the original product, Coke had to bring the original back which they renamed "Coca Cola Classic." The military, business and political list of enormous blunders is a long one and makes a football game mistake seem of little importance in the scheme of things. When we make a particularly painful mistake we tend to believe the whole world is watching. But, that belief is often the result of ego or a need to be perfect. The fact is people are busy enough with their own problems not to dwell on someone else’s mistake. We aren’t as important as we often think we are. Events should be seen in perspective. After all, there are some 6.5 Billion people on this planet and only a tiny fraction care what happened during a foot ball game. With the rest of the world concerned about war, poverty, Aids, disease and starvation, one mistake in a football game isn’t going to be of much importance. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said:

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and some absurdities have crept it; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."