It Just Ain't Fair

It has been called one of the top memorable moments and blunders in college football history. And I was there to see it happen on October 6, 1990, along with 46,856 football crazies.

The game pitted the Colorado Buffaloes (CU) against their Big Eight Conference rival, the Missouri Tigers (MU). It was at Missouri. It became known as the Fifth Down Game.

Colorado was ranked #12 in the nation and Missouri - well, let's just say they weren't ranked at all. Nada.

One of the basic rules of the game of football is actually pretty simple and basic: a team on its initial possession of the ball on offense is allowed four successive and consecutive attempts or "downs" to move the ball 10 yards towards the opposing goal line. If you don't move 10 yards in 4 downs, you give the ball up to the opponent.

Colorado trailed 31-27, with 40 seconds to go and the clock ticking. They had the ball and called a timeout, ready for the third down, with just seconds left in the game. One problem. The officiating crew forgot to flip the down marker to note that it was now third down. On the next play, the down marker showing second down when it was really third down, Colorado was stopped short of the end zone. On the next play, the quarterback quickly "spiked" the ball (thinking it was third down when it was really fourth) to stop the clock with two seconds left. On the following play – fourth down according to the marker, but "fifth down" in reality – the quarterback kept the ball himself and scampered in for a touchdown with no time left.

Final score: Colorado 33, Missouri 31.

And yes, I was screaming like the rest of thousands of fans, knowing that an extra down was being given - but to no avail. End of game. Final score. The rule violation that never got overturned. Colorado win. Missouri gets hosed.

The biggest rules fiasco in the history of Missouri. That the head coach Bill McCartney, four years after he retired as the Colorado coach, admitted to making mistakes and being saddened by the Fifth Down fiasco, and made the remarks at a Promise Keepers gathering at the site of the controversy in Missouri - didn’t make me or thousands of other Tigers fans feel any better.

I still don't think it's fair. Just ain't fair, it ain't.

Okay, so football is just a game. But what do we do when the calls don’t go our way in real life?

What do you do when someone with less tenure, less experience, less education and lower performance gets promoted ahead of you? What do you do when your company down-sizes you out of a job the same week you find out you’re expecting a baby? What do you do when the doctor says the tumor is malignant? What do you do when your character and reputation are tainted and misrepresented by another person? What do you say when you come out of the store to find your car window smashed and your stereo stolen? What do you do when lightening hits and burns your house to the ground?

They say “fair” is where you buy cotton candy. That’s true. I’ve bought it there before. But life? Life certainly isn’t fair.

Maybe our expectations are unrealistic. We live in a fallen world full of broken people. Present company included. Given the systemic corruption of our very nature, is it realistic to expect fairness? To use a farm analogy, expecting justice and fairness from a broken world is like putting a milk bucket under a bull. It just ain’t gonna happen.

Sometimes life isn’t fair and we had nothing to do with it. We were just eating our cotton candy and got blindsided by an injustice.

Sometimes life isn’t fair and we had something to do with it and the mess we find ourselves in is our own doing.

Regardless, God is very up front about the fact that life post-Eden isn’t fair. He reminds us throughout the Bible that our sin made “fair” the rare exception and not the rule.

Life is hard and God knows that.

We can’t change the fact that life isn’t fair. We can be glad that God is bigger than our circumstances. Much as we might not understand it, He may be doing His best work in and through us in the middle of our most painful situations.

We’re wasting our time if we try to make life “fair”, then complain when it isn’t. Life’s hard. That’s reality.

Life is hard. Painfully so. But God is good. He promises never to quit on you. In the middle of your “it’s not fair!”, His grace is sufficient.

Oh, yes. Back to the story. After the conclusion of the 1990 season, in January, 1991, the AP Poll voted Colorado national champions. With a loss at Missouri, the Colorado record would have been 10–2–1 - and no national championship.

It still ain't fair. Even though the seven man officiating team was suspended indefinitely following the contest. Didn't change the outcome.

And in your life and mine, the outcome isn't always changed. His grace is still sufficient, anyway. He won't give up. And neither should you.