Fantagony

Posted: 11/19/2017 - by Owen Burgin

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Fantagony:

The feeling of being so close to your goal but falling short, that sensation in your gut that gnaws at you while you replay the events over and over in your head.  Committed to a purpose greater than one’s self, with others who share your passion. 

Synonyms: angst, misery, sorrow, grief, heartache, desolation, despair, distress.   

Example: One often learns more from one day of Fantagony than from ten years of contentment.

As I sat in the stands in the UNI dome with a very good friend of mine, and experienced the game as a “Fan” for the first time this year.  I was trying to sort out the many emotions I was experiencing.  I came up with the word Fatagony. 

I felt an enormous sense of joy for this team!  As their coach in Jr. High I could see that they were a special group of young men.  They had achieved a goal and there was only one game left between them and their final goal.  After that opening kickoff return for a Touch Down I was cautiously optimistic.  Trying to stem my excitement, there was an entire game left to play.

I will not dwell on that particular “Bad Call” on Kyle Barnes, but I will say that the officials got it wrong.  A play like that is what makes football the greatest game ever.  A “Bad Call” can teach us so much about how to handle unfair situations in our life.  Life is tough…….  It was a devastating blow to the Falcons, but was losing Kyle after being ejected; the reason the Falcons lost the game?  Absolutely NOT.  The Falcons lost the game because the other team on that day on that field was better than they were.

After the officials’ final decision had been rendered I had an upset stomach, I could only imagine how devastated Kyle was at that moment.  Suddenly the popcorn did not taste good.  It wasn’t until later while driving home that I knew that this team 9th – 12th will eventually take away all the positive aspects of this experience; and it will in some fashion shape their futures.

Fantagony is not a trivial fleeting moment of anger.  Fantagony is a connection with the players and fellow fans, regional pride, family relationships, color preferences, aesthetic tastes and even moral standards. Fantagony can assume religious, ethnic or political identities, which weave threads of emotions, throughout our lives.

Fantagony is not a fatal disease, there is a cure.  Time truly does heal.  And of course the beginning of Basketball and Wrestling season.  Soon the raw emotions of losing will be covered up by a new layer of anticipation, and life will still move on. 

“His soul being exceeding sorrowful even unto death, and this tumult of emotion culminated in the agony. All that can be suggested by the exhausting struggles and sufferings of charioteers, runners, wrestlers and gladiators, in Grecian and Roman amphitheaters, is summed up in the pain and death-struggle of this solitary word "agony."  Ie. “Fantagony” Harold Coffin

There are 500 High schools in Iowa 434 Public and 66 Private. 331 football teams “All Classes” doing the math, only 12% of the teams make it to the Dome each year.

See ya at the game.

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