Favre's comeback with the Vikings looked destined for greatness until his final play of the game.

Even the best can crack under pressure

By: Tara Wellman

Posted: 2/4/10

It was all in his hands. He could make his controversial comeback oh-so-much sweeter. Time, possession and field position were all in his favor. He trusted his kicker. He knew the field goal would be good. All he had to do was make one more play.
History then repeated itself as Brett Favre, hailed for his accuracy and skill even at the age of 40, threw yet another dream crushing interception. Brett Favre, everyone said, choked. Again.
Professional athletes carry not only the weight of their own aspirations and expectations, but those of their teammates, coaches, family, friends and fans. When they mess up, thousands cringe. We praise them for getting to the big game, then destroy them when they don't come through. They get paid millions of dollars to play this game, we say. How hard can it be to do the same thing you do in practice every single day?
That's the thing about sports. It's not always about who is the most talented or the most trained. Instead, it's about the person who can lay it all on the line when the lights come on and the pressure falls to their shoulders. Someone will win. Someone will lose. And the loser - especially if it's a talented loser - gets stuck with the blame. He's the choker.
Athletes "earn" such titles in every sport. Phil Mickelson, golf. Andy Roddick, tennis. The 2004 Yankees, baseball. But I sometimes wonder if fans are too hasty in discounting entire careers for mistakes in the heat of the moment.
John Elway was called a choker once. All the game-changing plays he made, all the brilliance he put on display, was hidden away behind his Super Bowl blunders.
Karl Malone twice had his chance to take down basketball's greatest ever. Neither time could Michael Jordan and the Bulls be brought down.
Olympic athletes compete on perhaps the biggest sports stage there is. Not only are they representing themselves, sometimes a team, but they are representing their entire country as they take center stage.
Figure skating has Michelle Kwan. Five times she was world champion, nine times national champion. But when the lights shined brightest, someone else jumped a little higher or spun a little faster.
Snowboarding had Lindsey Jacobellis in Torino four years ago. The gold medal was all but a formality as she tore past her competitors. Then the final jump happened. Jacobellis got fancy in the air and crashed. She settled for silver.
Even the St. Louis Cardinals earned the nickname for their pitiful performance in the 2004 World Series (a week I've tried to block from my memory!). The best win-loss record in the National League. Swept in four games. Ouch.
Sometimes redemption comes, thankfully, in the form of finally shaking the demons and standing up to the pressure. Elway finally did win "the big one." Jacobellis is headed back to the Olympics in a few weeks for her second chance. The Yankees came back big to win last year, the Cardinals did in 2006.
Some, though, never quite make it to their goal. The question then becomes, does that make them failures? Is there something wrong with them that keeps them from performing well at that one, specific moment? Does their lifetime of work and dedication vanish if they never get "the big one?"
I have a hard time calling most professionals - in any field! - "chokers." These are people that do something few people in the world ever do. Ask any regular Joe on the street to show up Karl Malone and they couldn't do it. See if some skater at the local ice rink could out-skate Michelle Kwan. It wouldn't happen. Out-serving Andy Roddick on the court? Not a chance.
Anyone who works to that high performance level has won a big game somewhere along the line. You don't get to the NBA without making some plays in high school and college. You don't march into a stadium as an Olympian without staking your claim internationally. There's no doubt Brett Favre has been the best before.
Do some of the best of the best fold under the weight of expectation once in a while? Clearly, it happens often. But should their achievements be discounted because they didn't convert at the moment when the world was watching? I'm not so sure.
After all, it is sport. Someone is always going to have to lose. It happens, even to the very best.