Sometimes winning is boring. There, I said it.

“What?! That’s the point of sports.” 

“Would you rather lose?” 

“A win is a win!”

I get it, winning is fun. But fun and exciting are two different things. Yes, fans take pride in their team, coaches and administrators are appeased and athletes get to go home feeling good about themselves.

But what if a team wins in a landslide? The victory is never in doubt and the game or competition turns into a practice.

That’s what happened to Illinois swimming and diving at their meet against in-state rival Illinois State last Saturday.

The Illini defeated the Redbirds by a tally of 206-94, sweeping all 14 swimming events. Illinois State’s narrow 157-143 victory of last season fades into irrelevance as this year’s trouncing wipes all thoughts of that disappointing loss from the collective memory of Illinois swimming and diving.

But even though this victory was a kind of revenge for last year’s close and unexpected loss, when the challenge is taken out of sports, people lose interest.

Maybe obliterating another team is fun for a while. Athletes get a kind of high from beating a team so soundly — they feel invincible, like they can take on the world.

But I think the reason people compete, the reason people choose to play sports, is for the struggle.

There is no better feeling then playing a hard fought game, an all-out gruel, a dogfight, and coming up victorious. You feel like you earned it. And the opposing team? They are demoralized. They had hope. They could almost see themselves winning, only to have it ripped away at the last second. It physically hurts. Anyone who has ever played a sport has been there, and those losses stick with you.

Ten years from now, seniors Courtney Pope and Alyssa Toland won’t be reminiscing about this one-sided affair. They’ll talk about the hard-fought wins, the ones they were proud to be a part of.

The Illinois State thrashing is an oddity. A weird blip on an otherwise normal start to the 2013-14 season. The previous week the Illini beat both Liberty and Michigan State by relatively small margins, and came up just short when facing Oakland the very next day.

When the competition is close, teams learn something about themselves. Leaders step up and weaknesses are addressed. But it’s hard to find things to improve on when everything seemed to run flawlessly. It’s that feeling of invincibility that turns a possible learning experience into a trap. What if, because of the outcome of this meet, Illinois gets cocky? I don’t think it will happen, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility.

This win is boring. Illinois State was embarrassed and the Illini got a feel-good victory.

Great.

But it’s those close, hard-fought wins over Big Ten rivals and top programs that will keep these swimmers talking even when their Illini days are far behind them.

Aryn is a senior in LAS. She can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @ArynBraun.