I’ll never forget watching that final game of the best-of-three series between The King Crunchers and Cignal. It went the full distance, all three grueling matches, and in the end, The King Crunchers fell short. I was sitting there, a cold drink sweating in my hand, thinking about how many hours, how much heart, had gone into that campaign. And it struck me, not for the first time, how much that moment mirrored the classic Charlie Brown football gag. You know the one—Lucy holds the ball, Charlie Brown runs up for the kick, and at the very last second, she pulls it away. He ends up flat on his back, staring at the sky, every single time. Yet, he always gets up and tries again. Why? Why do we, like Charlie Brown and like The King Crunchers, keep running toward that ball when history suggests we’re just going to end up on our backs?

I’ve been in that position myself, both in sports and in my professional life. I’ve launched projects that I was sure would be winners, only to see them fizzle out after months of work. The data might have looked promising—we’re talking about projections that suggested a 70% chance of success, based on our models—but reality had other plans. There’s a profound psychological mechanism at play here, one that I believe is hardwired into the most driven among us. It’s not just blind optimism; it’s a complex cocktail of hope, resilience, and the belief that this time will be different. For The King Crunchers, losing that series 2-1 after forcing a third game must have been a special kind of agony. They were so close. They had pushed a dominant team like Cignal to the brink, and in that near-victory, I’d wager you’ll find the seed for their next attempt. The brain, fascinatingly, tends to highlight the almost-wins, the near-misses, more than the outright failures. It’s what fuels the “next time” mentality.

From a purely practical, industry-focused perspective, this behavior isn’t irrational; it’s the engine of innovation. Think about the startup world. The often-cited statistic is that around 90% of startups fail. Yet, venture capital continues to flow, and new companies are born every day. They operate on the same principle. They analyze their previous failures—the equivalent of reviewing game tape—and make micro-adjustments. Maybe The King Crunchers realized their defense crumbled in the final five minutes of each game, conceding an average of 12 points in that critical window. That’s a specific, actionable insight. You don’t give up on the sport; you hire a new conditioning coach or drill late-game scenarios until they’re second nature. In my own field, a failed marketing campaign isn’t a signal to stop marketing; it’s a goldmine of data on what doesn’t resonate with your audience. This iterative process, this stubborn refusal to let a single outcome define your entire journey, is what separates fleeting hobbies from lasting legacies.

Of course, there’s a fine line between resilient perseverance and foolish stubbornness. I’ve seen teams and individuals double down on a flawed strategy simply because they’ve invested so much already—what economists call the 'sunk cost fallacy.' It’s the point where Charlie Brown’s hope stops being endearing and starts looking like a pathology. The key, I’ve found, is to build in moments of brutal honesty. After a loss, whether it’s on the court or in the boardroom, you have to ask the hard question: Are we failing because of bad luck and timing, or are we failing because our core approach is wrong? If it’s the latter, then continuing to charge at the ball is just self-sabotage. The wisdom lies in knowing when to adjust your run-up and when to find a different Lucy, or perhaps a different game entirely.

When I look at The King Crunchers’ season, I don’t see a team that lost. I see a team that built a narrative. By taking the series to a final, deciding game, they created a story of grit and potential. That story is powerful. It attracts new fans, it motivates returning players, and it sets a new baseline for expectation. Suddenly, falling short in the first round is no longer acceptable; you’ve now proven you belong in the finals conversation. This is the intangible ROI of failure. It’s not measured in trophies, but in raised standards and hardened resolve. I prefer teams and people who have this history. I’m biased, I admit it. I’d rather back someone with a few noble failures on their record than a pristine resume that has never been truly tested.

So, as the dust settles on another season and The King Crunchers head back to the training ground, the question isn’t whether they will try again. We know they will. The real question is what they learned while they were lying on their backs, looking at the sky. That moment of defeat is where the most important work begins. It’s where strategy is refined, character is forged, and the foundation for the next run is built. We keep trying because the alternative—to never run up to the ball at all—is a far more profound failure. It’s the failure of never knowing what might have happened if we’d just kicked a little harder, run a little faster, or believed a little more. And frankly, that’s a life I’m not interested in living.