It was 30 years ago today...

We do hyperbole very well in sports. In fact, I’ll wager we do overwrought drama and gross overstatement better than Hollywood. Thinkabout it—where else do folks immediately attempt to place an event in some sort of historical context the second it ends?

Something always seems to be the best this or the worst that and it’s kind of weird. Who thinks that way? What are they trying to accomplish or validate? Hey, no one wants to be told they are wasting their time so maybe this is a way of pumping up our own choices or something.

Either way, sometimes we actually do get things right. Oh sure, we’ll miss the nuance of something and place too much importance on the less worthy, but then to go the other way, we point this out in overrated/underrated debates.

Oh yes, everything gets covered.

Here’s what is properly placed where it belongs:

The Miracle on Ice.

Yes, the consensus held top sports moment of the 20^th Century (in the U.S., of course), is neither overrated nor underrated, which is rare. How many other events/players/games can make this claim? How many sporting events actually transcend sports? Thirty years ago today in Lake Placid, we had one of those events that was so perfect no one bothers to question its place in sports history.

Here’s what interesting about the U.S. hockey team’s victory over the mighty Soviet juggernaut from Feb. 22, 1980—it meant something bigger than itself yet did not pump hockey into the American consciousness. American sports fans were no more interested in hockey after the game than they were before. I could be wrong here, but in the 30 years since The Miracle on Ice, hockey might even be less popular in terms of American sports interest. As far as American sports leagues go, the NHL might be fifth or sixth in overall popularity and that depends on whether big-time college sports is considered professional or not.

In other words, the game changed nothing and was simply a context-free game. Sure, people will say it was a manifestation of the Cold War played out as some sort of microcosm and all of that, but wasn’t that what Berlin was?

Here’s what else is cool about that one hockey game that didn’t even win the U.S. a gold medal (that came two days later against Finland): all the guys from the team are still around and are completely bearable. Yeah, Herb Brooks died in a car accident a few years back, but his legacy is still as bright as ever. Plus, invariably we grow tired and/or leery of people overexposed by the media. However, in this case that isn’t so. Every time the Winter Olympics roll around we get to hear from Mike Eruzione, Jim Craig and Mark Johnson, maybe even Dave Silk or Jack O’Callahan will come out, too. Yet for some reason it’s always interesting even though we’ve seen the movies and documentaries, read the books and the magazine articles.

An aside: If I recall correctly (hey, I was in the 3rd grade when it happened), the first time I heard those now ubiquitous "U-S-A!" chants was during the hockey competition of the 1980 Olympics. If anyone has an earlier instance of this occurring, by all means, correct me.

It was just one of those things. Chalk it up to being a cultural phenomenon or the sports equivalent to The Beatles going on the Ed Sullivan Show. When it happened people knew it was something pretty special and decades later that hasn’t changed much.

Primeau makes the smart decision

The hardest thing for an athlete to do is to be smart. No, that’s not an insult, nor is it any type of indictment of certain scholastic records. After all, it takes a top-flight engineer to be able to memorize and decipher all of the variables in an NFL playbook. Besides, those things are thicker than phone books and like Rain Man, guys like Peyton Manning and Donovan McNabb know the whole thing by heart.

What is meant by smart is that oftentimes for athletes the easiest and most logical decision is usually the hardest thing to come to terms with. Some athletes have no trouble going out and running 20 miles a day without fail, but when it comes time to take a day off to rest the mind and muscles most guys would prefer root canal surgery.

Take Flyers’ captain Keith Primeau, for example. After battling the effects of post-concussion syndrome for nearly a full calendar year with no foreseeable end to his rehabilitation, the erstwhile 34-year old was forced into retirement on Thursday morning. Certainly, after at least four or five concussions during his 14-season NHL career, Primeau made the “smart” decision. At home he has his wife, Lisa, and four children, whom will be around and will need their dad longer than the Flyers will need a captain and a center. In fact, in one of those “get-to-know-the-players” questionnaires that teams like to publish for the fans, Primeau lists becoming a father as his greatest accomplishment to date.

“This decision will allow me to live a normal life and hopefully, with time, few reminders of my injuries,” Primeau said on Thursday.

“My biggest fear is that I’d have regrets and at this point I don’t have regrets.”

But even something as big as being a dad rarely extinguishes what burns inside of a person. For someone like Primeau, a hockey player personified, that flame burns with a lot more intensity. Need an example? Try this out:

It was the second period of Game 2 of the 2000 Eastern Conference Finals where the New Jersey Devils are skating circles around the Flyers and are on the verge of taking a 2-0 lead in the series. Even though he missed parts of two games after he was carted off the ice on a stretcher and rushed to the hospital after taking a big hit from Pittsburgh’s Bob Boughner and suffering the first of a series of concussions, Primeau called out the Devils’ Randy McKay for a little tête-à-tête.

Now it wasn’t necessarily important whether or not Primeau beat McKay in the fight. The message was loud and clear.

“I thought our team needed a spark,” Primeau said at the time, noting that he envisioned Lisa sitting in the stands with her head in her hands as he brawled with McKay.

“I realize it may not have been the best thing to do,” Primeau said before telling me that he had three prior concussions that he knew of before the one in Pittsburgh, and noting that he probably had others as a kid growing up in Toronto, but nothing so serious that his dad didn’t pick him up, brush him off, and send him back out onto the ice. “I’m a father and a husband, but at the same time I’m a hockey player… ”

Sometimes hockey players don’t always make the smart decision. But in retiring, Primeau did make the smart decision because the term concussion softens what medical folks call the affliction – traumatic brain injuries.

If Primeau takes one more hard shot to the head while skating up the ice at break-neck speed, the result could be dire.

And we aren’t talking about something as easy as retirement, either.

Yet despite Thursday’s announcement and the lingering symptoms from all of those traumatic brain injuries, something tells us the fire still smolders inside of Primeau. Maybe that comes from watching Primeau run up and down the area steps after games at the Wachovia Center. Besides, doing what is smart is one thing, but the human brain is no match for the heart or guts. Worse, that little voice saying, “What if… ” will always nag even if the brain says, “This is correct.”

“He's always going to feel like he didn't get to finish on his own terms,” coach Ken Hitchcock said.

The operative word is that Primeau was “forced” into retirement because trainer Jim McCrossin tried every mind trick he could to get the captain’s head to drill some logic into his heart and guts. The trainer told Primeau he could skate with the minor leaguers on the Phantoms, or he could practice wearing a white jersey with a red cross so that other players would know not to touch him.

What self-respecting hockey player shies away from the contact?

When McCrossin finally told Primeau what he really felt – that he didn’t want to live with the consequences if the hockey player took another shot to the head – it was like getting run over by a truck.

“It was the first real time I'd been in touch with reality the last few months,” Primeau said Thursday. “I didn't want to become a distraction again.”

Primeau was thinking about the team. That’s just what a captain does. But in time, Primeau won’t be a captain anymore, and maybe he’ll start to feel better and get the itch to put those skates on again to see what he can do.

“If they let me go I’d keep pushing through. I’d keep going until they dragged me away,” Primeau said.

Hopefully, making the smart decision will be a lot easier if that itch needs to be scratched.