Learning the hard way

Sports can teach valuable life lessons. That maxim was confirmed anew Saturday when two uninvited visitors delivered an unexpected reminder that we often fall far short — or long — of our goals.

A pair of parachutists hired to drop, with the game ball, into Kenan Stadium on the University of North Carolina campus in Chapel Hill moments before the Tar Heels' football opener against McNeese State instead landed eight miles away in Wallace Wade Stadium in Durham, where Duke and James Madison were warming up for their opener.

According to The (Raleigh) News & Observer, the jumpers were about to cancel their grand entrance due to heavy cloud cover that obscured their pilot's view when a sudden clearing revealed a stadium.

Too bad it wasn't the right stadium.

At least the Blue Devils and Tar Heels started their seasons with victories, unlike fellow Atlantic Coast Conference member Clemson. The overrated, inept Tigers were embarrassed, 34-10, on national television later that night by five-point underdog Alabama. That rout in Atlanta's Georgia Dome delivered a bitter dose of humble pie to Clemson fans who had been basking in preseason speculation of national-title hopes. Thus, sports taught another lesson about how widely our aims can miss. Maybe the Tigers can bounce back Saturday at Death Valley against The Citadel.

And maybe we should all learn another lesson from that Clemson-Alabama mismatch: Talk's cheap.