There’s a classic sports-movie moment towards the end of the 2001 movie, Hardball: Keanu Reeves, wearied from his own personal journey but feeling a renewed sense of life coursing through his veins, huddles up his team of unlikely contenders and gives them this brief speech.

Transcribed, the part I’m referencing looks something like this:

I want you guys to take a good look at yourselves and feel proud. We made it here. We’re here. What I’ve learned from you is that really one of the most important things in life is showing up. I’m blown away by your ability to show up through everything that’s gone on.

In my cynical days as a 15-year-old smartass, more hair-gel than man, I hated this quote.

What the hell is he talking about? I would think to myself, in between crushing Warheads and playing Nintendo 64. What kind of compliment is it to say that someone just shows up?

I didn’t get it. Or anything, really.

As a 32-year-old man, I love this quote. I’m still a smartass, more ass than smart, but I get it.

I get it in the context of the real world, when I see people all over who work real, hard jobs in a real, hard world and just keep going back and back and back. And I get it in the context of the blurred lines between sports and real life that I so often find myself straddling as an adult who loves ascribing significance to games involving points and hoops and

And I’ll get it tonight when I witness Glynn Watson come trotting out onto the floor of Pinnacle Bank Arena for his 133rd career game at the University of Nebraska.

The six foot point guard from Illinois has already played 3,947 minutes for the program and he’s surely due up for another 40 minutes tonight, since his water-treading coach, Tim Miles, is asking his starters to follow him once more unto the breach in another kamikaze charge.

That’s 65 hours of time spent on the court alone, never mind the time spent behind the scenes riding this county fair carnival of instability that has been our beloved whip-sawing, bucking, roller coaster of #Nebrasketball for the past 4 years.

But, Glynn? He kept showing up.

When his numbers and our record seemed to bounce like the heart rate monitor on Aunt Cindy’s Apple-watching wrist in the middle of a haunted house? Glynn kept showing up.

When he saw so many of his teammates transfer that it almost felt like he was starring in a straight to the CBI reboot of Highlander.

Glynn kept showing up.

And in Nebraska? A place so tribally fierce and defensive of our state and our sports that we routinely find ourselves with almost unthinkable attendance numbers given the level of on-court success, we’ve been showing up, too.

Glynn and the fans. The fans and Glynn. Grabbing those obnoxiously cliché lunch pails and coming in to punch that annoyingly proverbial clock.

He’s been wild and reckless and maddening and always, always unafraid to back down. In short, he’s been a mirror for this fan base and this time in our program’s sputtering, herking-and-jerking history.

And, I love him for it.

We love him for it.

So, here’s to Glynn. To grit. And to the uncut diamond of always showing up.