Pascal’s Wager and the Florida Gators

Pascal’s Wager is an argument in philosophy that intends to answer a question about faith.

Pascal’s Wager charted new territory in probabilistic and decision theory.  A simplified form of Pascal’s Wager posits that as humans without ultimate knowledge to the answer of whether God exists, is it better to believe in God than to not believe?

In trying to solve the dilemma of faith, Pascal argued that the infinite reward for believing in God and God actually existing was a larger payoff for a believer than any penalty or reward for believing and God not existing.  On the other side of the coin, he rationalized that non-believers do not really gain anything for being correct, unless you count smugness.  As far as not believing in God and God existing, well the infinite punishment of Hell counted as a minus in Pascal’s decision matrix.

Thus, Pascal resolved the Wager by determining that a rational individual should always to believe (and no one argued about religion ever again).

So what does Pascal’s Wager have to do with our game in Tuscaloosa on Saturday?

As a Gator fan I spend some of my free time reading our boards like some of you.  I also enjoy the contributions of the other writers on Gator Country and many times I struggle with the idea of what it means to be a fan.  Should I get upset and angry at a player’s performance?  Should I get upset when the Gators lose or play in a close game?  What does it mean to support the Gators in all kinds of weather?

Like many of you, I became a fan during the boom time years under Spurrier.  As the son of a preacher, he knew about faith and I know where the man falls in relation to Pascal’s Wager.  However, it was easy to have faith in Spurrier; he was a Gator and our first Heisman winner and he came in to rescue a floundering Florida program.  He was the right man at the right time and he came into a program that did not have the expectations of our fan base in 2014.

We all came to enjoy the high scoring games that his Fun-N-Gun offense brought to Gainesville.  We enjoyed the domination of opponents.  We enjoyed Spurrier’s self-confidence.

In a way, his confidence and belief in himself and his teams rubbed off on all of us Gator fans.  That’s why to this day everyone loves beating the Gators.  He raised the bar of what came to be expected at the University of Florida.  He created the foundation in how we as fans chose to believe about the Gators.

He led our congregation every Saturday for 12 years and showed us the infinite reward of SEC Championships and a National Championship.  He delivered Championships and he helped deliver another Heisman Trophy by coaching Danny Wuerrfel.  He delivered all those Championships without the sniff of controversy.  He rewarded our faith.

However, at the end of his tenure 11-win seasons were not enough for some of our fan base.  Our expectations became raised so high we doomed a coach before he even coached his first game by having the vocal minority of a fan base hijack the conversation by creating Fireronzook.com.  While many Gator fans gave Ron Zook a fighting chance, he fought through 3 seasons of high expectations and whispers about whether the people behind Fireronzook.com were right.

However, Zook built upon the foundation that Spurrier created.  After Zook left,Urban Meyer came in and capitalized on Zook’s work.  We can all say what we want about Meyer, but the undeniable truth about Meyer is that he delivered two more National Championships and coached another Heisman Trophy winner in Tim Tebow.  Meyer raised the bar even higher.  The legacy of how he raised that bar and how it affected our program over the long-term can be debated another time.

Today we have Coach Will Muschamp and we have been through three up and down seasons.  After last season and a close win at home against Kentucky last Saturday, many fans seem to be having a crisis of faith.  Is Driskel good enough?  Are WE good enough?

So what was the point of Pascal’s Wager exactly, Mr. Scammell?

Being a fan requires faith.  When things go wrong, just like they do in real life we want answers.  We want to know why we were in prevent defense with that much time left?  As fans, we don’t have all the information available to know why coaches or players make the decisions that they do.  However, getting those answers don’t change the outcomes of past events.  Nor does making changes necessarily mean that we guarantee future success.

My decision matrix as a fan is simple, what do I gain by not having faith in the Gators?  Sure, if I am not a fan I don’t have to suffer the aggravation of possibly losing a game to Alabama on Saturday.  However, if the Gators win and I am not a fan; all my Gator friends will be rejoicing and I would not be sharing in that joy and esprit de corps.  Where is the reward in either of those scenarios?  That’s just feels passionless and boring.

If I am a fan and we lose, I’ll put it in box like I put the 1994 Auburn loss, the 1996 Fiesta Bowl, the 1996 UF/FSU game, and the 2009 SEC Championship.  I suffer through it; just like I would have to in life.  I remember when my mother was dying of cancer in 2004, I wanted answers to why this happened to her.

I felt entitled to answers, but being faithful or unfaithful does not mean that I was owed any answer to that question.  It only meant I had to accept the fact as it was.  Moreover, knowing the answer to that question wouldn’t have changed the fact my mother was dead.  The point is sometimes, regardless of faith or our best efforts, in life, and on a football field, bad things happen.

As a fan and as a person, I have to learn to accept them, with or without Pascal’s Wager.  As fans and as people we are all going to suffer regardless of faith.  We are going to make mistakes, experience loss and regret; but a little faith can help keep our eyes forward and looking towards the future.

In that future, in life and in faith, we can be rewarded.  On Saturday, I could be sitting with my girlfriend, Panda, my daughter and my son and watching the final seconds tick off the game in Tuscaloosa.  I can see Nick Saban striding out to mid-field to shake Muschamp’s hand while Verne Lundquist and Gary Danielson rave on about how brilliant Muschamp’s game plan was and how this shocking victory will shake up the SEC.  Pascal didn’t have to come up the Wager for me to know where to invest myself as a fan.

I would shelve that memory right up there with 52-20, 32-29, 41-14, and 24-14.  Those memories are the reason I love the Gators.  They are the moments that I love to relive and share with other fans; in those games I knew we had a chance to lose, but I also knew we had a chance to win.  I believed we could win when lots of people felt we couldn’t.  It wasn’t that we simply won those games; it was that my faith in the Gators was rewarded.  Sure without faith, you may not get the broken hearts, but you miss the simple joy of simply having that faith rewarded.  So put aside your fears, have a little faith, and turn into the game- you really have nothing to lose.