Congratulations to the North Carolina Tar Heels, my favorite college basketball team and the winners of tonight's national championship game.
I don't have much to say about the suspenseless game, other than that Ty Lawson is awesome. People often say that college basketball is better than pro basketball, and those people are morons, but I do think it's cool the impact a great college point guard can have on a game, and how many good points with different playing styles I've seen in the tournament over the years. (Incidentally, I say "morons" because the overall level of play is obviously so much higher in the pros than college, and because many college fans claim the teamwork is so much higher in than sport—all the while ignoring how there are often several players on the floor who couldn't even get a shot off without a well-designed play.)
Anyway, it's weird to say this on a night when one of my teams won a championship (which you should never take for granted, because you never know when it will happen again), but the second championship is never as sweet as the first. The Denver Broncos defeating the Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl XXXII made January 25, 1998 literally one of my favorite days of my life. But their whooping the Falcons a year later? Awesome, fun, entertaining to watch, a great capstone to a dream season, and a glorious sendoff for No. 7—but not nearly as sweet as the first. It would have meant so much more to Falcons fans to win that game than it did to Denver fans.
I couldn't help but think of this even before tonight's game. I felt spoiled when the Tar Heels made the championship this year because they'd just won a championship a few years ago, in 2005. It's great to have them back in it, and it saved my brackets from total humiliation (seriously, as of last week I'd basically resolved never to fill one out again), but it didn't move me in the same way. That's because what really makes a championship win special for a sports fan is not the win itself, but the vindication of the journey that came before…especially when that journey includes years of suffering or a really heartbreaking loss or six.
Denver's first Super Bowl win was so sweet because all of the factors aligned so brilliantly. Everyone in Denver loved our star quarterback, John Elway, who had that glorious match of talent and determination. In Colorado we knew him as the guy who carried several good-but-nowhere-near-great teams to the Super Bowl. To non-Broncos partisans, though, he was known as the guy who couldn't win a Super Bowl, and so Broncos fans around my age bracket took crap for supporting him their whole lives. The year before we won, however, we'd been blessed with a fantastic regular season, when the team started 12-1 and clinched home field advantage with ease. Denver's new coach, Mike Shanahan, who'd been a household name at my place even in the '80s, was just then earning his reputation as The Mastermind, but it finally felt like our year. But then Jacksonville pulled off one of the great playoff upsets I've ever had the displeasure of seeing, sending us home with an ignominious 30-27 defeat. Considering Elway's age, many of us thought we'd never see him make it so close again. That's what made the next year's victory so sweet.
I've always felt that Walter Payton-loving Bears supporters were the only NFL fanatics who could really understand what that Super Bowl win felt like. (Of course, the classy Shanahan allowed his long-suffering star to get a rushing touchdown, unlike some other coach I could name.)
So why would a Carolina fan feel so warm about the 2005 national championship team, when they're one of the truly great programs in college basketball and won titles in the '80s and '90s? Well, I didn't start following basketball until the late '90s, and 1998 was the first year I followed the tournament. I absolutely fell in love with the Carolina team, with player of the year Antawn Jamison, insane dunker Vince Carter, and my favorite college player of all time, shooting guard Shammond Williams. Though Jamison and Carter were vastly more talented, Williams was often the guy counted on to make the clutch shot, and he hit big threes throughout the first two weekends. I remember reading in the Denver Post that Williams had had a horrible shooting game in the Final Four a year before, and I felt he was due to make up for it. But then, in Carolina's Final Four game, he shot 2-for-12 in an upset loss to Utah. (I'd forgotten the Utes had been the opponent that night, but that's definitely the night I started hating them. I made no friends the next Monday night rooting loud for the champion Kentucky Wildcats in a household full of Utah fans.) Anyway, while Carolina had their moments over the next few years, specifically their tournament run in 2000 behind freshman Joe Forte, who Mark Kiszla hilariously compared with Michael Jordan in one column, they weren't really Carolina again until 2005, when they won it all.
There's one obvious exception to this from my own experience, and that's the Colorado Avalanche. They won the Stanley Cup in 1996, their first season in Denver. It was cool, and we all pretended to like hockey a lot for a few weeks, but most of us had no history whatsoever with the team. In 1997 I actually followed the team day-to-day, devouring game recaps and the like, but of course they couldn't break through the Red Wings that year. I was never quite so religious about the team, but I always kept tight watch over their playoff runs. In 1998 the Avs were upset in the first round. In 1999 and 2000, the team lost the Western Conference Finals in seven games both times to the Dallas Stars. In those series, they had a combined three chances to win one game and move on to the Stanley Cup Finals, and of course they lost every one. It was absolutely brutal, especially in 2000, when we'd picked up Ray Bourque, and lost Game Seven by one goal. (I'm pretty sure I remember a shot bouncing off Dallas' goalpost in the final minute or so that year…I even think Bourque may have taken it, but it was a long time ago and I'm not sure.) However, the Avalanche rebounded and won the Cup in 2001 behind a fantastic team effort, but especially behind the ferocious play of Patrick Roy in the net.
That's the only exception I can think of, though. Even though tonight's game was anticlimactic, I don't think it had any chance going in of stacking up well against that 2005 victory. In almost all cases, I'd think the second championship is much less special (-Jim Nantz) than the first. I wonder if there isn't a Law of Diminishing Returns with championships, actually. Any Yankees fans care to chime in?
Comments
I think it's really cool that many of the North Carolina players came back this year to play college ball again, but I don't believe (as everyone is saying on ESPN now) that they came back to win a ring. I'm sure they mostly came back because the figured out that they wouldn't be a high pick in last year's draft. Because they did come back though, it really made the Tar Heels so much better than every other team. They combined supreme talent with experience. They really had no one in the tournament that could challenge them. It seemed like it was inevitable that they would win the championship, and that made it much less exciting.
Also, with so many of the good college players bolting to the NBA (I can't really blame them) the overall level of play in the NCAA is way down from 10-15 years ago when the Tim Duncan's of the world were playing in college. College basketball in general is less enjoyable.
I thought UNC was the clear favorites, too, though they didn't stop some guys from picking Michigan State last night, and other teams throughout the tourney.
I get what you're saying with Timmy D, but it's not like he had anyone in the nation as good as he was when he was playing. Most of the other guys were still not that good, but it's true that almost every star was at least trying to get through school back then. (And yeah, with millions on the table I wouldn't spend a second longer in college than necessary.)
Anyway, I agree that it's cool that the Tar Heels stuck around for one more year, and of course winning championships four years apart in college means a whole new group of guys gets to benefit, which is nice. I wonder how many years have to pass for it to feel fresh again: obviously the 97 Packers, for example, did not win the franchise's first championship, but it had to be the first for a bunch of fans. I guess if the Broncos won it all again now I wouldn't take it for granted, but I'd still be a little spoiled. (Of course, that's a HIGHLY theoretical possibility.)
Overall I thought the tournament was very good - there were a bunch of teams with viable claims to winning it all, and a few very good games. The big question going into the tournament is whether Ty Lawson could play through the toe injury, and he came up huge. He has to be a lottery pick now, although I still don't get how NBA teams evaluate talent.
The second is always less exciting because there is less anticipation, although I would be happy if any team I am remotely affiliated with would like to win another championship in sports right about now.
I agree that the tournament was pretty good, though the cynic in me says you'd expect a few great games out of 63. Nevertheless, it was fun. Anyway, John, are you sure there's nothing else you want to mention about following the tournament this year?