You build me up, Buttercup, just to let me down
- Tom Rife: Livin' the Team
- January 14, 2021
- 738
When it comes to the court of public opinion, we may all agree that a perplexing phenomenon will always endure. How else will we account for the phrase “Damn Yankees” or recognize Tom Brady as the football star fans outwardly love to hate?
How is it the best of the best, the ones whose life-long pursuits have taken them to the pinnacle of their sports, by no doing of their own somehow wind up as the most scorned scoundrels?
The Dallas Cowboys? America’s Team, but widely derided.
Jimmie Johnson? NASCAR’s poster boy and auto racing’s bad apple all in the same breath.
Notre Dame football? Revered, and yet, so widely rejected.
Now, of course, we have the Alabama Crimson Tide to add to the roster of championship ruffians. And that includes their passionate head coach Nick Saban, perhaps the single-most successful maharishi in a protracted line of decorated college gridiron demigods.
For many, Roll Tide is, now more than ever, nothing more than a nauseating amalgamation of four-letter words.
Shouldn’t the openly superior, those who have scaled the mountain, deserve better? 'Bama accomplished a team record of 13-0 in an unforgettable, unsettling season awash with hurdles and obstacles and challenges never before taken on.
The 69-year-old Saban, at the helm of the program in Tuscaloosa since 2007, had ample reason to revel in his sixth national championship there — and seventh overall. That’s ridiculously efficient.
Let us not forget: Saban himself tackled COVID-19 not once, but twice, during the course of the memorable season.
It’s often been said the journey to the top is the most grueling. The truth may be it’s the sure-fired pathway to becoming one’s own worst enemy.
I recall former Florida State taskmaster Bobby Bowden confiding that going 12-0 in 1999 en route to his second national title in Tallahassee was a curse in disguise. Always highly judged, the Seminoles were the first in NCAA history to go "wire-to-wire" being ranked continuously as the nation's No. 1 team from the preseason through the bowl season.
“It was the worst thing we could have ever done,” Bowden told me a few weeks after the historic run. “Don’t know what I’m gonna do now. Guess we’ll have to go 13-0 next year.”
The 'Noles tried their dadgum best to do just that, but it didn’t happen. FSU wound up 11-2 in 2000, losing 27-24 at archrival Miami on Oct. 7 and bowing 13-2 to Oklahoma (13-0) in the Orange Bowl game on Jan. 3.
Bowden’s legacy of brilliance remained intact — until, that is, after a difficult 2009 season, he was unceremoniously fired by FSU President T.K. Wetherell, just weeks after the coach’s 80th birthday.
At the age of 91, Bowden defeated his most formidable opponent ever — the coronavirus — this past October.
The question remains: Why in Buttercup’s name do we build up our sports heroes, only to find bliss in letting them down? Can’t we just hail them for having achieved their iconic status?
The perplexing phenomenon seemingly has no boundaries. It extends to nearly every category of celebrity.
There may even come the day when Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep are inexplicably villainized for winning too many Oscars.
There may even come the day when the peanuts farmed by former President Jimmy Carter weren’t nutty enough.
There may even come the day when Lawrence Welk’s champagne bubble machine was decadent.
There may even come the day when Walter Cronkite was just fake news.
There may even come the day when them “Damn Yankees” will have to change their name.