Different Tune Not a Bad Thing
I was watching a rerun of Angel, the cancelled WB series about a vampire cursed with a soul seeking redemption for more than a century of evil deeds. In this episode, he teams up with a precognitive demon that runs a karaoke bar to stop a physics grad student from freezing time for eternity in order to keep his girlfriend from ending their relationship. Talk about niche programming, no wonder the show got cancelled.
Anyhow, in trying to console the young man after stopping the time freeze, the demon said something insightful. Speaking metaphorically about life, he said “I could sing one note and hold it forever, but nobody would want to hear it, it’s the changes that we listen for and what make the song worth listening to”.
Translate that to the sports world and think about the changes we as Husker fans have undergone.
Nebraska went 33 years winning nine games or more. Often, you’d look at the schedule prior to the season and really only see two or three games that mattered, Colorado or Oklahoma, maybe one tough out of conference game and then the bowl. Not anymore. When the Huskers went to Baylor, I was sweating until late in the fourth quarter. Iowa State was an overtime thriller. Most every win and some of the losses had you on the edge of your seat for much of the game. Some NU fans hate that. They’ll tell you they prefer blowouts. Yes, a blowout makes you feel good about your team, but after a while it’s not all that interesting.
Look at a season like 1996. I distinctly recall visiting a Virginia Tech website during the 1999 season and their 1996 team was gushingly described as a great team that ran into “almighty Nebraska” in the Orange Bowl. For Tech fans in the 1990’s, that was a team to be remembered. While NU fans love to talk about 60-3 from 1993-1997, no one really seems to swoon over the 1996 squad that won an Orange Bowl (something only 6 other teams in school history had ever done). Why? It was sandwiched between 4 teams that played in national championship games. Nebraska had been singing the same song long enough that the 1996 squad got lost in the noise. Sure, we’d love to see 60-3 again, but would the journey really be as exciting game in and game out as what we see today?
Turn to basketball. From 1959 to 1966 the Boston Celtics won 8 straight championships. After about 4 in a row, doesn’t it sort of stop being a good thing? The 60’s weren’t exactly big money days for that league. Probably in no small part due to the lack of drama about who would be champions year after year. Even in Boston, you’d suspect people ran errands or went shopping during playoff games. Why not? Were you really going to miss something important?
College basketball was much the same in the late 60’s and early 70’s. The UCLA Bruins won seven straight titles from 1967 to 1973. Sure, people remember the greatness of Lew Alcindor and Bill Walton, but the college game lacked the excitement that today’s wide open NCAA tournaments generate. You could just hear people in L.A. and around the country say, “What a shock, the Bruins win again”.
No fan gets tired of their favorite team winning, but if a team gets to the point that they cruise through 75% of the season year after year after year, a lot of the excitement is lost. Sure our favorite song was 9+ wins and we got to hear it 33 times in a row. But now we’ve downloaded a new mp3, and I for one think it’s worth listening to.
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