Who are these people? What makes them so vicious?
I doubt if it's much different anywhere in the land, but I just don't understand the negativity people manage to dredge up when their team loses. Or the chortling.
This is the part of sport I can't take. The blame game.
The naysayers are blaming Oregon's excellent and proven coach Dana Altman, the players, the officials, the cheerleaders and the bus driver for the loss last night.
Oh, and Nike.
Right, everyone is to blame, except Wisconsin, which happens to be a very good team that adjusted in the second-half and took advantage of its length to exploit Oregon's undersized and slow front line.
Great coaching there. If you didn't notice Oregon's front court crew was lacking all season you weren't paying attention.
Wisconsin noticed, that is for sure, if belatedly.
That's basketball.
When Oregon adjusted, or tried to, and packed the middle to stop Wisky's inside game, the back court suddenly had open opportunities, which they cashed in like a bundle of overtime bonus checks. That team could flat-out shoot it.
That's not the narrative though in the minds of certain types. The naysayers seem to be more interested in social science and psychology--bless you Harry Edwards, wherever you are. Thank you as well, Ivan Pavlov, wherever you are.
John Canzano walks into the Oregon locker room and, surprise, sees frowny faces. This bugs him, just as the smiley faces Oregon displayed in a football loss to Stanford this season bugged him. You would guess this is his first college rodeo. He can't decide what he wants--calzone or pizza?--in the buffet line.
Hey, JC, the players were pissed in both cases, and could give a damn what you think. Reactions to losing are as varied as the humans who have them. Wasn't last night a sign they cared? I mean, come now, you were critical when a couple of Ducks showed a seemingly cavalier attitude in the Stanford football game and didn't appear to take the thumping to heart.
Those self-defensive and embarrassed smiles on the sideline were deplorable! A true sign of not giving a damn! Right?
Which is it? Be sad or be glad when you lose? Hmm...the dilemma appears to be how to react to losing--a sticky-wicket open to interpretation. We can agree that acting out, picking a fight, is bad form. After that words, if not fists, commonly fly. Though I agree we all need to be nicer to each other, sometimes it just doesn't work that way.
Somewhere in the ether there exists a reaction to a loss that Canzano must envision as proper, a method of dispelling heartbreak. It would be neutral, emotionless, cold, and something other than honesty and the truth of the moment would need to play out.
Would it be like an NFL or NBA locker room, where an outrageous salary for the night's work might salve the wounds? Or would it be more like sitting in front of a keyboard and making shit up?
Who knows?
Oregon wasn't a "team?" Bullshit again. Were they immature? Must be, because only the writers and naysayers have maturity, obviously.
Oregon was a team with an inferior front line. There's no need to rip the players about that. Anyone with an ounce of acumen should be able to admit that without blaming the loss on phantoms. Oregon wasn't going to win it all--by losing in the round of 32 the team is fair game for the writers and would-be pundits/coaches. To hear JC, this loss was all Oregon. Wisconsin had nothing to do with it--except they had a better team on this night.
Take it from a guy who has played on a few losing teams--me. Great guys co-existed on those teams, with a few exceptions. The few bad guys didn't cause the teams to lose. A lack of size, speed and fundamentals did.
Good lord, get real...social relativism is a canard in sports most of the time. Feel-good stories about championship seasons, wherein a team of angels defeats the forces of darkness, are baloney.
Even the state champ has a dickhead on the team. Always.
It's embarrassing to be an Oregon fan at times, given the odd and hilarious paradox in Oregon athletics now. The thinking goes like this: Nike adversely coddles Oregon's players, which causes them to lose big games and act out. Or...Nike coddles them, which means they should never lose while acting out.
Win and it's on Nike. Lose and it's on Nike. The hue and cry is astonishing. The middle ground, good sense, realism, have vanished. You know, because athletes act out, good and bad. You know, because that always happens and always has. Always will.
In a recent year, an athlete on Harvard's much lauded team was kicked out of school for cheating. Damn entitled punk.
Oregon took its loss hard. Would you expect them to take it any other way? If the players cracked a smile, they'd get ripped for that.
But nobody is taking this loss as hard as the fans who expect Oregon to win because it's Nike U, or those who think Oregon lost because it's Nike U.
Christ, it was a game between two decent teams, both of which have corporate backers and, most certainly, a bad egg or two.
Would you like some corporate cheese atop those rotten eggs...?
Short of some kind of national championship outside of track and field (which is miraculously unaffiliated with the famed running shoe company, ha ha) nothing will please the bandwagon fans--except when something pleases them.
Darn it. I wish Oregon wasn't filled with so many bums. I wish they'd take their beatings like real men. I wish Nike would go away and we could have something else to blame.
You know, like other teams' fans do...
TS
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