Saturday, February 20, 2016

The unfairness of the fan base

The problem with having the success that we are having this season is that it raises the expectations of the fan base drastically. Taken in a vacuum, that is not a bad thing: if we did it once, might we not do it again? I have heard fans opine, "I support the program, and I deserve better than this." We buy our tickets and thus we can expect that the players and coaches will work hard and do their part. Past that, I doubt that we "deserve" anything outside of the right to gripe, which we do.

If Chris Beard stays more than a year or two, it is not reasonable to expect that he is going to have this type of success repeatedly. As has been said several times, in order to have this sort of a year, you have to be lucky as well as good. John Wooden was a great coach, but he also got to have Alcindor and Walton healthy for the most part for their entire careers. That helps.And some seasons, like this one, the ball just bounces your direction. Games when we get behind and come roaring back for a victory in other years just won't happen. Even the memorable 1986 season was not THIS kind of a season. After all (as we tend to forget), we lost 12 games that season, including 9 of our first 13. We finished fine, but we started stinky.

We tend to compare, and thus good seasons become mediocre seasons when compared with once-in-a-lifetime seasons, and so on. Good coaches are demoted to bad coaches because they were only moderately successful. Good teams are set aside in our minds because they were not as good as "that team." Hopefully, this team will be "that team" in our memories. But I hope we do not make the mistake of demeaning other fine teams and seasons and players and coaches just because they did not have the opportunity to play in one of those special situations.

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