When Winning Isn't Enough

Regardless of their loss to Iowa tonight, the Hoosier basketball program is once again at its rightful place at the adult table, sitting elbow-to-elbow with the nation’s other elite programs. They’re a top-20 team, loaded with talent, officially off of the NIT’s mailing list.

Order appears to have been restored in Bloomington these days. Why? Because, on the whole, they’re winning again. Which is great. Phenomenal, even.

So why is it then that I'm still completely disinterested in IU basketball?

I mean, all I ever wanted from the Hoosiers was for them to win. Whether it’s a national championship or a Big Ten title or a January game against Northwestern, winning is the ultimate goal.   And now that they are winning, shouldn’t my severe, supposedly temporary case of Hoosierapathitis be clearing up now?

It should. But it isn’t. And as I half-heartedly
watched the game with my equally disinterested
six-week-old son, I was stuck with one recurring
thought: Why can't I get back into IU Basketball?
Granted, at the time, the Hoosiers were getting
torched by the Hawkeyes, Mike Davis was
sitting—for 18-minute spans—the most dominant
IU player since Isiah Thomas, and I had baby vomit
running down my arms. So one might see why my
heart wasn't exactly in it.

But the question remained: why haven't the wins brought me back into Hoosier Fandom?    What more could I possibly want? Isn't winning enough? Why the f--- is Marco NOT in the game?! And then, after the third diaper change of the second half, it hit me...

...I guess that I just want it to be like it was.

I know, I know. It's not fair to Mike Davis. Nor is it fair to the current IU players. I know all this. And I know how that makes me appear in the eyes of the blindly loyal Hoosier fans. And see, that's my purpose here: I want to address all the staunch Davis-supporters—the ones who label me a "traitor" and "not a real IU fan"—and I want them to understand where I'm coming from on this...to understand why the Hoosiers' winning ways are just not having
the impact on me that I thought they would. I'm not trying to change their opinion, nor am I seeking their empathy. We just need some understanding. But I need to put this in terms they'll comprehend; after all, this is complicated, esoteric stuff. It's not like I'm explaining the rules of lawn-darts here. I need a relatable analogy. One they can grasp. I'll do my best.

Remember Chris Gaines? He was the utterly bizarre, pop-star-alter-ego creation of Garth Brooks. But more significantly for our purposes here, Gaines was the product of probably the worst decision in the 3,200-year history of music.

Even after researching the issue extensively, I'm still somewhat confused. As best as I can tell, sometime around 1999, Garth Brooks apparently became fed up with selling 8.3 trillion records per year and grew tired of being the most successful solo artist ever not named "Michael Jackson." If I had to speculate, knowing what I know now, he and his manager most likely had a conversation that went something like this:



And from that arose the disaster that was "Chris Gaines." When you really think about it, the whole thing doesn't even register on the "What-the-f----?! Meter" It was beyond that...it was beyond all chartable stupidity and short-sightedness and illogical thinking. And predictably, to nobody's surprise, the Chirs Gaines Experiment was a
total disaster. Shocking, I know.

Why am I mentioning this? Because of the fact that the Garth
Brooks fan-base became a divided bunch over the affair.
Most of them didn't take too kindly to the fact that their favorite
singer had morphed into "The Crow" and otherwise gone
insane. Their country idol was no longer playing the music
they had grown to love...in fact, he wasn't even playing music
from the same genre. And they were pissed. They were
pissed that the Garth Brooks they knew was no longer
there...and in his place was this entirely different, hardly
recognizable, woefully incompetent version of himself. They
felt robbed and scorned and betrayed. They LOVED the old
Garth Brooks; they despised Chris Gaines.

Conversely, there were also those Garth-fans who felt so obligated to Brooks that they were willing to look the other way on the issue. They couldn't (wouldn't?) separate Chris Gaines from Garth Brooks, and they were therefore incapable of rendering a logical assessment. Just as irrationally, they labeled the newly formed Gaines-bashers as "traitors" and "not real Garth Brooks fans" and worse. To these staunch supporters, Chris Gaines WAS Garth Brooks, for better or worst-thing-in-music-since-Don-Johnson. To them, to chastize Gaines was to chastize Brooks; and to chastize Brooks was heresy.

Does any of this make sense? Do you see the eerie similarities between the Garth Brooks/Chris Gaines thing and the Old IU Basketball/Current IU Basketball situation? In
both instances, the core figure is technically the same entity...just different. And worse. In both instances, the newer version was an almost-unrecognizable shell of its former self, the product of wretched, warped logic and poor judgment. And finally, in both instances, there were those who couldn't or wouldn't accept the newer version, and there were those who very consciously turned a blind eye toward it.

(Umm...just so we're clear on this, that there's no confusion: Garth Brooks is IU Basketball
in general, the storied program that served as the face of our state for the last 100 years. Chris Gaines is IU Basketball currently, the one that looks like it needs to be euthanized. Remember: you get what you pay for with Flipside. And seeing as how you paid nothing to read this, you're going to get a "relatable analogy" that requires a PhD in Linguistic Science to decipher it. Just deal with it and let's move on. We're almost done here.)

To wrap this up, the dyed-in-the-wool Garth Brooks fans who felt betrayed by the Chris Gaines Experiment really couldn't have cared less about his impressive record sales. Gaines could have gone octuple-platinum and it wouldn't have mattered. Not to them. Why?
Because Gaines really wasn't Garth Brooks. Gaines wasn't the person they grew to worship.

Well...this current IU program really isn't IU Basketball. It's not the program we grew to love.

In all liklihood, this team could rattle off a 20-game winning streak and I don't think it'd matter. Not to us. Not to those of us who grew up idolizing the larger-than-life image of IU Basketball. Because it's just not the same. In fact, I don't need to waste another 8,000 words itemizing the differences between then and now with the IU program. We all know them. We all see them. But only some of us are able to acknowledge them. Only some of us can acknowledge that IU is quickly becoming just another cookie-cutter program—built on hired guns and an occasional Final Four appearence—void of any uniqueness, no different than the Providences or Seton Halls or Ohio States of the college basketball world.

And as some of us can acknowledge, there's more to Indiana Basketball than winning.

Thursday, January 26, 2006

When Winning Isn't Enough

What more do we want?
What more do we need?

BROOKS: You know...I'm an American institution. I have hordes of loyal followers. Everyone loves me. Remember when we devised that formula that brought me all my successes? The formula that put me where I am today? Yeah...I think we need to change it. We need a new formula. We need to go in a different direction.

MANAGER: You could completely change your look, your sound, your persona, your name, and basically everything that makes you...well, you. Then, you could put out some horrendous records that will make everyone think that you've had a stroke or something. And if your fans are half as loyal as I think they are, they'll still love you. Because, you know, you'd still be...you. I'm damn sure of that. What do you think?

BROOKS: I think you, sir, are a genius. That's what I think.

When Winning Isn't Enough

Yes...this is really
Garth Brooks. During his schitzophrenic years.