A few weeks ago, Bobby Johnson threw in the towel as head coach of the Vanderbilt Commodores football program. He announced he was leaving immediately, no longer able to muster the necessary emotion to lead his team.
Johnson's retirement received far less attention than Nebraska's switch to the Big Ten or Texas' decision to save the Big Twelve. That was understandable. We sports fans focus on winners, focus on big stories.
Johnson had fashioned a measure of adequacy for the Commodores; he groomed quarterback Jay Cutler and offensive tackle Chris Williams into first round NFL draft choices and delivered the school's first bowl victory since 1955. Truth is Vanderbilt, a small private school with challenging academics, has no real chance against regular Southeastern Conference foes like Alabama, Florida, Georgia, LSU, and Tennessee.
This brings me to the dirty little reality we sports fans so often brush under the rug. For some people in sports, the pain of losing far exceeds the joy of victories. This can happen when one attempts the impossible: making a consistent winner out of an overmatched Vanderbilt.
At this juncture, this essay apologetically swerves into a bit of self-indulgence: I worked in public relations and promotions for a NASCAR race team in the early 1990s. We had a decent not great driver in Elton Sawyer and an owner who worked like crazy, but our team was drastically inexperienced. Frankly we weren't very competitive even in the second-tier NASCAR Busch Series (now NASCAR Nationwide Series).
Even though my efforts had next to nothing to do with the team's on-track performance, the tedious succession of 23rd place finishes—the NASCAR season is outrageously long—took a real toll on my spirit. Our one heartbreaking, near-win early in the year was long forgotten. It became almost intolerable to lose so often, unable to finish inside the top 10 week after week.
That race season mercifully ended, and I soon took off to visit friends and enjoy a Penn State football weekend. On Friday evening, I was introduced to Bruce Parkhill, the recently resigned men's basketball coach of the Nittany Lions. Parkhill had raised Penn State to a level of mediocrity the team had not enjoyed in some years. But, he couldn't lift the Lions, stuck in bucolic central Pennsylvania far from fertile inner city recruiting mines, to the quality he aspired to. So, like Bobby Johnson, Parkhill walked away from a somewhat hopeless situation.
Parkhill and I got talking that night about how losses can damage a competitor so much more than the wins can boost him up. I was surprised; I guiltily thought I might be the only person privileged to work in sports who felt that the losses so outweighed the wins. Not so. Bruce Parkhill felt it, and I suspect Bobby Johnson did as well.
Fortunately for me, my NASCAR experience quickly turned better. Ward Burton was brought in as driver midway in the next season, the crew picked up some additional talent, and two years later when we were preparing to move up to the premiere Winston Cup Series (now NASCAR Sprint Cup) Ward won a bundle of Busch awards for the most poles won and laps led. At Atlanta, Ward passed the highly-talented Mark Martin to win the last Busch race our team would compete in.
I eventually moved to MBNA America Bank, a sponsor of Joe Gibbs Racing, and enjoyed playing a very small but very enjoyable role in Bobby Labonte's 2000 Winston Cup championship season.
Bobby Johnson may never get to enjoy his taste of a championship. I hope he does.
--Bob Boyles
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