Mediocre Fred's Mediocre Blog (Ret.)

Riding the Redskin Rollercoaster

Today's Musical Selection: "King Tut" by Steve Martin

Oh, my God! We're an unstoppable machine! Start printing playoff tickets now! Surely the Super Bowl can't be far behind! Who do we have to talk to about putting Joe Gibbs' face on the ten-dollar bill? What do we pack for January in Jacksonville? Has you ever seen a better team than this in your whole entire life? Huh? Huh?

Sorry about that. I just got swept up in the local hysteria. Boy, you notch one decisive victory over a helpless, flailing opponent, and the whole Fedroplex goes nuts. The same fans who, three days ago, were talking about setting fire to FedEx Field are now speaking of playoffs. Playoffs! It's almost enough to make you forget that this is still a 4-8 team that has a date with Philadelphia in a week.

If you want to get a glimpse into Washington's sporting culture, the reaction to this game is a good place to start. For years I've defended my city against out-of-towners who deride D.C. as a crummy sports town. They say we're a bunch of front-runners, we're not the least bit loyal, we show up late and spend the whole game yakking on our cell phones, we go to games and root for the other team over our own, and we don't even have the cojones to work up a good passionate hatred for our teams, as Philadelphia does. Basically, the rap on Washington as a sports city is Atlanta with worse weather. And based on the reaction to one stinking win here, I'm starting to wonder if the critics aren't right.

Let's review the facts here for a moment. For several decades now, our sports scene has been defined by the Redskins. We haven't haven't had a baseball team in 33 years (until now!), and the Bullets/Wizards and Capitals only make much of a dent in the public consciousness when they make a run in the playoffs, or they sign some over-the-hill big name playing out the string, which only happens sporadically. And for over a decade, our flagship franchise hasn't been very good. I've previously taken my fellow citizens to task for whining like spoiled children over the fact that the Skins have stumbled of late, and deservedly so. But on the other hand, since 1993 they've only made the playoffs once. Given that the NFL is the land of enforced mediocrity, and given the size of the postseason field, a reasonable observer might conclude that the Little Sisters of the Blind could make the playoffs more than once in a decade. But no, not our Skins. And given the paucity of other sporting excitement to divert our attention, the city has become quite despondent over the state of things. Not enough to stop selling out a 90,000-seat stadium every week, mind you, but enough to lop a couple decades off the season-ticket waiting list.

Sensing that the town was starting to turn on his team, impetuous boy-genius owner Danny Snyder decided to do something really bold and get our attention: he coaxed the Sainted Joe Gibbs out of retirement with a pep talk about restoring the glory and a tall stack of long green. You may have heard something about this. In the Fedroplex, this news chased the Iraq war and the presidential race to the B section. Given that Gibbs, during his previous run as head coach in the '80s and early '90s, was the architect of the majority of our city's meager stock of sporting greatness, you can understand the madness. Imagine, if you will, the Chicago Superfans reacting to the news that Mike Ditka would be returning to coach Da Bears. You get the idea. This was a Big Deal. This was the Second Coming (and the Biblical reference is intentional). Praise be to Gibbs! Glory hallelujah!

Of course, while everyone was out whooping it up, talking confidently of 11-5 records and Super Bowl appearances and treating the playoffs as though they were a given, not too many people bothered to notice that, by and large, the same cast of characters who bumbled and lollygagged their way to a 12-20 record over two years under Steve Spurrier were still around. But no matter, we all figured. Gibbs will coach 'em up! That's what he does! Gibbs can do anything! Gibbs can walk on water! Bring on the playoffs!

But lo and behold, after a mildly impressive Opening Day win over a flat Buccaneers team, the Redskins started performing... a lot like last year. As it turned out, the return of Gibbs was essentially slapping a Rolls Royce grille on the front of a Volkswagen. The record sagged to 3-8. The same pattern kept repeating: an aggressive and stifling defensive performance was wasted by a punchless offense that couldn't play dead. This was particularly vexing to fans, because the offense was Gibbs' direct responsibility. (The defense is run by Gregg Williams.) How could this happen? With the Sainted Joe Gibbs and everything?

You might that that being God would by you a reprieve for a season or two, but not in this town. Fans began booing openly. They were particularly agressive in booing quarterback Mark Brunell, a spry lad of 55, so much so that Gibbs (always known to favor veterans over kids) was forced to bench Brunell before the fans could tar and feather him. All around town, the Redskins were fast becoming yesterday's news. Gibbs was being fitted for a plaque in the Washington Sports Past-Their-Prime Hall of Fame, right next to Michael Jordan and Deion Sanders and Jaromir Jagr. Each week we were treated to the sight of offensive line coach Joe Bugel, who comes off like Jerry Van Dyke with a smack habit, growing increasingly testy in interviews and scolding the fans and the media for being unsupportive. Bugel doesn't understand this town. During his previous tenure here, everything was wine and roses. This was his first taste of the dark side of the D.C. sports experience. Even Gibbs, famously patient and mild-mannered, grew whiny and short in the ever-more-downbeat postgame conferences.

But then came this week. 31 points! A beating handed to an old rival in the playoff race! 19-for-22 passing by Patrick Ramsey! It truly was a revelation. This looked like a different Redskins team than we've been subjected to for the last 11 weeks. The passes were crisp and accurate, and the receivers (for a fun and exciting change) didn't drop them. Clinton Portis, who apparently had a long and productive chat with someone important about the virtues of giving a crap, sliced and diced and juked and jived and ran like the running back we thought we were getting from Denver. The offensive line actually blocked a few people for a change. And the defense continued to be dominated, rebounding from a couple so-so performances against Pittsburgh and Philly to rattle young Eli Manning, shut down Tiki Barber and prevent the Giants from establishing any sort of offensive rhythm. The Skins even kept dumb penalties and mental blunders, their trademark in recent years, to a minimum. All in all, it was a moment to savor in a season that hasn't had many.

But, of course, Washington fans can't just smile, appreciate a happy Sunday and move on. No, this has to be the start of Something Big! Suddenly, we're capable of running the table! Suddenly, the playoffs are a possibility! And once we reach the playoffs, with the Sainted Joe Gibbs to guide us...

Just stop. Okay, fans? Stop it. One win does not make this a good team. One win does not make us contenders. We now have the same record as the Arizona Cardinals, okay? We're not going to run the table, and even if we did, 8-8 is not going to get the job done, not even in the NFC. Relax and take a deep breath. We're still bad.

This is what burns me about this town, and what worries me regarding the Nationals. Washington is not a town that embraces losers. We can't even accept defeat stoically and wait for the next thing. We have to have success, and we have to have it nownowNOW, or else we bail.

Maybe the return of baseball will break the string. Maybe we'll recognize what a long, hard struggle we survived just to get the team back, and we'll appreciate the team even when it's flailing. Or maybe the Nationals will become a summertime institution, and we'll come out win or lose, even if we're coming out to boo and throw rotten vegetables at Vinny Castilla. Perhaps we can defy the stereotype. (After all, we do come out for the Skins, and the Caps crowds, though not always large, are smart and faithful. Also, we're a good basketball town, and perhaps some day we'll get pro basketball back so we can prove it.) Perhaps this time will be different. I have faith that it can be.

Just please God don't let this be another Tampa Bay, where fan support sinks like an anchor once the novelty's gone. Just when I've come to a real appreciation of our city and our sports culture, don't spoil it by being a bunch of fair-weather idiots. Please. That's what I want for Christmas: a sports town I can be proud of.

Aside to Giants fans: Next time you see your team in action, watch Eli Manning carefully. Notice the way he stares at his receivers when they drop passes, even if the passes were bad? It's like he thinks they're quitting on him. This does not bode well for young Eli's future. Besides the fact that it's undoubtedly endearing him to his teammates, the stare indicates that Eli doesn't take responsibility for his own mistakes. That's a terrible flaw in a young quarterback. That's the problem with highly-touted players with famous bloodlines: sometimes they turn out to be great players who seem born to thrive in the pros, and sometimes they turn out to be spoiled jackasses with crippling senses of entitlement who don't know how to handle adversity. If young Eli is warming the bench behind Chris Chandler or Trent Dilfer in three years, don't say I didn't warn you.

Loyal reader BallWonk shares my horror at the collision of white people and hip-hop culture, sharing an anecdote from his own experience:

I well remember my days as a very young, very white movie-theater usher. This was the early 1990s, when I was in high school and Dada had a hit song with the lyric, "I just flipped off President George/I'm going to Disneyland" (except they didn't spell it "Disneyland" for fear of offending The Mouse).

Anyway, it was positive torture, seemingly designed specifically to make a repeated fool of me, when the Damon Wayans epic "Mo Money" came out. White men can too jump, and some of us do have rhythm. (Or at least the ability to hop around like Rudie to ska and rocksteady, which is something at least.) But some white men, this one included, positively cannot pull off hip-hop slang in any form.

I can still feel the mortification each time I had to say, sometimes hundreds of times in a row as I tore tickets, "'Mo Money'is the first theater to your left." I have never in my life felt more like a honkizzle.

Amen, BallWonk. Despite the fact that I am, by some accounts at least, pretty fly for a white guy, I cannot, and for that reason do not attempt to, speak the hip-hop dialect. I sound just as white as I am, and any attempt on my part to speak hip-hop would be truly laughable. I only wish that more people who are as white as I am would accept the facts.

When I was younger, my best neighborhood pal had a younger brother who, as he grew up, fell in love with rap and the hip-hop culture. Given that he was a chunky little pale white kid, this was met with amusement by my buddy and I. To say nothing of others around him. They mocked his dialect, his baggy clothes and 'do rag, and his constant quoting of rap lyrics. They called him "wigger" (short for "white n-----"). At the time, he was a joke. Turns out he was just ahead of the curve.

BallWonk also finds my musical selections eerily intriguing:

BTW, your musical selections are spooky. Uncanny even. For the first time in years, maybe all 20 of them since my mom used to play that Philly soul, yesterday I was thinking about the Spinners. And just the other day my iPod, set to shuffle, played "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" two times in a row - first the Queen original, then the Dwight Yoakam cover. Try getting a song out of your head after THAT happens.

This sort of coincidence happens a lot with your musical selections. It's like synchronicity. Which was a pretty good album in its own right.

I'm glad you enjoy my musical selections. I'm always glad to be in sync with my readers. Hope you enjoy today's musical selection, a wacky little chestnut that's one of my favorites. If it happens that you were just thinking of it, well... (theme from "Twilight Zone") And yes, Synchronicity is a great album.

That's all for today. See you tomorrow.

Posted by Fred at December 6, 2004 08:57 PM