Jimmie Johnson Joins Spurs, Sampras, Devils In Unknowingly Screwing His Sport
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Oct 06, 2008
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The San Antonio Spurs won four championships in nine years, but are saddled with the responsibility of making the National Basketball Association almost unwatchable.
Pete Sampras set a record with 14 Grand Slam crowns, but returned tennis to a distant international game after it had become quite Americanized.
The New Jersey Devils won Stanley Cups in 1995, 2000, and 2003, but helped make hockey so “blah” that the sport is now in the afterthought of America’s consciousness.
Style counts. And Jimmie Johnson doesn’t have any.
Well, maybe he does. But it doesn’t matter. The public has decided that Johnson is the equivalent of the halfcourt Spurs, the serve-and-volley, rally-be-damned Sampras and the trapping, skating-in-open-ice-is-sin Devs. Now, I don’t think any of the aforementioned champions were quite as boring as history has perceived them as. But if that’s what they’re pigeonholed as, that is their reality regardless.
Just the same, Johnson isn’t that much of a buzz-killer. In fact, his last-lap win over a kamikaze Carl Edwards at Kansas last Sunday was one of the best finishes of the season in the Sprint Cup.
But Johnson also proves that NASCAR, for all the accusations of it pulling puppet strings on the competition side, is run on the up-and-up for the most part. If the powers-that-be had its way, they’d throw a couple of dime bags in Johnson’s No. 48 and have him share a jail cell with Helio Castroneves. Because Johnson just doesn’t set off any emotion in people.
