Going Out On Bottom

Something is troubling me, folks, in regards to the recent rash of Favre and Strahan and Clemens (i.e., the end of career issue player), and that is this: at what point did Going Out On Top become the be-all and end-all of every well-publicized athletic career?

Being a nerd from way back, the first that I remember reading about this was the legendary Browns of Otto Graham's era, the ones from the first great threat to the NFL in terms of a rival league. Graham was the best quarterback of his era, and he retired at the end of a great run of Browns championships. (You see, there is value in pre-Lombardi NFL history: by knowing it, you can write phrases like "great run of Browns championships" without flinching or giggling.) Ever since, we get this from any number of quasi-important players.

As an Eagles fan, I dream of a championship. If it should happen this year, should Brian Dawkins retire? Well, of course; he's close to the end anyway, and last year was borderline ugly at times, with him really not performing to his level. Fine, then, B-Dawk gets to go out on top. How about Donovan McNabb? Well, no... in that if there is an Eagles championship, you'd have to think that he was a main cause of it, and you'd like to see the team be as good the next year. Or Brian Westbrook? He'd be 30 then, and wouldn't it be better if he could... You see the point. At some level, going out on top just means a much nastier word, a word that no one wants to embrace. Quitting.

Consider your own career for a second, in relation to the anointed. Are you going to be able to retire on top? My guess is, well, no. You'll retire somewhere in the great uncharted middle that is most cubicle life, assuming that the whole endeavour isn't farmed out to Bangladesh, and it will be. After that, you'll consult and cobble until you can manage something else. That's because for us, our career is very closely tuned to our lives, unlike professional athletes.

Everyone is, on some level, what they do and what they think. Pro athlete is attractive as a career profession and as a role model, because (for the most part) what they think is positive; if you don't think you are going to succeed and win, you aren't going to make it to the top level, even as a loser.

This is also why it smacks of artifice (at best) when an athlete picks their time to go, rather than just, you know, do the work and let someone else make that determination. No one else in our society makes their own determination to quit: the most celebrated entertainers never bail out despite innumerable threats, and it's rare that you see a celebrated CEO leave on anything but his shield. Media moguls like Rupert Murdoch and Sumner Redstone cling to the jobs until they are no more; so do, for the most part, Supreme Court justices.

There's really only two classes of people that try to game the system and be above every other monkey with a tax bill to pay... athletes and lottery winners.

And this is yet another reason why it's OK to hate on both.

(Ed. Note: Strahan, probably in the absence of what he'd consider to be meaningful cash, decides to stay in a Grecian beach and/or the Fox television studios in LA. Hey, maybe the Giants can coax Tiki Barber back to rush the passer instead...)