Jimmie Johnson Joins Spurs, Sampras, Devils In Unknowingly Screwing His Sport

(Originally published on Oct. 4, 2008)

It’s unfortunate that winning isn’t enough, but that’s the way it is.
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.
He’s kind of like an ineffective bad-guy wrestler. Since the character is a villain, people obviously don’t love him. But since he doesn’t make them seethe with anger, they don’t really hate him, either. Would you waste a full can of beer to dent his windshield the way thousands already have with Jeff Gordon at this week’s venue, Talladega? Most would say, “Hell no!”
If you were at dinner and compared him to the main course, he’d be the parsley.
Is this characterization of him completely unfair? Absolutely! I’ve had the pleasure of having lunch with Johnson before, and he doesn’t fit the corporate-robot persona people have hung on him, similar to his teammate, Jeff Gordon. I guess the difference is that Gordon had NASCAR’s ultimate roughneck, Dale Earnhardt Sr., to form a clear love/hate relationship between the sport’s younger and older fans. Johnson doesn’t have that dynamic to play off of, and never will.
Also, the timing of Johnson’s dominance has been unfortunate for him. He entered stardom right at the time NASCAR was reaching its peak in national exposure. A lot of people tried on NASCAR like a pair of dungarees, and many decided that it didn’t fit. The bubble burst and ratings settled to a more reasonable level exactly while Johnson was hoisting championship trophies. Ergo, the slide was Johnson’s fault—even if it wasn’t.
It’s a good time to talk about Johnson’s legacy when he’s eyeing Cale Yarborough’s mark of three Cup titles in a row. We should be having a Tiger Woods-like “we are experiencing greatness in our time and should rejoice” reaction. Instead, the masses would rather talk about what Joey Logano MIGHT do in 2013.
It isn’t fair. But as I’ve said before, sports fans are not required to make sense.