Your legacy isn’t necessarily – actually, it isn’t really at all – an objective view of your life.
It would be nice if it were – it would be fair and right and just if it were – but that’s simply not the case. Nobody ever said life was fair — and right and just.
It’s the perception of what you did, and were. Perception is usually 90 percent of reality. In this instance, though, it’s 100 percent.
I thought of all that – and the 1980s Browns – after the University of Virginia men’s basketball team became the first No. 1 seed in the modern history of the NCAA Tournament to lose to a No. 16 seed when it fell to UMBC on Friday in the first round. No, the Cavaliers – not Cleveland, but Virginia – didn’t just get felled. They got blown out. And they weren’t just the No. 1 seed in their region. Rather, they were the No. 1 overall seed in the tournament. Of the 68 teams that made it, they were at the very top.
And just what does UMBC stand for? The University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Not the University of Maryland’s main campus, which is located in College Park and plays Ohio State and others in the Big Ten Conference, but its Baltimore County branch, which is located in Catonsville in suburban Baltimore and plays Vermont and others in the America East Conference.
Its nickname is the Retrievers.
The school is known for having a great chess team.
Folks, you can’t make this stuff up.
The head coach of the Retrievers is Ryan Odom. If he never does anything else of note for the rest of his career, he will forever be a part of college basketball – really, just sports overall – history in, of course, a very positive way.
The same can be said of Tony Bennett – not the iconic 91-year-old singer, but the 48-year-old coach of the Cavaliers – in a negative way. No matter what he does from here on out – and he’s had an outstanding career thus far – he will forever be remembered almost exclusively as the coach whose suffered the most stunning, humiliating, egregious upset defeat in the history of the tournament.
As such, he is college basketball’s answer to Bill Buckner, the otherwise fine Boston Red Sox first baseman who let the ball go underneath his glove late in the sixth game of the !986 World Series, paving the way for the New York Mets to win the game and eventually the Series.
Bennett is the answer to Ralph Branca, the otherwise fine pitcher with the Brooklyn Dodgers who served up the game-winning three-run home run to Bobby Thomson in the bottom of the ninth inning of the third and deciding game of 1951 National League playoff series with the New York Giants.
He is the answer to Buffalo Bills kicker Scott Norwood, whose potential 47-yard game-winning field goal went wide right to give the New York Giants a 20-19 victory in Super Bowl XXV. That was the first of the Bills’ NFL-record four straight trips to the Super Bowl. Nobody remembers that fact or any of the other great things the Bills of that era did. They remember only the losses, especially that one. Most people couldn’t tell you anything about the other three defeats.
Finally – and most importantly for Browns fans — Bennett is also the answer to the Cleveland teams of the 1980s – the Kardiac Kids of 1980 and the clubs from 1985-89. We all know how those teams’ seasons ended. They are lore not just in Cleveland but throughout the NFL – and, of course, in a negative way. Nobody remembers all the great things – and there were many – that those Browns squads did.
So, welcome to this ignominious club, Tony Bennett. Enjoy your stay. It will last a lifetime, no matter how hard you try to shake it. It will be like a boomerang that keeps coming back again and again and again.
Just ask Sam Rutigliano.
And Brian Sipe.
And Marty Schottenheimer.
And Bernie Kosar.
And so on and so forth.
