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Collegiate teams reach the top, only to fall off the other side

by Tony Basilio

Florida State’s two national championship trophies were stolen a couple of weeks back, and the school is offering a reward for their return. I’m not sure why. Florida State has been an average program since their last national title back in 1999. Losing the trophies might be the best thing that could happen to them.

Call it the Law of the Poison Pinnacle. The Law of PP is operational when coaches and schools get to the top of major college sports, and then stumble and fall, lethally stricken with the poisoning intoxication of victory. Once it seemed like winning a national title meant a coach’s enshrinement at a particular institution, or at least stability for life. But winning it all nowadays seems to create more traps than trappings.

Conventional wisdom in Big Orange Country is that UT football has lost its edge, that the program has slipped from the nation’s elite. Maybe it has. But this wouldn’t be the first time a program has won a national championship that brought seasons of wither.

In 1996, Steve Spurrier was canonized after whipping undefeated Florida State in the Sugar Bowl 52-20. Saint Spurrier’s Gators seemed to have too much for college football. He used to make Tennessee and every other program in the SEC look silly. He changed the way the game was played in the league, turning what was once a bastion of hard-nosed football into a finesse conference. Then he won it all, and the Gators lost their edge.

Following the national title year, the Gators logged records of 10-2 in ’97, 10-2 in ’98, and 9-4 in ’99, with a loss to Michigan State (yes, that Michigan State) in the Citrus Bowl. Remember how Spurrier used to chide Tennessee and coach Phillip Fulmer publicly about how you couldn’t spell Citrus without a “U” and a “T”? Times changed. He won it all, and it was all over.

In 13 seasons, Spurrier managed to win six SEC Titles, five of which came before the national title. In fact, he won five in six seasons with only one coming in his last five years. Florida fans maintain that the Gators’ recruiting slipped after winning it all. Does that sound familiar?

Gene Stallings took over at Alabama in 1990 and delivered the Tide’s first national title since the late ’70s. But Stallings eventually departed in the first wave of NCAA trouble at the embattled Capstone. A decade and a half later, under the watch of clowns like DuBose, Franchione and now Shula, Al the Elephant has fallen and he can’t get up. The title of ’92 brought several seasons of poor recruiting as well as some unwelcome NCAA scrutiny to Tuscaloosa. Nor was that the first time that winning it all brought the NCAA to a college town.

Don James at Washington can tell you all about how winning attracts unwanted attention. In the twilight of his career, the 18-year veteran James led the Huskies to their only national title in school history back in 1991. The NCAA offered their congratulations in the form of an investigation that brought disgrace and probation to the once-proud school.

Barry Switzer offers another textbook case. The irascible former headman of Oklahoma was brash, verbose and seedy. (That’s how his friends described him, anyway.) A self-professed “bootlegger’s son,” he led the Sooners through two decades of dominance with his patented wishbone offense and defenses that fed off his aggression. Switzer led the Sooners to the national title in 1985 with a victory over Penn State in the Orange Bowl. Sports Illustrated came the following year and did a story about Brian Bosworth firing automatic weapons from the school’s dormitory, painting a picture of a program spiraling out of control. A subsequent NCAA probe saw Switzer blown out of town shortly thereafter, and OU disappeared from the national spotlight for over a decade.

Other coaches of note who have reached the poison pinnacle in basketball include:

• Rollie Massimino at Villanova: Won it all in 1985. Washed out recently at Cleveland State.

• Jerry Tarkanian: The guy looked a lot like George “The Animal” Steele with that towel in his mouth.

• Steve Fisher: Former Michigan head coach couldn’t buy a win after buying the “Fab Five.”

• Jim Harrick: Former Georgia head won a title in the mid-‘90s at UCLA, then fudged an expense report and couldn’t buy a break in Athens.

The object lesson here is that winning the big one is sometimes the “end-all” as well as the “be-all.” How will time view Phillip Fulmer and his tenure at the University of Tennessee? Maybe it’s time for somebody to break into the Neyland Thompson Center and snag our trophy.

July 1, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 27 © 2004 Metro Pulse