The Side Line

In all sports, the postseason is a completely separate beast from the regular season. The rules change, everyone goes back to zero (well, plus a few bonus points in NASCAR), but the idea is that it’s the best of the best competing against each other for the title.

This season, the Sprint Cup’s most dominant driver has been Kyle Busch, and most experts would agree that heading into the Chase for the Cup, he was the odds-on favorite to take the title in a ten-race shootout. Three races in, he is out of title contention. Completely.

Confused? It’s not that hard to believe, if you know anything about racing, or even sports in general. The postseason just doesn’t play by the rules.

All season, Busch’s cars were mechanically the best in NASCAR, providing him consistent power and speed every week. Now, after three terrible finishes due to mechanical problems, he is left scratching his head, last place in the Chase, 311 points behind leader Jimmie Johnson.

Which brings me to my next point: championships are not won in the regular season. If they were, my beloved Braves would have owned baseball in the 90s. Champions do what they have to do to get to the postseason, and then flourish under immense pressure.

Jimmie Johnson had his most lackluster season in three years, yet looks poised to capture a third straight title. Why? Because he and crew chief Chad Knaus just have that little extra something when it matters most. Their cars don’t fail in the Chase, they dominate.

Johnson knows when to push the envelope on the racetrack, and when to back off. He doesn’t wreck other drivers, so he doesn’t get wrecked, thus a better finish, and more precious points toward the title. Smart racing, though not as exciting as aggressive racing, is the name of the game this time of year.

So how can Busch’s disappointments be explained? Is it karma, for being so cocky and dominant during the season? Is it a 23-year-old driver wanting his first title too much?

My guess is that it is just nature’s way of reminding us that in sports, the postseason is a place where unlikely and just plain weird things happen.

Take last season’s Super Bowl for example, when the Giants dispatched the Patriots in a “huge” upset.

I argue that there is no such thing as a huge upset in the postseason. The system works out so that every team in a playoff scenario has earned the right to be there, through a grueling regular season. The Giants had lost and won close games during the season, while the Patriots were hardly tested. Advantage – Giants.

And how about the Olympics this summer? Viewers were surprised when certain athletes didn’t win gold, or even place. These viewers have no concept of the pressure of perfection on an international stage.

Each athlete went through similar preparations, and when events are decided by thousandths of a second, what is surprising about any outcome?

Currently, there is a good opportunity for a very “surprising” outcome in Major League Baseball’s postseason. Included in the mix are the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, a team making the playoffs for the first time ever, as well as both Chicago teams, tempting us with a possible North Side/South Side civil war in the Windy City. Basically, none of the experts were right this season.

My point is, under the postseason spotlight, the ones who win championships are the ones who perform at their absolute best for that span of time, as basic as that sounds. You know, “one game at a time”, “there is no tomorrow”, all those clichés.

Too often, we crown champions before the postseason has even begun, yet sit dumbfounded when things don’t go according to our script. Playoffs have a way of writing their own scripts, as we watch enthralled and helpless.

And I watch the chaos, and smile, and am reminded of why I love sports so much.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Oct 3 2008. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry