Winners? No such thing

Trent Dilfer or Dan Marino? Jason Varitek or Barry Bonds? Leon Powe or Karl Malone?

Any sane person would take the latter of the pairings and that’s how it should be. So what if the trio has never won a ring while the others have?

There is no such thing as a winner. There are only good players and bad players. Some good players happen to play on bad teams and some bad players play on good teams. There is not some intrinsic quality that differs among players that allows one to be considered a winner, and by default, the other something less than that. 

Tim Tebow has played a hand in two national championships and is gunning for a third. There is no denying he is a good player and he has inevitably been dubbed a great winner. (This also has to do with the fact that he is a polite, white, Christian quarterback that likes to flaunt his charity work and plays for a top tier program, but that’s another topic alltogether.) He is certainly the most recognizable and most revered athlete in college athletics today. Is this all because he has that little something extra in him that no other player in the country possesses? No, he is a good player but he has also played on one of the best overall teams in the nation thanks in large part to Urban Meyer’s ability to recruit a bevy of talented players. Just wait until he gets to the next level, plays for an average team and all of a sudden he has lost “it.” That intangible quality he once possessed is now gone just a few short years later? No, no I say. There was never anything there at all. He was simply a good player on a great team and was lucky enough to enjoy a magical four year run.

Let’s not put too much stock into championships. Only one team can win it each year. Does that mean all the other players on all the other teams do not possess whatever the championship members did? It is ludicrous to assume an average player, or even a great one, on a championship squad is better than an exceptional player that hasn’t won it simply because he rode the coattails of his teammates to a title.