Sports teams who lose a lot of good players are often said to be “rebuilding.” But some teams have so many good players in the pipeline that it can truly be said, “They don’t rebuild, they just reload.”
I am curious about the origin of that (paraphrased) quote. I think the saying has been around since the late 70s or early 80s. I want to say it was originally applied to Alabama or USC. But it could possibly have been in reference to an NFL team. Google has failed me. It could possibly have come from a sports writer, but I want to say a sportscaster came up with it. (Keith Jackson, maybe?)
Anybody have the lowdown on this?
(Putting this in general questions because I’m asking about a phrase origin.)
The earliest sports-related reference I can find by searching newspapers.com for various combinations of rebuild and reload occurs in a column by Fred Stabley Jr. of the Lansing Times on September 2, 1973. The column is titled “Rebuild? Not Bo–He Just Reloads” and the first sentence is “It’s rapidly becoming apparent that Michigan’s Bo Schembechler never rebuilds . . . he just reloads.”
The phrase spread rapidly and was regularly being applied to various powerhouse teams, mostly college but some professional, by the mid-to-late 1970’s.
/aside
Which is a rather amusing term for me. A local Urdu idiom is “چالا ہواکارتوس” (lit a spent/fired cartridge). Often used to mean that something has nothing further to offer. Often used in sports.
Reload with spent cartridges?
/aside