It’s happened: The 49ers are now being called chumps. Some fans are already comparing them to the freaking Bills. There was a when I thought winning earned immunity. Sure, the Patriots and Steelers are dregs now, but when your team gets Lombardi #6 maybe you can start talking. Granted there are bizarre cases like the Seahawks who hit the perfect formula once and then never again, but no one’s ever taking away the one. The 49ers have 5. 4 of them under a quarterback the sports media treated like a god. It means nothing, nothing at all. The mockery is relentless.
In sumo, the top of makushita is known as “the barrier between Heaven and Hell”. The Super Bowl is ours. There is nothing greater than winning it, and there is nothing, nothing worse than losing it. No, not 0-16 or 1-31. Not even close. Remember what really happened? We were all “Well, it looks like he kept his promise not to go 1-15 again, HAR HAR HAR HAR HEEEEEYUCK HEEYUCK HEEYUCK HEEYUCK!!!” for about 30 seconds before going back to grumbling about Donald Trump. It’s the Browns. Who gives a crap. But come up short in the biggest game and the recriminations begin immediately; fail a third time and you will never hear the end of it. Quick, which is the NFL team associated with eternal failure? The Bills. Not even close. It’s become so overwhelming that the Falcons’ failures pale in comparison, for crying out loud. I remember a sportswriter who was offended…honest-to-Yuugi offended…when the Bills won a fourth AFC championship. That’s how bad it was.
Does this ever happen in any other sport? The Boston Celtics (I don’t have the energy to research this) have probably lost more finals than any other NBA team in history, including a recent pretty humiliating one against the Warriors, and nearly all their great triumphs were in the distant past, yet they don’t get called failures. MLB, the only eternally seared-into-consciousness failure that comes into mind is the Boston Red Sox, but that was mostly due to the most legendarily freakish run of bad luck in the history of American sports and probably wouldn’t have been very remarkable otherwise. The NHL? Uhh…the Washington Capitals really blew a couple? I think? Maybe? The World Cup? Brazil crumbles in embarrassing fashion, the whole nation is near-suicidal for a couple weeks, and then tomorrow’s another day and they start gearing up for the next one.
In most sports, second place is very good. Not the best, of course, but an achievement worth appreciating, if not celebrating. In the NFL, if you get to the greatest stage, you’d damn well better win. Why? All the big money leagues have insane expectations and tons of pressure nowadays (and long before stuff like online gambling and fantasy).
Fans of great teams go into the season thinking Super Bowl-or-bust. Not winning the Super Bowl is a failure, and why have this great team if you’re just going to fail? “Rather be a perennial also-ran,” say the fans who haven’t ever cheered for an also-ran.
It’s a massive game. Parties are thrown to watch it every year. People who don’t watch football at all watch the Super Bowl. And the only game they watch all year, San Francisco just lost. In a huge number of minds, San Francisco only has losses this year.
Did I say two theories? I meant three. People are incredibly stupid, wildly hyperbolic, and utterly irrational. Anyone denigrating San Francisco after that game are just morons. This might include most of theory one, as well.
I’ve always had a feeling it has something to do with the fact that the second-best team is somewhere along the line of playoff teams that the Chiefs beat on the way to winning the Super Bowl. But it’s not necessarily the 49ers.
My suspicion is that people somehow intuitively know this, and the losing team inevitably gets compared to all the other teams the Chiefs beat and people start wondering who #2 really was, and get down on the runners-up because they weren’t actually #2.
Otherwise, it’s just dumb-ass bandwagon fandom without any real reasoning behind it- lauding the winner and pissing on the loser, even though the loser only lost one game less in the playoffs than the champions did.
It’s just football. It’s what football fans do when their team loses, and when their team loses the biggest game of the season it’s worse. There’s not much behind it though. It’s the same thing as the Taylor Swift nonsense. The same kind of fans complain about anything that isn’t pure football in their eyes. And then they forget about it. It’s how the fan game is played, and it’s only a minority of fans being egged on by the sports media to produce a story. And when the Super Bowl is over the only story left is complaining about losing.
In the 49er’s case, there’s a few issues at play here.
It was seen as their year. Number one in the NFC. Healthy roster after making such noise about losing their QBs last year that the NFL changed their rules. Compared to the Chiefs who were seen as having a down year prior to the playoffs.
They’ve made the playoffs 4 of the last 5 years, each time end in loss in either the NFC Championship or Super Bowl. So there’s a notion “maybe they just can’t win it all”.
This is Kyle Shanahan’s 3rd Super Bowl where he had a lead in the 4th quarter and still lost.
It’s the big game, and it’s so hyped up. When you lose, it’s very public. Many know.
As a 49er fan I’m grateful that we have our QB of the future. We’ll be back. But after winning 5 straight appearances, losing in the last 3 appearances really sucks.
And, years after the Buffalo Bills lost 4 in consecutive seasons, I’m more and more impressed that their team made it to 4 in a row. To date, after 58 Super Bowls, they’re the only team ever to do so.
But yeah, getting back to the OP, it’s the big game and it’s a very public way to lose.
Yes it’s a little different in this case. The Niners have been close and failed a lot. And its current history unlike the Bills.
Take my team, the Giants. In 2007 if they lost to the undefeated Patriots no one would look down on them. They were perceived to be overachieving by even getting there. The Niners have been so close recently and haven’t won. There’s a difference
The Super Bowl is built up as the ultimate sports event of the year. It’s much bigger than the championship game of other sports. The closest equivalent is the NCAA Basketball championship game. March Madness builds a lot of excitement for fans.
Reaching the Super Bowl is a big deal for any coach or team. Unfortunately it can be seen negatively for the team that loses. It’s basic human nature that reaching the pinnacle moment in a career can be crushing if you fail.
Hopefully the 49ers will regroup and get back next year. They played well in the Super Bowl.
I’ve heard it said that getting a silver medal in the Olympics has more of a stigma than a bronze. If you get a bronze, you’re in the top three–and besides, you’re in the Olympics. That’s pretty good. But if you get a silver, it means you went against gold and came up short. That’s bad.
And if you ain’t first, sometimes you’re murdered.
Consider the case of Andrés Escobar, the Colombian soccer player. In 1994 he was playing for the Colombia national team in the World Cup. In the game against the USA he tried to block an American attack and cross pass, but his block put the ball into the Colombian net. Known as an “own goal” in soccer.
Less than a week after Colombia was eliminated, Escobar was back home and out with some friends. Alone in a parking lot late that night, he was murdered, shot 6x. It was reported that the killer shouted “Gol!” (“Goal!”) after every shot, once for each time the TV commentator said it during the broadcast.
As a Lions fan, I remember their 0-16 season, and I saw them almost get into the SB. I can safely say, from my perspective, seeing them go 0-16 was much more grim than seeing them lose in the SB would have been.