Are Legacies Built To Last?

As I was watching the Open Championship over the past weekend (yes, I was one of the people up at 3 AM to watch a golf tournament), I not only got to witness and think about how great Rory Mcilroy could actually be, but I also unfortunately got to see something on the opposite end of the spectrum, that being just how far Tiger Woods has fallen in the past 6 years. Before Woods’ fiasco, he was in an even better place than Rory is now; Tiger was 32 years old and had recently won his 14^th major championship which had kept him in second place to only Jack Nicklaus, who had 18 majors. Tiger Woods was seemingly on top of the world in not only golf, but in the sports world as a whole, and then we all know what happened next.  Ever since the dramatic and many marital infidelities came to light, Tiger just hasn’t been the same golfer. Some people say that his recurring back and knee problems are stopping him from climbing back to the top, but the majority still believes that his head hasn’t been in the game of golf since the 2009 drama that ultimately ended his marriage to Elin Nordegren. Whatever it is, it still hasn’t changed as we just witnessed a promising first round score (Woods shot 3-under in his first round this weekend) disappear faster than a group of opposing fans after their team beats the Oakland Raiders at O.co Coliseum. By the time the tournament was over, Woods had barely made the cut on Friday and was easily out of contention heading into the weekend, finishing with a +6 in the tournament to put him in 69^th place, 23 strokes behind the 25-year-old Rory Mcilroy, a golfer who reminds people of just how good Tiger Woods has been … and also how far he has fallen.

My Tiger Woods realization leads me to my actual topic, that is, how strong are legacies in not only golf, but also every other major sport? What if Michael Jordan had stuck with baseball, failed miserably or even been mediocre, and never returned to the game of basketball … would his legacy hold up? What about Brett Favre, if he had decided to retire while he was on top, would that have stopped him from sending less than fortunate pictures of himself to the wrong person and people questioning his motives towards the end of his excruciatingly long career? Obviously we will never know the true answer to this, but it never hurts to discuss it and hopefully insult enough people that the idea creates a nice, and of course healthy, debate topic, because in reality isn’t that the joy of analyzing sports? I have always been taught to listen and learn about every angle of thought in order to further strengthen your opinion on any given topic, and I think this “legacy” topic should provoke a great opportunity to do just that.

The real question when talking about legacies is what helps to define a legacy? Is it the number of titles you’ve won? Statistical achievements throughout your career? Records broken? It seems that among sports experts, a legacy is built by a combination of the previously mentioned categories, and possibly a couple more such as sportsmanship, passion, and how you carry yourself outside of the game, which is a questionable category to use when deciding just how great any particular players legacy is, because they are building a legacy in the sport they are paid to play, which shouldn’t require “being a good guy.” Unfortunately, it isn’t up to me to decide what a true legacy requires and behavior outside of the game seems to be a category that everyone throws into the conversation, so who am I to exclude it?

I believe off the court behavior, if you will, can tip a borderline legend into legendary status, but cannot be used as a major factor when deciding whether or not someone is truly a legend in any given sport. For example, people like Allen Iverson, Michael Jordan, and Muhammad Ali aren’t known for being the nicest, or most well-liked guys around, but what they did was so great that overlooking their legacy due to that one factor would be simply idiotic. On the other hand though, you have guys like Phil Mickelson who is an amazing golfer, but maybe shouldn’t be discussed at legendary status, but he is because he carries himself well and has that “it” factor that helps push him into the discussion. On the other end of the spectrum there are people like Ron Artest, who has had an extremely solid professional career, but being that he has one of the most terrible attitudes, he might pop up in certain discussions when discussing great players but he will never be a centerpiece of that discussion, and it makes you wonder if attitude might have something to do with it after all.

Now that my tangent on off the field/court/course behavior is over, I can get back to the overall point of the discussion, and that is, the combination of all these different categories plays such an important role in building a true legacy, that you usually have to have done it all (Michael Jordan), or have done certain categories at an incredible rate for an extended period of time (Allen Iverson).  I personally do believe that leaving while you’re on top can greatly affect your legacy (Ray Lewis), but staying in the game to long (Brett Favre) can also have the opposite effect when discussing where a certain player ranks in the  “legend” discussion.  I will ask one more question, and leave it  as a sort of open-ended discussion question, and it will bring me back to the opening thought of this article. My question is, if Tiger Woods plays golf for another 15 years and never gets back to where he was in 2008, will he still be discussed as the legend that we are accustomed to hearing about in the last 15 years? He will still have 14 majors to his name, and he will still be responsible for doing some of the greatest things to ever be done on the golf course, but will he still carry that title with such assurance? I’m not so sure that he will, and while I am always rooting for him to get back to his previous self, the question of if he doesn’t really makes me think about how strong these so called “legacies” really are. Let me know what you think, as I believe this topic is wide open for discussion. I can’t wait to hear everyone’s thoughts on this!