Dynasty or Fan-Fatigue?
After two weeks of hype, Super Bowl LVIII will finally take place this weekend. Super Bowls are all about hype and everything being over-the-top, but with this Super Bowl taking place in Las Vegas – things seem to be even more amped up. One of the topics of conversation going into this Super Bowl is to see if the Kansas City Chiefs can win their third Super Bowl in the past five years. They are already in their fourth Super Bowl in the past five years, but they lost to Tom Brady and Tampa Bay after the 2020 season.
Many writers, fans and talk radio hosts are complaining about Chiefs Fatigue. In the eyes of some fans, it’s bad enough are they already considered a dynasty; but the Chiefs are also filling up their TV screens seven days a week. Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and even Coach Andy Reid are cranking out commercials to the point that we are tired of seeing them. Throw in the Taylor Swift factor, and most fans are completely over the Chiefs.
On a side note – I’m not a Swiftie (although my wife is a big fan), but I don’t really begrudge Taylor Swift with all of the coverage she gets for attending Chiefs games. She’s just there to support her boyfriend, Travis Kelce. It’s the TV networks that keep showing her after every big play, drawing the ire of fans.
I still haven’t decided who I’m for Sunday. Personally, I like Mahomes. He is the best QB in the game today and is in the conversation for one of the best ever. I like his demeanor and it is fun to watch him play. I also like Coach Andy Reid. He has shrugged the label of “can’t win the big one”. He’s also about the only coach left in the league who is older than I am (by seven months). But I like 49ers Coach Kyle Shanahan also; and I really like the Brock Purdy storyline of being Mr. Irrelevant – the last player drafted in the 2022 NFL draft. He’s a good quiet kid. He may not have the flash of Mahomes, but he is very smart and athletic in his own right.
It’s safe to say that Chief’s fatigue is real – just like Patriots fatigue was real in the past decade. I kind of admire dynasties and I think they are good for sports. It makes winning a championship that more special, if only a handful of teams can do it. To do it consistently is even more rare. That’s why I appreciate dynasties. But I am aware that the general public is always wanting to end a dynasty, and will cheer for any person or team that has the chance to do that. That’s why many are pulling for the 49ers this weekend.
Keeping with the dynasty theme, we IndyCar fans are on the verge of witnessing what could become a major dynasty, if it isn’t already. Chip Ganassi Racing is already a dynasty. Since 1996, they have won fifteen IndyCar championships. Since 2000, they have also won five Indianapolis 500s.
Chip Ganassi Racing’s IndyCar legacy is already cemented, no matter what happens going forward. But since the team has added Alex Palou to their stable, they could totally redefine the word dynasty. My question is…will that be good or bad for the series?
Andretti-Green Racing (AGR) won three IndyCar titles in four years (2004, 2005 & 2007) and two Indianapolis 500s in that time. I remember fans grumbling then that the series was in danger of become an all-AGR series. In 2009, AGR went winless and everyone was wondering what had gone wrong. Their quick (and short-lived) demise was a reminder of the very last line in the movie Patton – that “all glory is fleeting”.
It was also a reminder of how fickle fans can be. Win three championships in a four-year period, and you have a dynasty that will surely ruin the sport. Go winless two years later and your team is a bunch of losers that don’t deserve to be on the grid. Of course, reality lies somewhere between those two extremes; but that is how unforgiving the public can be.
Dynasties have been a part of IndyCar racing for years. In the late 30s and 1940s, Lou Moore had a dynasty as a car-owner. Altogether he won a then-record five Indianapolis 500s from 1938 to 1949. His first came with Floyd Roberts in 1938, then Mauri Rose (with Floyd Davis) in 1941. After the war, Moore had his beautiful Blue Crown Specials, which won in 1947-48 with Rose as the driver, then in 1949 with Bill Holland. It wasn’t long after that when Howard Keck launched his own mini-dynasty with Bill Vukovich and the Fuel Injection Special.
Of course, in my lifetime – there has never been a dynasty to rival Team Penske. I was in the stands when Team Penske first appeared on the grid in 1969. I was also present when they won their first Indianapolis 500 with Mark Donohue in 1972. Fifty-four years after they first appeared at Indianapolis, I was also on-hand to witness Josef Newgarden win the 2023 race – giving Penske his record-nineteenth Indianapolis 500 victory as an owner. Newgarden became the fourteenth driver to win at least one Indianapolis 500, while driving for Penske.
Are dynasties good or bad for the sport? As I said earlier, I’ve always thought dynasties were good for any sport – IndyCar racing included. Would a championship be special if a different team or driver won it every year? From 2010 to 2020, would a championship seem like the pinnacle of the sportl if nine of the ten fulltime teams won it? I guess it would if you were the tenth team that didn’t win it. We would all talk about how competitive the series was, but it would not seem that hard to do, if almost everyone can do it.
Without looking it up, when was the last time a driver won the IndyCar championship in a car not owned by Penske or Ganassi? Give up? It was 2012, when Ryan Hunter-Reay won the championship for Andretti Autosport. Prior to that, it was 2007 – when Dario Franchitti won it for AGR. The fact that only twice in almost twenty years, a car not from Penske and Ganassi has won the championship; tells me that the next time that happens will be very special – for fans and the winning team alike.
Some have already predicted that Alex Palou is going to “stink things up” this year by clinching the championship in August, before the series even gets to the season-finale in Nashville. That is when we go from a dynasty of three championships in four years, to Palou Fatigue.
For the most part, last year’s championship was over by early July, when Palou won his fourth race in five tries at Mid-Ohio. He dominated the GMR Grand Prix at Indianapolis. After overcoming a pit-lane mishap, he still finished fourth in the Indianapolis 500. Then he went on a tear, winning three races in a row at Detroit, Road America and Mid-Ohio. He held serve through out the rest of the summer. He won at Portland, which clinched the championship for Palou with one race to go.
In all honesty, the races held little suspense for the championship. Palou didn’t put a wheel wrong all season. His worst finish for all of 2023 was eighth twice – at St. Petersburg and again at Iowa Race One. Palou had ten podium finishes last season, five of them being wins. He finished 78 points ahead of second-place Scott Dixon, his teammate. That’s about as much as a beat-down as we’ve seen for quite a while in the NTT IndyCar Series. Quite honestly, I hope we don’t see one of this magnitude ever again.
There is a fine line between dynasty and fan-fatigue. Dynasties can be good for the sport, while fan-fatigue can actually drive people away. I won’t begrudge Alex Palou if he wins another IndyCar championship in 2024, but I want him to have to sweat it out in September. That’s how you keep fans engaged. That’s why, as I write this, I have no idea who I will be cheering for on Sunday. I just want it to be a close game.
George Phillips
Oilpressure 
February 9, 2024 at 8:12 am
NFL: I like Reid and those guys on KC, but I want SF to win. It would be nice to see George Kittle and the guys who were on the 49ers when they lost to KC a few years ago get their redemption.
What Palou did last season was impressive. It’s not just that he was on what is likely the series’ best team, but as you said, he never turned a bad wheel the entire season. It was a masterclass performance through and through. He earned every inch of that championship.
That said, I’m just not a fan of the guy. I don’t care for the seemingly unprofessional manner in which he conducts his business off-track. (Signing with McLaren while under contract with Chip, then turning around and re-upping with Chip while under contract with McLaren. What the hell man?) Totally petty on my part, but I even find his voice and interviews annoying. Thus, I’d be happy to see Alex come back down to Earth this year. But….he’s an outstanding talent. If he kicks the rest of the field’s butt again this year, I suspect it will once again be well-earned.
February 9, 2024 at 11:19 am
Domination is a funny thing … it captures the public’s attention, but at the risk of the fan fatigue you discuss. What would happen, though, if 16 different drivers won in a 16-race season? Would that be too random for the public, no matter how competitive the field might be for your readers?
Maybe the non-die-hard public needs a McLaren (Can-Am), UCLA (college basketball), New York Yankees (baseball), etc. to set a standard and raise the profile of a sport — just not, in my opinion, to the extent that Formula One has done the last couple of decades.
February 9, 2024 at 12:49 pm
Dynasties, on the whole, probably generate more interest than fatigue. What really generates interest, I think, is when dynasties occur in succession, especially with succeeding dynasties conquering the preceding ones rather than preceding dynasties simply dissolving, and when dynasties face and overcome interesting challengers.
Think of the NBA and the hot streak the league went on from the mid-80s to the late 90s. The Lakers rose in the west and Celtics in the east (having to dispatch of a wannabe dynasty in Philadelphia first), then the Celtics fell to the Pistons, the Lakers fell to the Trailblazers, the Pistons fell to the Bulls, the Trailblazers fell to the Rockets, the Rockets fell to the Jazz, and all challengers fell to the Bulls. And then the Bulls dynasty ended when the team simply dissolved and the NBA entered a post-Michael Jordan “malaise”. One marked with a couple dynasties of its own (the Lakers and Spurs), but neither of these dynasties arose by conquering the Bulls. The NBA has since found and lost another run of dynasties (Golden State and whatever east team LeBron James was on), with the resulting attention swings to match.
It is not unlike what we saw in the early 90s when so many of Indycar’s aging but brightest stars retired in a short period of time. The “dynasties” simply dissolved, and then the split reset the scene shortly afterward for the next generation of stars trying to build their legacies. But before that, the fact that Foyt, the Unsers, Mears, Johncock, Rutherford, and Andretti were a constant presence in the 500 as they traded wins bolstered their status greatly. Compare this to Helio Castroneves’ 4 wins, for example… not to diminish his accomplishments in these 4 wins, but show how field turnover makes it harder to build the kind of narrative the 60s-80s stars had.
In 2001, Castroneves raced against only 2 multi-time 500 winners, and none of the other drivers he raced against would go on to win multiple 500s. In 2002, there were again 2 multi-time winners, but with 1 driver who would go on to win multiple 500s. In 2009, there were no multi-time winners other than Helio, though 2 future ones (thus far) were in the field. And in 2021, these two figures stood at 2 current and (thus far) 0 future multi-time winners.
Compare that to just Rick Mears’ first 500 win, for example. There were 4 multi-time winners in that field, with another driver who would join that club. 3 of those multi-time winners were yet to add a 500 win to their totals too.
February 9, 2024 at 4:28 pm
i want the referees to have a “good game”.
February 10, 2024 at 10:41 am
I’m a big fan of dynasties, as long as I’m a fan of that team! No, in all honesty, I think dynasties are a good thing for sports. They can be the villain or the good guy in the white cowboy hat.
As a Bears fan I’m definitely an NFC guy, so it’s ‘Go 9ers!’ for me.
If you hang around Indycar long enough you get to see a new dynasty emerge every so often and I do enjoy that. All the flak Palou gets for his immaturity off the track is fine, but I like that there is a new ‘Scott Dixon’ in town(whether he’s got the black or white cowboy hat is up to you).