This is the worst place for a fan base to be

Good morning to everybody except the Norwegian men’s national soccer team, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.

I was planning on blogging a bit about video game music today, but please forgive me; the spirit is compelling me to BrazilPost one last time. And my argument today will come back to college sports, I promise.

Brazil is not a small country or one without massive achievements on the global scale. Brazilians have given the world much in a variety of fields, like architecture, education, cinema, music and fine cuisine.

But if you talk to a typical American — or, I suspect, a typical member of the Global North — and ask what they think of when they think of Brazil, they’re probably not going to mention the literary work of Machado de Assis or the masterpieces of Oscar Niemeyer … although they should, because those things are awesome. They’re gonna think about soccer.

And that makes sense! No country has been more successful at the men’s World Cup than Brazil. Not only has Brazil won the championship five times (more than any other team), it’s also finished in the top four another six times. It’s qualified for every single World Cup and advanced out of the group in every World Cup since 1966.

But beyond winning all the time, Brazil is associated with a particular kind of soccer: o jogo bonito, or the beautiful game. Brazilian soccer is not meant to be some park-the-bus, hope-to-score-on-the-counter Italian defensive bullshit, or whatever. It’s supposed to be played fluidly, with creativity and joy. It is not enough to simply win all the time. Brazil is also supposed to look cool while doing it.

But sadly, yesterday’s 2-1 loss to Norway (a country with a population roughly equal to South Carolina) was not an aberration. Brazil hasn’t won a World Cup since 2002 and hasn’t made a semifinal since the disaster in 2014. In five of the past six World Cups, the Brazilians have been eliminated before the semifinals by a much, much smaller European country.

And while Brazil was still expected to beat the likes of Belgium, Croatia and Norway, its failure to win a championship over the past few runs isn’t a total shock. A clear-eyed analysis of the past few rosters would tell you that while Brazil has constantly featured some of the best individual players in the world, the team hasn’t had one of the world’s best rosters in a minute.

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I’ve seen many folks compare the current state of the Brazilian national team to Nebraska football: a one-time elite program whose championship-contending days are far in the rearview mirror. I understand the comparison, but I don’t think it’s a perfect one.

Unlike Nebraska over the past decade, Brazil certainly hasn’t been bad. It’s still boasted some of the best individual players in the world, still qualified for every major tournament (and won games in them) and still captured the attention and hearts of fans, international broadcasters and #brands. But it’s not a five-stars-everywhere roster anymore. Honestly, it’s even been a minute since the team has won a meaningful big game at all.

To me, that feels more like USC football (or perhaps Kentucky men’s basketball) than Nebraska or Indiana men’s basketball: too good to completely blow up and ignore, but not nearly good enough to meet fan or team expectations. It’s the perfect scenario to create a toxic fan base, put unfair pressure on players and wind up with anger all around.

This is not a phenomenon unique to international soccer. It’s a huge issue in college sports as well … and I suspect we’ll find plenty of new examples as expenses climb in the post-House era.

The Brazilian Football Confederation probably doesn’t need to worry that much about Brazilians completely disengaging from their national men’s soccer team, given the outsized cultural importance of the sport and the team. But it may need to worry about accidentally creating a toxic feedback loop for the players and future coaches, if that doesn’t exist already.

In college sports, though, I think this can be a real worry. It’s one thing if your team has stunk for decades and you need to rebuild and reengage a fanbase that doesn’t really know what success looks like. That’s a very hard challenge. But it’s not the same as trying to sustain success at a program that does know what deep postseason success looks like but isn’t equipped to reach that level again.

I’ve actually talked about this with staffers associated with low-majors who made deep NCAA tournament runs, so long as I promised not to identify them. Everybody wants to make a miracle Sweet 16, but it’s possible to be a very good OVC-type school for 40 years, go on that run and then never sniff another Sweet 16. That’s just how college basketball works now — so if you have that one miracle run, how do you sell tickets and cultivate donors if they expect that sort of thing more often? Can you handle being held to an impossible standard?

I have no idea how to fix that problem. It’s not like an athletic director can step forward and say, “Yeah we’re never going to go 11-1 ever again, our budget is only $4 million, and Texas spends that on Whataburger" … or, "Our previous national titles were the product of a world that no longer exists and will probably never come back.” That’s a great way to become an ex-AD. If a Brazilian politician tried to suggest, “Hey, winning the group and a knockout game was still a great accomplishment, and hey, we did better than Germany!” … he’d be on a one-way flight to Orlando, because his political career would be toast.

But I do know that being attached to a team where expectations do not align with resources or reality sucks. I can handle watching this Cleveland Guardians baseball team because I know its payroll is smaller than Oregon’s NIL fund and nobody seriously expects Cleveland to do more than battle for the AL Central title.

But watching Ohio State, which has 50-plus blue-chip players and is expected to win every game by double digits, often isn’t very fun. And if Ohio State recruiting ever dips a bit and the team starts going 8-4 every year, the Shoe is gonna have, like, 13 fans in the building. There will be hearings at the statehouse. Presidents will be impeached.

I get how USC fans feel, or how Oklahoma fans felt for much of the last decade. You never truly bottom out … but boy, it isn’t fun at all.

But you know who is having fun? Norway. One fallen giant means a country with a population of South Carolina now gets to play for World Cup glory.

I’d be happy for them if I still weren't so daggone mad about it.

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I am planning on going on a family vacation later this month. Because I’m a big stupid idiot, our vacation is going to be a drive across the dang country, since my wife’s family is holding a reunion in Wyoming. So starting July 17, we’ll be driving through Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota and Wyoming … and then Utah, Colorado, Nebraska, etc. on the way back to Chicago.

I’ll probably blog a little bit during that window, but I’d sure love to run a bunch of freelance stories so I could actually close my laptop for good over an extended period of time. As a reminder, we’re happy to pay for freelance submissions here at Extra Points. If you’ve got a good story idea that fits within our coverage beats, send an email to our editor. You can reacher at Joan @ ExtraPointsMB dot com. Ideally, these pitches should not be crazy time-sensitive, since I want to hold them for my vacation.

Also, even if you aren’t a Michigan fan (but especially if you are), you should check out mgoblog today …