The Depth of Championships

The nature of the thing is elusive

If you follow the Premier League, then you know that Arsenal just finished atop the league table (standings) for the first time in over 20 years. In football (soccer) parlance: they won the league.

In somewhat anticlimactic fashion, Arsenal clinched the title the day after playing their penultimate game of the campaign on Monday, because second-place Manchester City tied Bournemouth on Tuesday, ensuring that Evil would not be able to catch Good on the league’s final day of the 38-game season this Saturday.

If you know anything about English football, you know that led to some pretty riotous celebrations in north London. It wasn’t a game day, but that didn’t prevent thousands upon thousands of people from flooding streets when the title was clinched on Tuesday night.

For my part here on the other side of the Atlantic, I had a couple of text threads with friends that were going crazy. Video clips were exchanged, “name some guys” was being played constantly, and we lapped up every montage of Big Moments the internet could compile as quickly as we could.

Soccer is different from the major North American sports in a lot of ways, and not all of them good. But one thing that remains unassailable about soccer fandom is its full-throatedness of support and dedication, from the memorized songs and chants about nearly every player on the roster to the solemn singing of the team’s anthem right before every match.

When you have all of that in the background, a championship gets echoed for years, with every song imbued with that memory of ultimate victory. It’s pretty darn special, really.

In any sport, if you’ve followed a team that’s won a championship, you’ve tasted this sort of euphoria.

Let’s look at Texas, for instance. Rangers fans got the unlooked-for glory of 2023, almost completely healing some very painful wounds from 2011. I’m not sure Arlington’s city streets are quite as conducive to parades as London’s, but that’s not the point. When your dudes win it all, you get to let loose for a bit and bask in the glory, from victorious trophy acceptances to the little digital fireworks Google adds to your team’s page for a day or two after the championship. Adolis García got a contract he struggled to live up to after that all-timer of a playoff run, and I still don’t think anyone begrudges him a dollar of it. Corey Seager’s struggles this season (well-articulated by Jamey) are all easier to sift through because of the plain fact that he’s done one of the most special things a baseball player can do.

Mavericks fans enjoyed this as well, back before the team was sold and subsequently ripped in half. A one-name star got the championship he so richly deserved back in 2011, and Bob is even re-living that run right now, if you haven’t seen it. Every time I walk by the statues outside AAC, I think about the Mavericks fans I knew in 2011 and what that title meant to them, what it still means to them. In a way, the Luka trade was made far worse because there was such a clear and recent template for why you don’t do what they did: the reward for sticking with a superstar, for hoping for that one special run to cement his legacy, is priceless. Turns out, priceless commodities fetch a lot less on the trade market when you let a Business Genius run the team.

F.C. Dallas (formerly the Burn) have yet to win a true championship, though they have a couple of U.S Open Cups. Having lived in Seattle during both of their MLS Cups, I can testify that it changes things, so here’s hoping Dallas gets to taste that one day.

The Cowboys? Well, they’re the Cowboys. For 30 years now, they’ve coupled the arrogance of the Yankees with the championship résumé of the Minnesota Wild. I already resent having to type their name, so let’s move on.