The cool crowd

Levelheadedness is one of sports' most underrated virtues

Shots of coaches on the sideline, reacting to the action on the field, are among the biggest wastes of time in television sports. If the cameras gave us half as many looks at coaches as they do, there would still be twice as many as we need. One of the few exceptions to this rule, however, is Notre Dame football coach Tyrone Willingham. I enjoy watching Willingham not because I have an affinity for the Fighting Irish (I don't) or because I get special satisfaction from seeing an African-American coach in a prime job (I do.) Willingham is fun to watch because he's just cool.

Remember cool? There was a time, not so long ago, when most of our biggest sports heroes were cool. Joe Montana was cool. Julius Erving was cool. Jim Brown, Gale Sayers, Walt Frazier -- all cooler than a popsicle on a summer day. They were cool because they were so in control of their emotions that they made us wonder if they actually had any. Their faces were stoic in even the most pressure-packed situations. They looked completely confident that they would succeed, completely unsurprised when they did, and completely unfazed on those rare occasions when they didn't.

Willingham is cool the way great players and coaches used to be cool. He's cool the way Tom Landry used to be cool. Notre Dame was enmeshed in a tense, nip-and-tuck struggle with Michigan on Saturday, and every time the cameras found Willingham, regardless of whether his team had just made a big play or a big blunder, regardless of the crowd noise and sideline chaos around him, he looked about as excited as a man picking up his dry cleaning. Every now and then he'd get really demonstrative and place his index finger against his mustache.

We used to love that kind of cool. It used to be one of the most highly regarded traits in sports. But now everyone wants emotion, and the more the better. We don't care what the feelings are, as long as they're out there in plain sight. We don't want Landry's stone face, we want Jon Gruden to contort his face like the guy on those "bitter beer" commercials. We don't want Dr. J throwing down a dunk and casually loping back down the court as if he'd just tossed a wad of gum in a wastebasket, we want Vince Carter stopping for a post-dunk snarl into the camera even if he does it while his man is scoring at the other end. Instead of applauding coolness, we criticize lack of emotion. We assume the coach who doesn't throw down a clipboard or harass a ref just isn't motivating his team properly, that the player who doesn't get in his teammates' faces or chest-bump somebody after a big play just isn't competitive enough. There's nothing wrong with honest emotion, but every now and then we need to be reminded of the beauty of cool. If Cleveland Browns linebacker Dwayne Rudd had been cool, for instance, he wouldn't have gotten that ridiculous penalty for ripping off his helmet, a call that ended up costing his team a game.

There still is, thankfully, some cool left in sports, and Willingham doesn't own all of it. Cool transcends sport, gender, race and nationality. Derek Jeter is cool. John Stockton is cool. Mia Hamm is cool. Ichiro is cool. Tim Duncan is cool. Michael Jordan was, is, and will always be cool. Pat Riley was cool when he was with the Lakers, but he gets less cool every year. Joe Torre and Wayne Gretzky would both be cool if they didn't get all teary-eyed from time to time. Bill Belichick used to seem antisocial, but now that the Patriots are Super Bowl champs, he's cool.

Not everyone can be cool, nor should they try. Sammy Sosa will never be cool, nor will Rasheed Wallace, John Daly or Larry Bowa. But maybe it's for the best that cool is becoming increasingly rare. If it were more common, it just wouldn't be cool.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Phil Taylor writes about a Hot Button issue every Monday on CNNSI.com.

 

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