What happened to "Just Win Baby?"

By Ben Chew

Well, I’ve noticed something recently in pro sports that has been getting on my nerves lately and that thing is the mention of winning with the right guys or winning with hometown guys.

Obviously this stems from when Brady Quinn was given the helm for the Browns and the mention that he was a local kid from Dublin, Ohio. Some fans even took it to the extreme that if they won a Super Bowl with Brady Quinn and since he is a local product, he knows the issues that face the Browns.

You wonder why this city hasn’t won a title in over thirty years. This isn’t completely indicative of only Cleveland, but there has suddenly been a charge of fans who want to win with local talent. Sure, there have been some NFL teams that have had recent success with home-grown talent. (The Tampa Bay Buccaneers come to mind when they drafted Derrick Brooks, Warrick Dunn, and Warren Sapp -- all of those players are from colleges in Florida.)

However, why should anyone care about the personality of a player or where they grew up? To be honest, it’s gotten to the point where fans would rather win with style points instead of points on the scoreboard. This to me is sad with a capital S. Isn’t winning a title the most important part in the end?

Most of us figure out in life that we cannot choose our destiny and in professional sports it is usually the same. However, I am not stating that we should turn a blind eye to players' personal lives or problems, but in the end, production on the field is more important than anything else. I personally could care less if half the team is womanizing Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Lindsay Lohan, but if they get me a title, that’s good enough for me. I’d rather have a team full of convicts with five titles than a team full of priests with none.

In the end, just like the old Raiders motto, “Just Win Baby” is really in the end all that should matter in professional sports.