“Everything dies, baby, that’s a fact. But maybe everything that dies, someday comes back.”
There were five or so CDs that we would listen to over and over again in my dad’s 1998 Toyota 4Runner — among them Jimmy Buffett’s Banana Wind, Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers’ Glassjaw Boxer and Dire Straits’ Money for Nothing. But the disc that may have gotten the most run on those mid-aughts errand trips and basketball practice commutes was The Rising by Bruce Springsteen.
People assume I got my love of Pearl Jam from my parents. They’re of the age that it would have made sense, especially my mom, who was in college when their albums were hitting the top of the Billboard charts. While I fell in love with Eddie Vedder and company myself, my parents passed down three main musical interests: Buffett (who is probably my family’s patron saint), local folk group Eddie From Ohio, and Bruce.
I’m lucky to have seen each of the first two artists with my parents multiple times. But I hadn’t seen Bruce. And, despite a couple efforts that never really took off, I hadn’t dived into his discography in the way that I do with my own favorite artists. Of course, I knew the hits — “Born to Run,” “Dancing in the Dark,” “Born in the USA” — and the songs my parents had bought on iTunes back in the day had worked into my rotation as well — like “Rosalita” and my mom’s favorite song, “Thunder Road.”
I’m a deadline-oriented person, as much as I try to drop that habit, so a concert date often spurs me into action. As the procrastinator I am, I attempted to cram 21 studio albums into the five-day workweek before the show.
Didn’t quite work. I think I got through Born in the USA.
But it was the penultimate record, Nebraska, that stuck with me. As the legend goes, Springsteen recorded demos on a Tascam 4-Track, intending to bring them in to the E Street Band. But when the full band versions didn’t quite work, Springsteen and producer Jon Landau decided to release the demos themselves as an album.
The American Narrative over the last decade or so has been decay. No matter what side you’re on, you’re told that things aren’t as good as they once were. The Right yearns openly for an idealized version of the 1950s. Liberals miss the time before Trump when they didn’t have to care as much about politics. Leftists will tell you that late-stage capitalism is accelerating this country’s decline.
But decay is a theme of humanity, not just the 3rd decade of the 21st century. And for as long as there has been decay and decline, there have been people fighting for what they love. And there has been rebirth.
Atlantic City became a widely popular resort almost as soon as passenger train service began in the 1850s. In its 1920s heyday, it was second to only Broadway as an entertainment destination. But the city declined through the 1940s and ’50s. The boardwalk was mostly destroyed by a hurricane in 1946, and the rise of the suburbs accelerated the urban decay. Tourists stayed away. A resort town without any vacationers doesn’t work.
So Atlantic City turned to gambling. In 1976, a referendum passed in New Jersey legalizing casino games in the city, a last-ditch effort to fight against the city’s decline.
And it… kind of worked. Adjusted for inflation, Atlantic City’s tax revenue increased by more than 200% by the turn of the millennium. The city drew millions more visitors per year. And development projects helped revitalize a squalid downtown.
But casino profits – and therefore tax revenue – has plateaued. New development has slowed. And its reputation as a seedy, beat-up place is still intact.
A reasonably similar story could be told about college basketball. Its former place at the top of the sports ecosystem is a distant memory, March notwithstanding. The rise of the NBA as a personality-based entertainment product has probably had something to do with is, as has football’s continued dominance.
One could paint college basketball’s embrace of gambling as a similar deal with the devil. But honestly, it hasn’t produced anywhere close to the positive impact to be able to make that case. And to be fair to the sport’s power brokers, college basketball, sports betting was more put upon it than a strategic choice.
While March is still March, for those of us who care about the sport 365 days a year, it can feel like something is slipping away from us. But maybe everything that dies someday comes back.
Springsteen sings the chorus to “Atlantic City” matter-of-factly, and it doesn’t take a doctorate-level English degree to examine the piece.
“Everything dies, baby, that’s a fact.”
It’s a truth about the law of entropy and time’s ultimate decay.
“But maybe everything that dies someday comes back.”
It’s a statement of hope and of faith.
The juxtaposition of the two is an extremely simple summation of the human condition.
William & Mary men’s basketball has, uh, not been so hot lately. After an incredible first campaign on the back of one of the greatest individual seasons in Tribe history by Nathan Knight, Dane Fischer’s next four teams each finished sub-300 in KenPom. That hadn’t happened even once going back to 1997, the beginning of KenPom’s database. (This isn’t helped by the CAA’s decline in stature, but still.)
Declining attendance and attention and enthusiasm all pointed to the fact that it was time for a change. The decay of what had been built during Tony Shaver’s time as the head coach was tough to watch. It was clear William & Mary had to make a change; to delay the inevitable would be a disservice to those of us still invested in the program.
We’ve done all we can do. Now we hope that someday, W&M men’s basketball will come all the way back.
Speaking of things that have died… the 2023-24 season was not a good one for No Bid Nation. We basically fell off the map. I could lay out the reasons – tech issues, a new job, general apathy about W&M men’s basketball, some mixture of all of the above – but things just didn’t work out for us to really do anything.
To those of y’all who noticed: Thanks, I guess. And sorry.
To any of y’all who didn’t: That’s fine. We’re good. We mostly do this for ourselves, anyway.
(I don’t know why I talk about No Bid Nation in the second person. At this point, it’s just my alias.)
But with some hardware upgrades, a more settled employment situation, and a desire to keep sportswriting in one way or another, we’re back this year. I’m not going to make any grand pronouncements about how much, or the seriousness level, but there will indeed be posts here on my website about Tribe men’s and women’s basketball.
So Bruce, you might be right. Maybe everything that dies does someday come back. It’s true for me. And hopefully it’s true for the Tribe.
Hang in there. Life has peaks and valleys, and sometimes, in the fog, it’s hard to tell one from the other. But persistence and tenacity are the only way to make your way through. Good stuff on Bruce and you should go see a concert before it’s too late….