Sisyphus

It is once again time to push a boulder up a hill.

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Sisyphus was a cunning man. The founder and king of Corinth had a fear of death, but figured out a way to trick Hades, the Greek god of death, not once but twice, thus avoiding his fate. Sisyphus was able to live out his days in happiness, but eventually, his cunning ways caught up to him. Upon his third death, Zeus himself intervened and brought Sisyphus to Hades personally and came up with his fate. As Homer would later describe in the Odyssey:

Then I witnessed the torture of Sisyphus, as he wrestled with a huge rock with both hands. Bracing himself and thrusting with hands and feet he pushed the boulder uphill to the top. But every time, as he was about to send it toppling over the crest, its sheer weight turned it back, and once again towards the plain the pitiless rock rolled down. So once more he had to wrestle with the thing and push it up, while the sweat poured from his limbs and the dust rose high above his head.

So was Sisyphus’s fate, to push a boulder up a hill every day, only for it to roll back to the bottom before he could reach the top. It was not the worst punishment handed out by the Greek gods (for my money that title goes to Prometheus, who would have his liver eaten by an eagle only to have it regrow each night), but it did represent an endless cycle of unfulfilled goals.

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As we sit here, at the dawn of a new season of UCLA football, I thought about Sisyphus, because he is a pretty good metaphor for this program in its current state.

Ever since that dreary Miami day in December of 1998, the Bruins have been chasing a high that will never come to them. The program is on its fourth new coach since that day, and is staring down the barrel of moving on for the fifth time. None of the coaches since Bob Toledo have created anything lasting with the program; Toledo himself did not prove adept at maintaining the program following that 1998 season, and would be fired four years later.

With every new hire, the cycle of hope begins again. Chip Kelly signaled that UCLA was willing to go all-in on football. Jim Mora represented UCLA wanting to implement a tougher, no-nonsense brand. Rick Neuheisel would not shrink from Southern Cal, but would go to war with them. Karl Dorrell….well he was really nice, and after Toledo that’s what fans wanted, right?

With each new hire, UCLA fans approach the boulder. They start walking it up the hill, as early wins over name programs embolden the fanbase and make them dream of reaching the top of the hill. And then, inevitably, the hill gets slick, and the boulder starts to roll backwards until UCLA is forced to fire their coach and prepare for a new journey up the hill. An endless cycle that has yet to produce any signs of breaking.

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Everyone who writes has someone that they are trying to emulate. Ancient writers and orators constantly tried to measure themselves against the works of Homer. My brother never goes anywhere without a Kurt Vonnegut book. Stephen Sondheim created a new wave of musicals almost single-handedly. An entire generation of sportswriters got into the business thanks to the works of Hunter S. Thompson. The list goes on.

For myself, I’ve always been trying to emulate Spencer Hall. Spencer was our former editor-in-chief at SB Nation and creator of the internet-beloved Every Day Should Be Saturday. His writing effortlessly fluctuates between irreverently goofy and hauntingly beautiful. Whenever Spencer publishes something, you stop what you’re doing and go read it. What also drew me to Spencer is how normal he is; you’d watch him do a guest spot on Scott Van Pelt’s Sportscenter utterly convinced he had just rolled out of his mountain cabin, and then the next minute he’s got SVP rolling while howling about the latest happenings in wrestling.

Every year, Spencer and his longtime collaborator Holly Anderson put out their Openers, a thought-provoking piece meditating on some small piece of college football. You can read most of them here, and I highly recommend it. This week, the pair released this season’s two-part Opener on their website Channel Six. Again, highly recommended.

(A quick sidebar: you might have noticed that I said their website. Spencer no longer works for Vox Media, having been let go at the start of the pandemic. He joined the long list of people writing about sports that Vox failed to make money on. You’re on this website because Vox could not figure out how to pay the California writers that were making them thousands of dollars for pennies on the dollar. Just this week, Vox let go of another wave of team sites across the network. I tell you all this not to make you feel sorry for Spencer - he has his own website and a weekly show at ESPN now - but more to point out that Vox continues to fail at making money off of sports, which should be the easiest thing in the world.)

Spencer’s writing is my own personal boulder. Every time I sit down to write an article, I find myself staring at the hill ahead of me. Imposter Syndrome is real, and every time I read something that Spencer writes, I again find myself questioning why I even bother trying to write when I will never put out something as good as him. Then, once I finally get past the feeling of being a fraud, I start to push that boulder forward.

I don’t think I will ever get that boulder fully up the hill, but each time I get a little closer, and that next time the push will be a little easier. Sometimes, that’s good enough.

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In 1942 French philosopher Albert Camus wrote an essay titled The Myth of Sisyphus. In it, Camus introduces the philosophical concept of the absurd; it is the idea that the world lacks in meaning and a higher purpose, and cannot be perfectly explained through reason. Absurdism differs from nihilism in a key way - where nihilists believe that life is meaningless, absurdists believe that meaning can still be derived from a meaningless world and that men should live their lives in defiance of the world around them.

The last part of Camus’s essay focuses on Sisyphus himself. Camus speculates on the inner thoughts of Sisyphus as he pushes the boulder each day, and how he must feel when the boulder inevitably rolls back down the hill to its starting point. Camus believed that Sisyphus understood the futility of his task, and that that understanding allowed him to transcend his situation and move towards acceptance. As Camus states in the final lines, “The struggle itself ... is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

College sports fandom is itself a tremendous lesson in the absurd. There is no rational reason why so many of are willing to tie our happiness to the performance of a host of 18-22 year olds, and yet every Saturday in the fall we go through our gameday rituals, hoping that this year will be different and we will experience joy. It never truly sticks - even fans of perennial juggernauts like Alabama recognize that they will not win a championship every season - but the chance to sit atop the hill for just a moment is enough to make the process worth it.

UCLA fans are in the middle of another push up the hill. I’ve been on the record on my skepticism regarding Chip Kelly’s long-term future as the head of the UCLA program, but at the moment he has the program moving forward. Maybe that should be enough for now. Just like Sisyphus surely realized after all those centuries, it is the struggle to be better that UCLA fans should take pleasure in. After all, the day will come when Kelly is no longer in charge, and the Bruins will again find themselves at the bottom of the hill with the trusty boulder by their side.

Welcome to the start of the season. Time to start pushing.

Go Bruins.