Being identified as the ‘Next Big Thing’ in sports can be both a blessing and a curse
No one had to explain it to Rory McIlroy — he understood the significance of the moment.
The 22-year-old from Northern Ireland had just won the U.S. Open, capturing his first major, and already his name was being mentioned in the same breath as Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus.
McIlroy had become the Next Big Thing.
“When you win a major quite early in your career, everyone is going to draw comparisons,” he told reporters. “It’s natural.”
Modern sport thrives on star power, feeding off those rarified athletes who come along once a generation or so, talented and successful enough to become icons.
Crowds cheer for them. Corporate sponsors hire them to pitch cars and shaving cream. And the moment a superstar — such as Woods — falters, the search begins for his replacement.
“Sport is all about striving for excellence,” said Jay Coakley, a sociologist and author of “Sport in Society: Issues and Controversies.” “So people are looking for athletes who epitomize that.”
As McIlroy heads into the British Open this week, he has asked fans and the media to take a deep breath, characterizing the hype as “only people saying these things.”
His career has entered perilous territory. The road to glory is strewn with the wreckage of promising young athletes who have fallen short of expectations.
Painful fate
Southern California has seen this dynamic up close.
In the late 1980s, Harold Miner came off the Inglewood playgrounds with the nickname “Baby Jordan,” a tribute to his explosiveness around the basket. His star continued to shine at USC, prompting the Miami Heat to select him in the first round of the 1992 NBA draft.
Miner won the NBA’s dunk contest twice in his first three seasons but when a balky knee robbed him of his greatest asset, he possessed neither the jump shot nor the defensive skills to compensate.
His career ended after four seasons and he spent years dealing with the letdown.
“I guess I feel like I’m over it now,” he said in a recent interview with The Times. “I’ve kind of purged my system and come to the point of accepting what happened with my career, that I wasn’t able to live up to my own personal expectations.”
Injury ranks among the most common pitfalls for rising stars.
Sam Bowie, picked by the Portland Trail Blazers before the Chicago Bulls took Michael Jordan in the 1984 NBA draft, struggled through a mediocre career on sore legs. Jay Williams, the Duke guard drafted to save the Bulls long before Derrick Rose came along, suffered massive injuries in a 2003 motorcycle accident.
A year later, another talented young guard hit Southern California amid whispers that he could be the next Magic Johnson.
Built long and slender, Shaun Livingston helped lead the Clippers to the Western Conference semifinals in 2005-06, his second season in the league. But then came a freak knee injury on a missed layup.
Livingston is still in the league, spending last season as a reserve for the Charlotte Bobcats, but no one compares him to Magic anymore. As he told a reporter: “You do a lot of soul-searching.”
False promise
Coming out of Notre Dame, it made sense that Rick Mirer evoked memories of a previous Fighting Irish quarterback.
None other than the late Bill Walsh looked at Mirer and saw the mobility of Joe Montana with better size.
The Seattle Seahawks picked Mirer second in the 1993 NFL draft and he rewarded them by completing 56% of his passes as the AFC rookie of the year. Then something went wrong.
With each new season, Mirer looked increasingly uneasy in the pocket, making bad decisions. Seattle traded him in 1997, beginning an odyssey that saw Mirer play for four teams in the final years of his career. Near the end, Walsh struggled to comprehend how he and so many others had been wrong.
“It’s confounding to me that he hasn’t matured into an NFL quarterback,” the former coach said.
No injury was to blame — the talents that Mirer exhibited in college simply did not translate to the NFL.
Add his name to a list that includes former quarterbacks Ryan Leaf, JaMarcus Russell and Drew Henson, who was dubbed the “Golden Boy” by Sports Illustrated but ended up a bust in pro football and major league baseball.
Freddy Adu suffered a similar fate in soccer, turning professional at 14, touted as an American-born superstar. Adu is now trying to resurrect his career after years of bouncing around Major League Soccer and European leagues.
“It was just a case of over-hyping,” said Roger Allaway, author of “The Encyclopedia of American Soccer History.” “He was dominating kids his own age. But once he got in against adults, it didn’t happen.”
In their hunger for the next superstar, fans and the media — even coaches — can expect too much.
“These icons just don’t come along that often,” said Ray LeBov, executive director of the Assn. for Professional Basketball Research. “As much as you’d like to find the next one . . . it’s just not realistic.”
Not enough
Most ballplayers would kill for Bobby Murcer’s career.
Seventeen years in the majors, nearly all of them playing for the New York Yankees. A .277 lifetime batting average and more than 1,800 hits.
But in some eyes that wasn’t good enough. Murcer was supposed to be the next Mickey Mantle, a promising outfielder and fellow Oklahoman who arrived in New York just as Mantle’s career was ending.
Such is the plight of the Next Big Thing. For those who avoid injury and possess the talent to stick in the majors, there remains a third possibility for failure.
They can fail to be great.
Whereas Murcer met this challenge with good humor — “I was too young and too dumb to realize,” he once said — it never felt comfortable on Eric Lindros.
The hockey world expected Lindros to replace “The Great One,” Wayne Gretzky. He was still a teenager when people started calling him “The Next One.”
“I don’t know who started it,” he once told ESPN magazine. “I try not to get too excited about things I can’t control.”
Lindros spent 13 seasons in the NHL and amassed Hall of Fame numbers. But he was no Gretzky. Critics point out that he never led a team to the Stanley Cup, never enjoyed one of those career-defining moments.
The same shortcoming has marked the tennis career of Andy Roddick. His 30 singles titles include only one major, a victory at the 2003 U.S. Open when he was 21. Since then, Roddick has lost four times in Grand Slam finals.
That, by itself, has kept him from taking his place in a royal American lineage that traces back through Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras, John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors.
“If you ask any tennis player what their goals are, it’s not winning Peoria,” longtime tennis correspondent Steve Flink said. “It’s winning a Grand Slam.”
Long road
Early last month, McIlroy got the opportunity to speak with Nicklaus, who gave him some advice: “You’ve got to embrace the pressure.”
The expectations will only grow heavier when the British Open commences Thursday at Royal St. George’s, where McIlroy will be a popular choice to win.
He has the swing and the boyish charisma to charm fans. But McIlroy knows that he has a long way to go before making good on all the hype.
And a lot can go wrong between here and there.
“It’s nice that people say that he could be this or he could be that or he could win 20 major championships,” McIlroy said. “But at the end of the day, I’ve won one.”
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