Wanted: A Team of Rivals

Brock Mosley finished 2^nd last week in the Elite Series event at Lake Chickamauga. It was the fifth runner-up finish of his career, but perhaps even more painful was the fact that three of those near-misses have come when he’s seen Jason Christie hoist the trophy.

Obviously, Christie is one of a handful of anglers competing in that rare air – eight BASS wins, over $1.7 million in BASS winnings over a million in FLW winnings – and lots of unfinished business on the lengthy runway ahead of him. That doesn’t take anything away from Mosley, who in recent years has been a contender for the Angler of the Year trophy, ultimately falling short a handful of times. He’s younger than Christie, and will no doubt experience his day in the sun, but it has to be frustrating.

Of course, just asking “what if” (as in, “What if Jason Christie hadn’t fished last week?”) won’t get him anywhere. First of all, the truth is that Christie of course was fishing. Furthermore, had he not been there it could have changed the dynamic of the tournament in other ways. Perhaps someone else would’ve stumbled onto those fish. Perhaps Mosley, who was leading after Day Three, would have made altogether different choices on Day Four and fell even further. In baseball, I once heard it referred to as “the fallacy of the missing hit.” When someone gets caught stealing and then the next two hitters get on base, we wonder what would have happened had the first guy not gotten caught, when the truth is that had things progressed that way the other outcomes may have differed. Maybe the pitcher would have pitched the subsequent batters differently or would have been replaced by a reliever, with different outcomes.

I’m sure that Mosley, who had his smallest catch of the week on Sunday, is wondering what he could have done differently, when in reality he should be at least semi-thrilled that the process is more or less working for him. Nibble around the edges long enough and eventually, everything will fall into place.

As a pundit, I’m a bit saddened that Christie vs. Mosley is unlikely to develop into a full-fledged rivalry. That’s not because I don’t expect both of them to make more top tens – surely I do – but rather because they’re both pretty mild-mannered and non-demonstrative. You can’t force a rivalry onto them, but our sport is so much better when we have one. Any sport is, really. Think about Magic vs. Larry Bird. Or Ali vs. Frazier. The Yankees versus the Red Sox. Sports are best when we divide the fan base up into rooting camps. For fishing to be at its best, those rooting interests need to be consistent and well-developed.

There have of course been rivalries before. One of the early ones was Roland Martin vs. Rick Clunn, not so much in terms of aggression between the two, but rather as archetypes for the debate over which was more important: AOY or Classics? The best rivalries, though, were KVD vs. the world in the late aughts through the early 2010s. Others, like Skeet and Ike, had distinct moments in the limelight, but more often they were fighting to topple VanDam. Even when they did so, they then had to fight tooth and nail to remain at the top of the hill. Many fishing fans still consider Skeet’s loss of the AOY title as the result of a bizarre (but clearly-outlined) post-season scoring system to be a grave injustice – but they remember it, in a way that they may not similarly recall the 2012 or 2015 seasons.

BASS has done a great job of allowing the new and returning crop of anglers to build their own personas. In many cases, that’s just a work in progress, but the platform is there. But you can’t force someone to be someone they’re not, and you can’t create a rivalry where none naturally exists. We don’t get to choose our champions in the same way a professional wrestling league preordains the heels. We can only hope that they develop organically. Big bass, big stage, and big dreams are best when there are not only big personalities, but also the occasional or frequent clashing of those personalities.