Diagnosing cause behind outbreak of Jimmie Fatigue

The most dominant athlete on the planet is also the most universally admired. People go to golf tournaments not just hoping, but expecting to see Tiger Woods win, and come away disappointed with anything less. When Woods is in contention on Sunday, ratings go through the stratosphere. Events that don't include the world's No. 1 player have an empty, incomplete feel.

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For all that's made of Woods' multicultural background, no small ingredient in his popularity, his fundamental allure rests in the way he wins -- how he intimidates and devours opponents, how he prepares with an unrivaled work ethic, his red shirts and fist pumps and cuss words and scowls.

He's the world's biggest sports star, and he got that way through a combination of factors that all revolve around his ability to win. And people eat it up, too. He's won 71 tournaments, 14 majors, and $93 million during the course of his career, and you never hear of fans getting tired of watching Tiger Woods. If that red shirt is in the hunt on Sundays, droves of people are going to tune in. They're watching a little history in the making, one of the best ever at his craft, and they well know it.

It's not an unfamiliar scene. Even beleaguered fans of the Cleveland Cavaliers had to marvel at the tongue wag and the picture-perfect follow-through and the soaring greatness that was Michael Jordan, a basketball player who inspired genuine awe in all who saw him, even when the Bulls were up by 30.

Through a seeming immunity to pain and an insurmountable force of will, Lance Armstrong turned a niche cycling event held half a world away into a mainstay on the front pages of American sports sections for seven years, and transformed the war on cancer into a yellow-clad phenomenon in the process.

Until he was too old to do it anymore, no one grew tired of watching M.J. throw down a one-handed slam. No one grew weary of watching Armstrong ascend an Alp.

And yet, with six races still remaining in the Chase for the Sprint Cup, people are already e-mailing to complain about how tired they are of watching Jimmie Johnson win. Now, Johnson is not his sport's Tiger, not his sport's Jordan, not his sport's Armstrong -- yet. But the potential is clearly there, given that he's won three consecutive championships in NASCAR's premier series, and is on the cusp of claiming an unprecedented, and somewhat unthinkable, fourth in a row.

People were agog when Woods began to accumulate major after major, when Jordan began to win title after title, when Armstrong began to collect Tour after Tour. Bored? Hardly. People were excited. They wanted to see them win more and more, see how far they could go. There was an overarching sense that people were witnessing something very special, something they were very fortunate to see.

With Johnson, though, there seems to be a collective yawn. Call it Jimmie Fatigue, that wearying sense of predestination that makes people want to hurry up and get to next year's Daytona 500. No question, Johnson has plenty of fans and neutral admirers who appreciate what he's done, and recognize what he might do, and know they're watching a once-in-a-generation kind of driver who may very well go down as one of the two or three best to ever strap on a helmet.

But there are also a lot of people who have been beaten down by seeing that blue and silver No. 48 car up front week after week, who have an inkling of what the next month might be like, and would just assume hand him the big trophy right now. Maybe that's why television ratings have been down for virtually the entire Chase. (Continued)