“Winning is a great deodorant.” was a pet phrase of John Madden’s for many years. Though always loathe to credit himself for its origination, he was happy to repeat it to the extent that you could almost anticipate it’s usage. Most often he used it to describe internally conflicted or underachieving teams, as if it were his own neo-Buddhist sporting meditation.
In Madden’s hands the phrase was largely diagnostic, but sometimes it proved itself prophetic. The two occasions that I most clearly recall this being the case involved the 2001-02 St. Louis Rams, and the 2002-03 Oakland Raiders, both teams that reached the Super Bowl in spite of various strategic and chemistry-related issues, and whom were promptly exposed by more united forces on one of the sporting world’s largest stages.