ESPN columnist Bill Simmons insists that when a team wins a world championship in their respective sport, they should be granted a five-year grace period from any criticism from fans. 

The team wins, it provides some memorable moments for you and your friends and all of your irrational behavior as a fan up to that point becomes completely justified.  As a trade off, you should be able to absolve them of any missteps they should make in the near future.  Here’s Simmons’ take:

After your team wins a championship, they immediately get a five-year grace period: You can't complain about anything that happens with your team (trades, draft picks, salary-cap cuts, coaching moves) for five years. There are no exceptions. For instance, the Pats could finish 0-80 over the next five years and I wouldn't say a peep. That's just the way it is. You win the Super Bowl, you go on cruise control for five years. Everything else is gravy.

Seems reasonable right? 

Well, it isn’t.  The people who enjoy the championship the most are the die-hard fans that have hung on through the years when Tripp Cromer was the team’s shortstop so that they could properly appreciate the moment when they finally did win it all.  Such dedication serves as a boot camp to prepare you to become a fan at all costs.  Once you are, there’s really no turning back. 

No matter whether the five-year grace period makes sense in your head, there’s no way you can just turn off your fanatical emotions towards the team.  It just doesn’t work that way. 

The St. Louis Cardinals are a perfect example. 

Throughout my career as a fan, they’ve always seemed to follow up their most successful runs with disastrous encores –

1985 they lose the World Series in 7 games --> 1986 they stumble out of the gates and finish 28 games back of their archrival Mets

1987 they lose the World Series in 7 games --> 1988 they finish 5th in the division , even behind the Cubs

1996 they come within a game of reaching their first World Series in a decade --> 1997 they finish 4th in the NL Central

So along comes 2006, when they come out of nowhere to actually secure the World Series that had alluded them for 24 years – it’s grace period time, right?  Not exactly. 

Here’s a trip through the real grace period…

DEFCON 5
Team wins the World Series and the city as a whole is like a real live version of The Real World: Reunited, with people passing out in the streets with bottles of champagne nestled under their arms, drunken buffoons climbing on the Stan Musial statue, Chris Duncan humping the World Series Trophy...just like everyone pictured it. 

Over a million show up downtown for the parade two days later on one of the most beautiful October days you’ll ever see.  DVD’s and various World Series memorabilia are hitting the stores, giving you an easy Christmas gift for any Cardinals fans in your family (and vice versa of course). 

They could have told us Billy Bob Thornton was narrating the World Series DVD and we still would have bought it just so that whenever we wanted, we could cue up that Adam Wainwright curveball to Beltran that ended the NLCS (wait, Billy Bob really did narrate it? I thought I was just dreaming that.)

DEFCON 5 is for peace time, and there is no more peaceful moment as a sports fan than when you see the Sports Illustrated commercial on TV and your team is the one who is featured on the World Series book that is free for all new subscriptions.  That means life is good.

DEFCON 4
The Hot Stove season starts up and the team is taking some hits.  Gone are a few of the key pieces to last year’s squad, namely a few members of the starting rotation.  It’s alright though, Marquis was a bum, Suppan got overpaid and Weaver was a flash in the pan, right?  No way the team can’t replace those guys.  Besides, any day now they’ll sign Jason Schmidt. 

As the weeks go by, you start to watch as all of the big name free agents are inked to other teams.  Suddenly you realize that the signing of Kip Wells was the free agent contract of the offseason.  But, hey, this is a World Series winning team.  They were better than everyone else, how much help do they really need?

Things are okay, you’ve still got that final strike Tivo’d and marked as “do not delete” so you can watch it at a moment’s notice. 

DEFCON 3
Spring training starts and you realize that the team was actually serious about the whole “Braden Looper can be a starter” thing.  After a winter full of chest thumping and strategically wearing your “World Champions 2006” shirt around your friends/Royals supporters, you concede that you’re a little nervous about the upcoming season. 

A couple other teams in the division have improved, the “experts” are saying that your team has lost a step and is no longer favored to win the division they’ve dominated over the past three years.  Maybe just a tad bit of doubt is in the air.  Ah, what the hell do experts know anyway?  John Kruk is considered an expert for christ’s sake. 

Even when the manager gets a DUI after falling asleep at a stoplight with the car running, you remain stoic.  Surely that won’t serve as a distraction to a veteran team like this.

DEFCON 2
The season kicks off with a sweep at the hands of the Mets.  Within a few weeks, the entire offense is struggling, including Albert Pujols and to make matters worse, Chris Carpenter, the only known quantity in the rotation just called in sick with an elbow problem.  Kip Wells can’t win a game, Jim Edmonds can’t hit the ball out of the infield and the Brewers have bolted out to a hot start, threatening to run away with this thing.  Oh yeah, and the long-relief man just died in a late night car accident that caused all sorts of local turmoil over his condition. 

In mid-May, the Tigers take three in a row, putting the Cardinals nine games under .500 and leaving them 1-8 against the teams they beat in the playoffs last October.  It’s not even a month into the season, doubt has officially been ushered into the mind and pulling up next to it is its old friend, panic. 

Maybe they did blow it this offseason…that Carpenter extension was a waste of money…the World Series was a fluke…how the hell could I have not realized that a rotation with Kip Wells and Braden Looper in it was going to be horrible…Bill DeWitt is probably rolling around in all that World Series money like Demi Moore in Indecent Proposal.   We, the fans, have been snowed. 

DEFCON 1
DEFCON 1 is defined as a state of maximum readiness - exactly where most Cardinals fans currently reside.  Poised and ready to write our team off, just waiting for that inevitable moment that is going to convince us that all hope is lost.  Sure the NL Central is pathetic enough to keep them in the race for the time being, but the team is consistently 7-8 games below .500 and for the love of God their starting rotation features Brad Thompson and Todd Wellemeyer, a pitcher who was released by the Royals. 

Braden Looper not only stuck in the rotation, he’s arguably the freaking ace of the pitching staff.  Four of the starters were relievers last season.  The one who was a starter?  Kip Wells, easily the worst of the bunch.  Tony LaRussa is holding a grudge against pitcher Anthony Reyes who is back in the minors, their lone free agent hitter, Adam Kennedy, is a platoon player at this point and not only did they just sign Troy Percival off the street, but people are actually eagerly anticipating his arrival on the big club.  That’s quite a state-of-the-union. 

It's only June…we’re supposed to give them time.  But they have the same amount of wins as the freaking Washington Nationals.  Put them in the AL East and they’re already over ten out and we’re talking about which players to dump.

And those Royals that were so easy to mock? They just beat the Cardinals 8-1.

The grace period has officially left the building.  We’re right back to where we started. 

Except now I have a DVD narrated by Billy Bob Thornton. 

JSF Weekly is written by Josh Bacott.  He wishes he could have humped the World Series trophy.  E-mail him at josh@joesportsfan.com