"They've got a name for the winners in the world, I want a name when I lose, They call Alabama the Crimson Tide, Call me Deacon Blues."
Donald Fagen wrote those lyrics back in 1977, for a song he titled "Deacon Blues" on Steely Dan's sixth album, Aja.
That happened to be the same year that Alabama's football team went 11-1 under Bear Bryant and Wake Forest's went 1-10 under Chuck Mills.
Anyone wanting to connect the dots might deduce that Fagen was a college-football fan and that the lyrics were a reference to the Alabama and Wake Forest programs, the starkest contrasts of winners and losers to be found at the time.
And anyone connecting the dots that way might be interested to hear what Fagen thinks about those lyrics 30 years later, with Wake Forest heading to the Orange Bowl as the most successful team in school history.
But disregard the dots.
And forget about what Fagen thinks, because Fagen isn't saying.
Fagen doesn't grant interview requests when he's not promoting a tour, according to his publicist at Warner Bros. Reprise Records.
Especially interview requests about football. And he's not making any exceptions just because the winners in the world and the lovable losers have traded places this season.
So there's a better chance that Fagen will replace Riley Skinner and throw for six touchdowns in the Orange Bowl than there is that Fagen will utter so much as, "Wow, the Deacons are finally winners, that's great.
"
But this is a story worth telling anyway, because the lyrics have spawned football myths and urban legends for decades.
One popular urban legend is that the lyrics were inspired when Steely Dan played a concert here on the same day that the football team got pummeled. Fagen, so the story goes, was struck by the glumness of the situation and drew on it when work started on Aja.
Good story, except that Steely Dan never played in Winston-Salem, according to compilations of the band's tour dates. And it didn't tour at all from 1975 to 1992.
The closest the band ever came to Winston-Salem in the early '70s were concerts in Fayetteville and Cullowhee in April 1974.
There was also a concert in Greensboro sometime around then if memories are more accurate than pieced-together archives.
Granted, Wake Forest also went 1-10 in '74 and lost at Oklahoma 63-0, at Penn State 55-0 and at Maryland 47-0 on consecutive Saturdays that October. But the odds that Fagen drew those games from the memory bank when writing "Deacon Blues" are - again - no better than the odds that he'll take over for Skinner and throw for six touchdowns against Louisville.
Another popular urban legend is that Walter Becker, Steely Dan's irreverent co-founder and Fagen's general all-around co-conspirator, attended Wake Forest and offered up the line. Good story again, except that Becker - who also declines interview requests these days - attended Bard College in New York. Bard College's nickname is the Raptors.
"Raptor Blues" doesn't quite work.
At least the part about Becker playing a role in the lyrics is true.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, presumably before a tour, Fagen was asked about the lyrics.
He didn't give a detailed explanation about why he chose to use the nicknames of Alabama and Wake Forest, but it was clear that he was looking for contrasts - and was trying to complete the song as quickly as possible.
"Walter and I had been working on that song at a house in Malibu," Fagen told Rolling Stone. "And he said, 'You mean, it's like, they call these cracker (bleeps) this grandiose name like the Crimson Tide, and I'm this loser, so they call me this other grandiose name, Deacon Blues?
' And I said, 'Yeah.' And he said, 'Cool! Let's finish it.
'"
Ah, so even though we don't know what Fagen would say about the success that Skinner and Co. are having this season, we can deduce what Becker would say.
"Cool.
"
And here's another urban legend in the making.
Wake Forest players have taken great delight this season in noting that the WF on their helmets really stands for "We Finish." That has been the team's theme.
So, surely there's some cosmic connection here. When Becker said "Let's finish it" to Fagen, he wasn't merely telling Fagen that the lyrics for "Deacon Blues" were good to go and it was time to head to the recording studio. He was laying the foundation for a remarkable story that would unfold 30 years later.
Becker was looking into his crystal ball and seeing the day that the Deacons would be the winners in the world, and he was giving them their motto for this season. Or maybe not.
They've got a name for the winners in the world.
Eight times in Orange Bowl history, they have called them the Crimson Tide.
On Jan. 2, they'll call them the Deacons.
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