Tanking is a term for failing hard. In sports, it means losing on purpose.

In the 19th century, swimming pools in the US were called tanks, so diving was known as “going in the tank.”

Boxing was the first sport to be associated with tanking. Fighters dove to the canvas aka “took a  dive” aka “tanked” so they could get paid by the people who were rigging the fights.

In the Movie On The Waterfront, Marlon Brando’s character Terry Malloy takes a dive, but he regrets it for the rest of his life. He feels that had he not taken a dive he “coulda been a contender”, and therefore, “coulda had class,” like say current UFC lightweight contender Conor McGregor. This sense of regret is commonly known as “Diver’s Remorse.”  

In the movie Pulp Fiction, Butch agrees to take a dive but instead he double-crosses Marsellus Wallace, bets on himself, and fights to win. This is commonly known as “faking a dive.”

Butch absolutely murders the other guy, Marsellus gets pissed, and Butch winds having to punch a guy in a bondage suit, use a samurai sword, and shoot a man on the toilet in the very same day. Doing these three things in succession is commonly known as “hitting the trifecta.” 

Tanking eventually came to be associated with politics as well. Being “in the tank” for someone was applied to biased media types and political figures. Here I will link to the same Slate article as before, because it’s that damn good. 

Some Examples—Sean Hannity is in the tank for Trump. The 2016 Democratic National Committee was in the tank for Hillary. In 2020, Dr. Phil will be in the tank for Oprah, Kim will be in the tank for Kanye, and Kanye will be in rehab, which won’t stop him from running the most successful campaign in history and becoming the 48th President of the United States (Trump, Pence, DeVos—I know! Crazy, right?!) 

These days, tanking means losing now to improve your chances of winning later. Pro sports leagues are set up so that losing intentionally increases your opportunity to add promising talent through an annual draft.   

Basketball’s Philadelphia 76ers have tanked their way to a promising future. And baseball’s Houston Astros tanked all the way to a 2017 World Series win.

If teams can lose on purpose to improve their positions, shouldn’t us working slobs be able to do some version of the same thing? Isn’t there some analog for being a loser now to become a winner later?  

The best real-life analog for tanking in sports is faking your own death. The idea in each is that you escape failure and get a fresh start.  

How do you I go about faking my own death? Will I need to figure out the Dark web? Or do I just need to go some place weird like the Philippines?

I just need to go to the Philippines! At least according to Elizabeth Greenwood, author of Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud.  Sweet! Because the Dark web seems spooky and a little too techy for me.  

In the Philippines you can buy a body from the morgue to fake your death with. Nothing spooky there. 

According to Greenwood, to successfully fake you own death you have to make a clean break and set up a new identity. She says you can’t cherry pick the parts of your life you like, or you’ll get caught.

Setting up a good fake identity is expensive. It’s something rich people can do, but not us working slobs.

Faking your death is considered fraud, aka a crime you can go to jail for.   

Tanking in sports is fraud too! Shouldn’t teams that provably tank go to jail? Or should they perhaps face even more serious consequences, like death? It’s a serious question.

I lied. That wasn’t a serious question. But wait a second…....

There is a “death penalty” in college sports. Teams that cheat have their programs completely shut down. Maybe a death penalty for pro sports teams is the solution to ending tanking. Then again…....

Sports are entertainment. While we like to see hard work rewarded, ultimately, we root for compelling storylines. So maybe we tolerate our favorite team sucking hard for a while to potentially to win big later.  It offers us a glimmer of hope. And maybe those glimmers of hope in the world of entertainment and make-believe are all we can realistically attain to make our working slob lives a little more tolerable.

If you enjoyed that dark summation, good—that’s what I was going for. If not, here’s a 47 second compilation of cat videos.