THE COUNTDOWN: No. 113: Idaho

This happens with Vandals. Beginning in about 430 and running for the next century, the original Vandals — the group with the higher winning percentage — whipped the Romans out of Northern Africa, Sicily, Corsica and, eventually, Rome itself. But the Vandals grew fat and lazy in power, which allowed a reborn Byzantine Empire, from 530-34, to regain a significant portion of its lost Roman outposts and send the Vandals into irrelevance. Said Gelimer, the last king of the Vandals, at the time of the tribe’s decline, as recounted by Edward Gibbon: “The Vandals still prefer an ignominious repose, at the expense of their wives and children, their wealth and liberty.” See, the Vandals worked, clawed and fought to achieve their goal, but that pace grew to a crawl once they reached the pinnacle. Kind of like the other Vandals — the group with the lower winning percentage — who worked for more than a decade to go back into bowl play, but since getting there in 2009 have returned to, well, irrelevance.

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