On Inconsequential Things That Matter To Me (Quickish edition)

1. Books

I'll be reading (briefly) with an all-star cast of sportswriting characters this evening in Manhattan, at Gelf's fifth annual Varsity Letters event. You can read the interview with me--and with all the others--here. And I highly recommend Dan Shanoff's new site, Quickish--it's like a hybrid of a sports blog and a well-curated Twitter feed, without all the peripheral nonsense. 

2. Bo

Somehow, Bo Jackson is only receiving one percent of the vote in this poll of GQ's Coolest Athletes. Also, a surfer is in first place. Please help remedy this injustice immediately.
 
3. Punks

Following up on yesterday's McMahon story, the folks at Bodog came up with this graphic. Though given McMahon's injury (and social) history, there are several other body parts they could have pinpointed as well, for various reasons.

On Cam Newton: A Kind Of Anarchistic Viewpoint

 

The good people at The War Eagle Reader, a fun/hipsterish Auburn-centric website, asked me to write something about the Cam Newton saga. So of course I wound up writing about Penn State...

Let me begin with this: I grew up a fan of Penn State football, and so you may assume that everything I say is couched in a certain amount of stodgy Northeastern academic elitism. At Penn State, they like to think they treat football and compliance with equal dilligence, which is why my alma mater often finds itself marooned in the Outback Bowl on New Year’s Day, led by a seemingly indestructible octogenarian who resembles a professor emeritus at Hogwarts. You may think of us a declining power with prison-issue uniforms and a stunning inability to defeat Alabama, but at least we are self-righteous about it.
And so, while it is true that, in the midst of researching my latest book, I bore witness to the holy act of Bo Jackson firing a crossbow in his own driveway, I am not going to lie and say I understand exactly what you are feeling down there at Toomer’s Corner at this critical juncture. (The closest Penn State has come to a truly juicy recruiting scandal revolved around Joe Paterno’s insistence on converting several future Hall of Fame quarterbacks to linebacker.) But we do have one thing in common: We have both felt the sting of being worked over by the pollsters.

Read more here. And while you're at it, listen to this:

On Inconsequential Things That Matter To Me

1. In case you're in the vicinity: I'll be reading/signing on Thursday evening at the excellent Varsity Letters Reading Series in Brooklyn, along with Dave Zirin and Dan Epstein. I also did an interview with Gelf, which you can find here.

2. I also did an interview with the War Eagle Reader, an awesomely eccentric, hipsterish Auburn-centric site, in which I discussed all things Bo.

3. I had an interesting conversation (about 35 minutes in on here) with David Sirota, a prominent political journalist, on his radio show this morning. Sirota is also writing a (very different) book about the '80s, and he has a theory that the notion of athletes as roguish outsiders who in fact embrace celebrity, a la Jim McMahon and Brian Bosworth, parallels the political evolution that began with Ronald Reagan and has now culminated in the public persona of Sarah Palin*. It's a fascinating thought, and maybe explains the fact that athletes who make millions of endorsement dollars can still claim a "lack of respect," and that politicians who raise millions of dollars in contributions can decry the insider culture in Washington. In both realms, it would seem, it is a strike against one's image to be seen as a tool of the establishment, even if, in fact, you're obviously part of an establishment. Which could explain why insane people are winning primary elections, and why LeBron feels like he needs to keep a blacklist. 

*Though in the interest of balancing the political spectrum, it should be noted that Barack Obama marketed himself as a political outsider from the very beginning.

On Inconsequential Things That Matter To Me

1. Tebow Knows 

This is sheer blasphemy. There is only one true Lord and Savior, and his name is Bo. The mere fact that this T-shirt exists should condemn Tebow to an eternity in the Ninth Circle, forced to endure extended lectures about his throwing motion from Jon Gruden while being ruthleesly mocked by a cabal of sports bloggers wielding photos of well-endowed women.

2. Brettfavre

So...I got bumped from a Minneapolis radio show last night because of Favre. Which begs the question: How is all this Favre time filled? What is there to discuss in a three-hour block between pizza commercials and trivia questions? But of course, it's Minneapolis, and it's the Vikings. I get it. No hard feelings, WCCO.

Still, because I do not incessantly follow sports news, I have no idea how much of this Schadenfavre is actually based in reality. I cannot say I watch SportsCenter that often, but how much do they really address Favre?* Has anyone ever timed it? Or are we all just making broad presumptions based on the Twitter feed of Ken Tremendous? It's clear that Favre wants to play. It's clear that the only thing holding him back at this point is his health. It's also clear that he has an uncanny ability to get under people's skin, even when he does nothing at all. At this point, since we're going to hate him no matter what he does, why wouldn't he make it his express goal to screw with people?

At this point, I've come full circle. I'm so tired of the complaining that I'd prefer to see the complainants keel over from sheer exhaustion. I hope Favre does come back, and I hope he has his best season ever. And then I hope he retires the week of the Super Bowl.

And then unretires the next day. 

3. Vampire Envy

Why is it that people who have only a casual interest in movies will pay $12 to see a movie that consists entirely of second-tier actors satirizing films that many of them probably haven't actually seen in the first place?**


*Although, I will admit: I turned on SportsCenter for 12 seconds last night and saw a state-of-the-art graphic of a human ankle, and heard the voice of an orthopedic surgeon. I did not remain on the channel long enough to pass the anatomy exam that followed.

**Probably for the same reason I subscribed to MAD Magazine for the first 15 years of my existence. I've never actually seen Top Gun, but thanks to MAD, I still presume the lead characters' names are "Maniac" and "Goof."

On Bo

I've started doing interviews for the book, and one of the prime topics, unsurprisingly, is Bo Jackson. Everybody wants to know about Bo, about the sheer impossibility of his accomplishments, about the marketing and the myth and the man himself. I was fortunate enough to spend a day with him a couple of years ago, and I'm not going to lie--it was one of the most intriguing experiences of career. Bo is probably the self-contained athlete I've ever met. And it would appear USA Today's longtime baseball writer, Bob Nightengale, found the same thing when he interviewed Bo last month.

There's a lot of amazing stuff in there--stuff I wished I'd gotten myself, like the fact that Bo's license plate reads BROKE--but this is my favorite quote of all, because this sums up the endearing quasi-egotistical quasi-innocent individualism of Bo:

"When I was born, God gave me a natural greenie, a built-in steroid," Jackson says. "I was always faster than people, stronger than people. So when I found out what guys were doing, I figured guys were cheating just to catch up to where I was.

"But I didn't know. To be honest with you, I was so focused on what I was doing, people could have been doing steroids right under my nose and I wouldn't have known.

"But you know what I always wondered, why the guys were drinking all of this milk after games. I'm going to have a beer or drink some water, and I'm thinking, 'Why are all guys drinking all this milk?' I found out later it was because they were coming down from greenies. I didn't even know what a greenie was. I swear to God I didn't know."

There aren't a lot of athletes I believe anymore. But I believe Bo.

On Bo: "I guess I'm a product of the '80's"

From a Newsweek interview with Bo Jackson:
Was there a point during your career when the attention got out of hand?
Back in the late '80s when I was living in Kansas City, I stopped answering my door. People would send their kids to come ask for an autograph. I started telling them that Mr. Jackson had moved to China.

I think what struck me about Bo, during the brief period I spent with him, and in the months I've spent studying him since then (as you may have guessed, he figures prominently in the book I'm working on), is just how self-possessed he is--even when engaged in the mundanity of daily life. Bo did/does what Bo wanted to do, for better or worse. In that way, he really did represent the new breed of athlete that emerged in the '80's. And not just in Tecmo Bowl.

(Photo: Ross Dettman, ESPN.com)