On the Great Biographical Narratives of 2030

I've never seen the movie Ali in its entirety. If ever there were a biopic that seemed unnecessarily redundant, it was this one, for not only is Ali the subject of perhaps the greatest sports documentary of all time, not only is Ali is the subject of one of the greatest sports books ever written* ... but even his opponents and contemporaries have been the subjects of transcendent literature, from Nick Tosches' intense biography of Sonny Liston to Gay Talese's sympathetic magazine profiles of Floyd Patterson. There was no need for an Ali biopic because Ali pulled into his wake some of the greatest non-fiction chroniclers of the 20th century. Fiction could not compare to the truth, especially when Jamie Foxx was involved.

In this age of miniscule attention spans, I find myself thinking about these kinds of things quite often. What are the stories that serve as metaphorical proxies for their era?** Will we still be discussing the sexual vagaries Tiger Woods in ten years, or will he slink back into a protective shell? Is this a truly meaningful moment in the national narrative, as Bill Simmons hypothesizes? Or did the shock of it all simply amplify its importance? It's too early to tell (though I'd probably lean toward Simmons at this point).

Anyway, here's my point: Certain athletes of this era seem representative of some larger issue, of an evolutionary or technological or societal tipping point. And it's not always the obvious people. So yes, in ten or twenty years, there are many excellent biographies I expect to read (or write) that might capture the Zeitgeist of the early 21st century. But here are the underdogs--if I were forced to sign a contract right now to write a biography in 2030 of an active athlete/coach who isn't Tiger Woods, LeBron James, or Kobe Bryant, these are some of the people I might choose:

1. Allen Iverson. Has there been a more polarizing moment in recent sports history than The Practice Speech? Iverson is the progenitor of a new era in the NBA, of the narrowing authoritarian boundaries between player and coach, of the age of personal expression. That he seems headed for the inevitable tragic fall only makes him that much more compelling.***

2. Donovan McNabb. Not just because of Rush Limbaugh, and not just because he possesses the most famously sensitive digestive system in NFL history--in a city with a checkered racial history, McNabb has come to represent the tribulations of the black quarterback in the modern age. He is an undeniably great player, and yet he is never quite good enough.

3. Peyton Manning/Tom Brady. It would have to be a dual biography, because it is already virtually impossible to separate the legacy of one from the legacy of the other. There is no better rivalry in the modern era. This is essentially Magic/Bird without the racial undertones.

4. Mark McGwire. Jeff Pearlman made a valiant effort to capture the soul of Barry Bonds a few years ago, but the problem is, Bonds doesn't appear to possess a soul. Of all the principles in the steroid era, McGwire still seems like the most sympathetic figure to me, more rent with guilt than any of the others. His return to baseball could prove either triumphant or tragic--I really don't know where it's going.

5. Rick Pitino. Because no one embodies the role of coach as slicked-up mercenary quite like Pitino. He was a trendsetter. Not to mention there's plenty of sex involved.

*I'm currently reading David Remnick's King of the World, which is also predictably excellent.
**One of the reasons I chose to write Bigger Than the Game (now available for pre-order!) is because Bo Jackson always felt, to me, like one of those people who transcended his era.
***I expect Steve James' 30 for 30 documentary on Iverson will be one of the highlights of the series.

On the Big Game, the Losing Quarterback, and Google's Ownership of Our Lives

1. I don't want to say I was the only person in America who saw that onside kick coming, but I am happy to make such blind assertions, because that's what blogging is all about (See No. XXII). And on that note, I'd have to disagree with Pat Yasinkas' assertion that the onside kick was not, in fact, a true gamble because Sean Payton calculated the odds to be better than 60 to 70 percent. Even if those were the odds, this was the SUPER BOWL: Payton was not only potentially risking the entire season on a complex play in which several variables (including a visibly freaked out kicker) had the potential to spontaneously implode; he was also defying tradition, spurning conservatism, and metaphorically expectorating in the face of John Facenda and Vince Lombardi and Hank Stram and George Allen. Payton made several decisions that would have been unthinkable 10-15 years ago, the onside kick foremost among them. And I'm not sure why the Super Bowl has suddenly gone from the most boring major championship game in any sport to the most exciting, but maybe this defiant shift in the coaching paradigm has something to do with it. This was football's liberal cerebellum, making itself more blatantly apparent than ever before. Never, I'm guessing, has there been an NFL season in which the two most exciting and memorable plays were a fourth down conversion that didn't work and an onside kick that did.

2. I open this question up for discussion: Who are athletes, in any sport, whose careers have advanced from "disappointing" to "transcendent" ... only to slip backward, and once again become "disappointing"?* Is this how we will now be forced to define Peyton Manning? Does one errant pass disqualify him from the moniker of Greatest Quarterback Ever? Are we judging too harshly, or does Manning's lone Super Bowl victory now stand out as the glaring exception in a career otherwise marred by an inability to finish? Honestly, I think we probably need some time to allow this one to settle before we judge. And of course, Manning still has at least 4-5 good years remaining in his career ... I have to imagine his impact on the way the game is played/called will most likely outweigh even a mistake as crushing as this one. But I could be wrong.

3. Am I the only one who found that Google ad inherently depressing? Because the underlying message had nothing to do with a love story between a boy and a girl--it had to do with our dependence on the Internet for everything we ever do. What Google was saying, essentially, is that our entire lives will, now and forever, be dictated by the results of what we type into a rectangular box. The message of the Google ad was that they own us, and they know they own us, and we know that they own us; ideologically, it was a bizarro version of Apple's 1984 ad, only this time Big Brother wins.
 
 *Honestly, there are none that immediately come to mind, especially when it comes to Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks. Maybe Jim McMahon, but the Bears were never really good before the '86 Super Bowl. Maybe Mark Rypien, but if I remember correctly, his opportunities were pretty limited before the '92 Super Bowl. The only other Super Bowl-winning QB with such an arc of possibility is ... Eli Manning.

(Photo: Getty Images)

On Football, Robots and Schadenfavre

Here's how I see it: The most depressing sports week of the year is the day after the NBA finals end in June (or July, or upon the inauguration of David Stern, whichever comes first). This is an indisputable fact, because even if you happen to still cling to the illusion that baseball is a major American sport (sorry, I can't help it--at this point, taking shots at baseball is more of an American pastime than baseball), you would admit that baseball season, from late June to mid-August, is essentially inconsequential, and matters far less if anything else of note happens to occur during that time period.

Anyway, the third most depressing sports week of the year--and this is more a matter of personal taste--is the day after the BCS Championship, because college football season goes by far too fast. But this very week is the second most-depressing sports week of the year, because now only the Super Bowl stands between ourselves and six months of yearning for Hard Knocks to begin. Also, it's cold, and in Brooklyn, at least, even the dogs seem surlier than usual.

My point is, the Super Bowl is not a football game. The Super Bowl ceased to exist as an actual football game in 1985. At that point, it became an event, which means, for Americans, it became an to excuse A.) Consume store-bought french onion dip, and B.) Attend a party where at least 33 percent of the audience is entirely unaware a game is actually being played. If the game is not a blowout by the third quarter, that's just a spiritual bonus.

That said, here are my preliminary thoughts:

--At some point during Sunday's game, I Twittered the term, "Schadenfavre." I presumed this was a very clever turn of phrase, until I realized that I was approximately the thirty millionth person to come up with it. Moral of the story--Originality is dead ... but thankfully, so is Brett Favre's season. And I'm not going to lie: That game was cathartic. It feels kind of craven to root for violence, but it seemed unfathomable that any 40-year-old quarterback, in this day and age, could make his way through a season and not end up with the motility and general color of this dude. Somebody needed to hit him, and the Saints did it, and you can't tell me those hits--and the fear of a future spent mowing his lawn with a walker--weren't running through Favre's mind when he made that final decision to gunsling a pass across his own body and straight into no-man's land. I don't even remember the precise details of when or why we started to dislike Favre so much in the first place, but it just felt like he deserved that ending for holding us an emotional hostage all these months.

--Also, let's just confirm what I said earlier this season: Peyton Manning, if he wins this game, could very well be the greatest quarterback of all time. Don't get me wrong--Favre is undeniably great, and even his late-career shenanigans can't keep him out of the top five. But if Favre was a throwback,* Manning is a pure projection of the future, a cool-thinking cyborg who operates with such precision that even James Cameron probably finds him a little ridiculous. I'll be rooting for the Saints, because I am a human with a beating heart, but it's hard not to feel like, at this point, that Manning, by utilizing his giant programmable brain, has probably changed the position more than any quarterback since Unitas. He may not be a gunslinger, but brilliant robots are far more interesting.

*If only an overzealous television broadcaster (or four hundred) had thought to refer to Favre as a "throwback." Imagine the possibilities!

On Colts, Saints and the Impossibility of Perfection

In 1972, the average NFL salary was $35,000. Adjusted for inflation, that's approximately $180,000, which isn't an unhealthy hunk of change ... unless you compare to it 2009's average NFL salary, which is exactly ten times that amount, and unless you compare it to 2009's league minimum, which is $295,000. Now, I'm not going to launch into the tired old argument that money changes everything (or that girls just wanna have fun, or that it is safe to dream while driving), but ... money changes everything.

Don't get me wrong. The influence is not necessarily direct. Years ago, when I interviewed Larry Csonka at a farmhouse in rural Ohio, in the shadow of a giant taxidermied deer, he tried to convince me that the '72 Dolphins went undefeated because they possessed more self-discipline than any team in NFL history; I've interviewed other NFL legends who insist they were more driven because they sold insurance in the offseason. I don't believe this to be true. I'm sure Peyton Manning and Drew Brees regiment their existences at least as seriously as Earl Morrall ever did. I'm guessing that Wes Welker and Randy Moss might live more disciplined (and less blatantly drunken) existences than Larry Csonka and Jim Kiick ever did. But the reason NFL salaries have skyrocketed in the thirty-seven years is not because the players abandoned self-discipline; in fact, it has nothing to do with the players themselves. The reason salaries are so high is because there is now more attention paid to the game than ever before. TV, radio, the internet...every time I turn on my television, Trey Wingo and Ron Jaworski are discussing the Eagles' zone blitz.

And that's the reason it may simply be impossible to go undefeated in the modern NFL. There's too much attention being paid to everything; as soon as a team approaches perfection, it becomes an omnipresent topic of discussion. And as hard as they try--as much as they may insist that they are paying attention to nothing except themselves--no team can exist in a vacuum. Peyton Manning is not the Buddha. This is the moral of the 2007 Patriots; in an era of media overkill, perfection is impossible. At this point in our existence, it is almost impossible to even conceive perfection. Axl Rose spent a decade, and didn't come close. James Cameron spent $400 million, and gave us an aquamarine Sigourney Weaver. And the 2007 Patriots went eighteen games and then, weighed down by outside expectations, lost control of the narrative at the worst possible moment. If perfection can never be achieved, why bother trying? Wouldn't it be better to simply ease the burden by acknowledging the inherent creative flaws of any collaborative endeavor? Wouldn't it be better simply to show yourself as imperfect?

In my book*, I write about the 1985 Bears, who lost their only game of the season in Miami; the next day, they filmed a video assuring America that they would win the Super Bowl. Losing set them free. And if I were the Colts, or the Saints, each careening toward the playoffs with an unblemished record, I would consider doing the same, by any means necessary. In this era, imperfection may be the only route to perfection.

*Available for pre-order!

On Peyton Manning...the Best Quarterback of All-Time?

I don't know, maybe it's quarterback week around these parts, but I had a brief discussion this weekend about Peyton Manning, and I've spent the past few days contemplating his career, and today I read this post on Pro Football Reference that reinforces with hard numbers what I already suspected with my unreliable cerebellum--that the Peyton Manning of 2009, Peyton Manning at age 33, is perhaps as good as any incarnation of Peyton Manning we've ever seen before. Honestly, I can't think of an elite quarterback whose public persona has evolved more radically over the course of such a short period; look at this Slate piece written by Tommy Craggs just 30 months ago, which labored under the conceit that Manning was too inherently nerdy to ever become a beloved figure in the NFL.

It's an intriguing artifact, and it was utterly true at the time. In January 2007, all those goofy ads featuring Peyton cheering on blue-collar employees in the name of extending their credit debt seemed presumptuous and forced. They didn't seem like the real Peyton Manning; they seemed like a Madison Avenue construction. "His affability takes on an overtone of insincerity," Craggs quoted one critic, and there seemed no way to change that. Manning was who he was; he would always be an outsider, a doofus in an oversized helmet, and that dorkiness would prevent his genius from ever being truly recognized.

Except then Peyton Manning won a Super Bowl. And all those memories of his failures in big games past became secondary, and all those notions that Manning couldn't win because he was too uptight or too bookish or too omnipresent during commercial breaks seemed utterly ridiculous. Now Peyton Manning was a beloved goofball, an affable dude whose quirks facilitated his brilliance. Now Peyton Manning just seemed like what he probably was all along: A guy with ridiculous genetic gifts, who also happened to be legtimately smarter and more honestly self-deprecating than just about anyone else who had ever played his position. Winning a single game transformed Peyton Manning's entire career. He's not the first player to experience this, but in Manning's case, it seemed to set him free, to allow him to embrace his true self; perhaps equally as important, it also allowed us to embrace him. Which is just as well, because if he continues on his current trajectory, we may soon have to accept the fact the Peyton Manning is the greatest quarterback in football history. And amazingly enough, most of us will do so willingly.

Back then, 30 months ago, when Peyton Manning was still an outsider, Rolling Stone resident curmudgeon Matt Taibbi wrote that it was "impossible" to root for him, and that, by comparison, it "easy to root for" a rugged individualist like Brett Favre. Something tells me if the Colts face the Vikings in Super Bowl XLIV, Peyton Manning won't be the one accused of insincerity.

(Illustration: Mark Alan Stamaty/Slate)