On Super Bowl XLV, The Day After: XXV Random Thoughts

I. I agree with Joe--if Rodgers doesn't make that third down throw, the Steelers probably win. Then again, if Mendenhall doesn't fumble, the Steelers probably win. And if Roethlisberger doesn't throw that pick-six, the Steelers probably win.

II. And yet there was never a moment where it felt like the Steelers were going to win.

III. The most surprising thing about the final drive is not that the Steelers didn't score. It's that the drive fizzled out. Given the situation, you would have figured the Packers would give up underneath routes, that Roethlisberger would find a way to deliver first downs, that the game would be decided in Green Bay's red zone.

IV. That it wasn't was both curious and anticlimactic.

V. Because of the way it ended, I doubt I will remember much of anything about this Super Bowl in five years. Unlike the past few years, there was no single, defining play. Which means the Super Bowl is far better than it used to be. Which means we've actually grown to expect a decent Super Bowl.

VI. Wasn't there a time when ESPN would show the NFL Films highlights package from every Super Bowl, back to back?

VII. I seem to remember a brief period in my life when I could recite the winners of every single SB from memory. It's kind of sad that there are too many now, that we can't do this anymore, that there are no longer as many kids who grow up knowing who Max McGee is because John Facenda taught them.

VIII. XTina's bungling of our national hymn only makes it seem more absurd that Roseanne generated such raging controversy for mangling a tune that even professionals can't get right.

IX. It's either The Star-Spangled Banner or America the Beautiful. Not both. Decide.

X. A record number of people watched this Super Bowl, which is kind of astounding.

XI. And yet it's more astounding to me how many people choose not to watch the Super Bowl.

XII. I mean, is the Puppy Bowl really that compelling?

XIII. Let's say 25 percent of the population professes no interest in football, or in pervasive cultural events. That still leaves an additional 30 percent of American households with televisions who were not watching the Super Bowl at any given moment.

XIX. That said, I was actually driving through the backwoods of South Carolina, on assignment, when the Giants defeated the Patriots a couple of years ago. It's weird, listening to a Super Bowl on the radio--it's almost like the game never happened.

XV. I was also in England for a Super Bowl once, which was even stranger, because A.) The game kicked off after midnight, and B.) No one in the entire country seemed to care about the single most popular television event in America.

XVI. Which I suppose is how transplanted Europeans must feel about our disdain for virtually every sport they actually seem to like.

XVII. Charles Woodson has had an undeniably great professional career, and is almost certainly a Hall of Famer. And yet he was so dynamically awesome in college--there were moments when Woodson, playing both ways, looked like he might actually alter the paradigm--that he almost seems like a disappointment to me.

XVIII. The Darth Vader kid was the only ad that didn't seem heavily burdened with either "epic" imagery, talking animals, or borderline misogyny.

XIX. When exactly did Eminem become a spokesman for mainstream America?

XX. As someone at my apartment happened to mention, how far down the celebrity endorsement list did Groupon have to go before they landed on Timothy Hutton?

XXI. Was Tim Matheson occupied?

XXII. Chimpanzees are so 2007.

XXIII. So is beer.

XXIV. So are automobiles.

XXV. So is America. 

On The Super Bowl and the Return of the Great American Bacchanalia

Part II of my GQ.com Super Bowl week "series." You can find several pieces I've written about football here.

Of the hundreds of empirical measurements used to determine the health of the national economy, none speak in such a quintessentially American way as a stripper shortage. That's what Dallas is experiencing this week, according to the exotica experts at TMZ, who breathlessly reported that the city is in search of ten thousand nublile females—STAT!—to satisfy the whims of that slim faction of citizens who can actually afford to attend a Super Bowl.

But it's not just perfumed sex kittens who are at a premium amid the expanse of glass and silicone known as the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. Parking spaces are reportedly going for up to $1,000, the average online ticket price is north of $4,000 (up considerably from last year), and sold-out passes for something called the Party Plaza, which affords one the opportunity to stand in the general vicinity of Cowboys Stadium and watch the game on a supersized television, are being offered at as much as four times their $200 face value.

Unless you happen to own a parking garage in which exotic dancers scalp second-hand tickets, this may all seem inherently disquieting. In fact, to everyone outside of Jerry Jones and Grover Norquist, I have to imagine that the sheer capitalistic scope of the Super Bowl must be a little disturbing, especially when the country is slowly emerging from a crippling recession. That it is taking place in a city that lives up to every sordid cliche about itself, and in a stadium built by a narcissistic billionaire who installed an HD Jumbotron the size of Skylab, only heightens the instinct for revulsion. But maybe this is all a good sign.

Read More http://www.gq.com/sports/guides/201102/super-bowl-dallas-parties#ixzz1D0n1LlNd

On The One Super Bowl Week That Wasn't a Bore

I wrote this piece for GQ.com.

In commemoration of the most ostentatious and overhyped seven days in American sports, let us hearken back precisely twenty-five years, to a time that was both more and less innocent, to a moment when, thanks to one man, Super Bowl week overcame its stultifying reputation and became, ever so briefly, a tabloid bonanza. Let us recall the apostate known as the Punky QB, who strode into the holy land of New Orleans and, over the course of a few short days, rendered the Super Bowl his own personal bacchanal, a montage of drinking and fighting and mooning replete with plot twists involving a rogue acupuncturist, Bob Hope, public urination, and a controversial radio interview that never actually took place. It was so tacky and improbable that even the producers of Entourage would question the plausibility of it all.

Of course, the Super Bowl, at least since Joe Willie Namath's overhyped guarantee of victory, has always been more "event" than event. Few men could rise above it. For years—with the exception of a cocaine-addled Dallas Cowboys linebacker named Thomas "Hollywood" Henderson questioning the intelligence of the Steelers' Terry Bradshaw*—the week leading up the Super Bowl, post Namath, had been positively boring. And then came the Bears, who were already national icons, who had already recorded a pulsating rap song proclaiming their intention to win the Super Bowl, whose gap-toothed defensive lineman was guzzling Big Macs and scoring touchdowns and reveling in his girth, whose blustery coach had been arrested for drunk driving after getting toasted on the team plane, and whose quarterback had gone on Letterman and declared he had no intention to pay a fine levied by the commissioner for wearing a headband bearing the logo of a German shoe company.
James Robert McMahon Jr. was the quarterback's name, and despite the significant contributions of sidemen like Ditka and William "Refrigerator" Perry, Jim McMahon was the frontman for the Bears' short-lived pop-cultural explosion.

Read More http://www.gq.com/sports/profiles/201102/jim-mcmahon-super-bowl-weekend-chicago-bears-1985#ixzz1CoobyfE0

On the Power of Nostalgia, Punky/Non-Punky QBs, and the 2010 Jets

"It's incredible. If we said words back when I was playing, we'd have to stand up in front of the team and take about a one-minute berating from the coach. Now, it's coming from the coaches.''
-- CBS NFL analyst Phil Simms, on the volume coming from teams critical of other teams in football these days. (via Peter King)

 

I cannot blame Phil Simms for engaging in revisionist history. I do it. We all do it. We turn back to the events of some bygone era in order to proclaim that the modern world has been turned on its ear. This kind of nostalgic thinking is what drives our culture, and our politics, and our national dialogue; it is what defines us as Americans. But in this case, Phil Simms is clearly blinded by idealism. In this case, Phil Simms is simply ignoring the fact that the hodgepodge of braggadocio and poppycock that comes screaming like a scud missile out of Rex Ryan's id was actually born in the era when Simms himself was an All-Pro quarterback.

 

On the surface, nothing about the 2010 Jets is ground-breaking. You could argue that self-aggrandizement in sports was born with Babe Ruth, or with Ali, or with Namath...or you could argue, as I would, that the modern formula was perfected twenty-five years ago, when the 1985 Bears streaked onto the cultural landscape, rapping cacophonous rhymes about the Super Bowl before the playoffs had even begun. Much of that was driven by a raucous and untamed locker room--and, I have argued, by a quarterback who didn't care much for the social mores of his position--but it wasn't like the coaches were innocents in this drama. Forget Bart Scott's histrionic WWE lunacy: At one point, you may recall the Packers took out a hitlist on the Bears. Rex Ryan's father was a master of the psychological screw-job, and Simms' own coach was one of the most cruel and Machiavellian figures in football history.

 

So, on a basic level, Simms is wrong. And yet in a strange way, he still seems kind of right.

 

There's something about the way the Jets carry themselves that does seem unprecedented. They're messy; they're all tangled up in tabloid culture in ways that even that '85 Bears team never really was. If the Bears were the cultural equivalent of Eddie Murphy, the Jets seem more like Joan Rivers. Things just move way faster now, and that's part of it: The acceleration of media in the time between the '85 Bears and the 2010 Jets is about a hundred times what it was in the era between Super Bowl III and Super Bowl XX. But there's something else going on here, too: Just as Jim McMahon did with his hero Joe Willie Namath, the Jets are repurposing their influences. The Bears were more like a dysfunctional family: The defensive coordinator hated the offensive coordinator, the offense hated the defense, and they channeled all this negative energy against their opponents. The Jets are more like a cabal of obnoxious bloggers: They are immature and playfully narcissistic and intermittently entertaining. They say what they think without processing it; they act as if they are more talented (and more influential) than they actually are. They are very much of a piece with their era, which is why Phil Simms' astonishment, while factually incorrect, is emotionally accurate.

It's funny: I liked the Jets when I watched them on Hard Knocks. I liked them in the abstract, as a team that seemed determined to break the mold, to cast away the stereotypes of football coaches as crusty authority figures and football players as soulless automatons. I think Rex Ryan is a charismatic goofball, and part of me truly wants him to succeed. But I can't bring myself to actually root for them on Sundays, and I don't know why. The only thing I can think of is that I'm a little bit like Phil Simms myself, that somehow I'm so wrapped up in my own nostalgia that I would prefer not to acknowledge that the world I grew up in is not exactly the same as I remember it to be.

(Photo: AP)

On One-Hit Wonders

I was driving on a two-lane road in South Carolina, listening to a football game on the radio. It was February 3, 2008, and that game happened to the Super Bowl, the first one of my lifetime that I didn't see on television. I was on my way to watch Len Bias's mother speak to a group of high-school students when David Tyree made the last catch of his pro career; I specifically remember, despite the apopleptic exhortations of the radio broadcasters, not being able to comprehend exactly what had happened. There was too much to describe without the pictures to accompany it. How does a man catch a football with his helmet?

You may have heard that Tyree retired today, completing one of the most distinctive careers in sports history. Here's what makes it distinct, at least to me: Over at Yahoo!, Chris Chase examines whether Tyree's catch was indeed the greatest in NFL history; I disagree with his logic, but what I found most interesting is the comparisons he makes, likening to Tyree's catch to clutch plays made by Franco Harris, Dwight Clark, Alan Ameche, and Bart Starr. Three of those men are Hall of Famers. The fourth, Dwight Clark, is a two-time Pro Bowler. Most of the time, this is how it works; it's almost unthinkable for a marginal player to wind up with the ball in his hands in the final moments of a game.* The most memorable catch in baseball history was made by Willie Mays, in part because it was made by Willie Mays.**

David Tyree was not Willie Mays, or Franco Harris, or even Dwight Clark. David Tyree played 83 games in his NFL career, and made 54 catches. He never averaged more than 13.2 yards receiving per game over the course of a season. Pro Football Reference rates him as the 8,413th best receiver since 1950. The only reason he earned the cache to call a press conference announcing the end of his career is because of a single play that essentially won the Giants, a prohibitive underdog, the Super Bowl over what otherwise would have been the greatest team in the history of the National Football League. And that one moment, in itself, makes David Tyree the greatest one-hit wonder in the history of sports. He is to athletics as Dexy's Midnight Runners are to pop music. He will be remembered as long as professional football exists. And if sports are all about establishing a legacy--hello, LeBron--what could possibly comprise a better career than David Tyree's single towering accomplishment?

*There are exceptions, of course, like, say, Steve Kerr, but Kerr played 17 seasons in the NBA and was one of the best shooters in league history.
**Even Bill Mazeroski, long defined by one hit, actually played 17 seasons and had more than 2,000 hits in his career.

On The Jersey Bowl

I'll admit it: I hate February in New York. It is a conglomeration of the worst elements of the city, everyone dressed up in mountaineering gear and cursing and shoving past each other on sidewalks narrowed to meager footpaths by 12-foot snowdrifts the color of bile. And if February in New York is bad, I have to imagine that February in New Jersey is worse, just by default.

That said, I'm pretty excited about the 2014 Super Bowl. I never thought this would happen...a cold weather Super Bowl...but now that it has, it seems like nothing but upside to me. The arguments against it--with the obvious exception of the safety hazards, which are dwarfed by the fact that football itself is a safety hazard--all seem kind of ridiculous and contrived. "Is it fair for teams to potentially alter their game plans dramatically in the face of wintry conditions?" asks SI's Jim Trotter, and my answer to that question is: Are you kidding me? Isn't this the very definition of football, the thing that sets it apart from climate-controlled pastimes like football and hockey? Maybe the game will be sloppy, and maybe it will be ugly, and maybe it will neutralize some of the modern elements of the game itself--maybe it will wind up 7-3--but why is that a terrible thing? Football fans who watch the Super Bowl would appreciate the change of pace; non-football fans who watch the Super Bowl are far more interested in the commercials. So why is it acceptable for Green Bay to potentially play an NFC Championship game in a wind-chill of minus-59, but the Super Bowl must be contested in a Disneyified greenhouse?

I sympathize with the notion that cold-weather games are never as fun for the players or the spectators as they are for the television viewers, but the NFL sold this game as the ultimate made-for-television product many years ago, then completely abandoned the very nature of the game itself for a bland rotation of domes and palm trees. On television, nothing looks cooler than a snow bowl. I hope it happens in February of 2014. I just hope I happen to be on vacation when it does.

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 XLIV Jarringly Specific Predictions For This Weekend's Game

I. Approximately 12 percent of the pregame coverage will be spent discussing the cuisine of New Orleans.

II. Approximately 8 percent of the pregame coverage will be spent discussing the Manning family.

III. Approximately 0.6 percent of the pregame coverage will be spent discussing Up With People.

IV. Some type of unnecessarily loud Pentagon-produced aircraft will buzz over the stadium during pregame, rendering several CEOs in attendance temporarily deaf. A Nation writer will later refer to this as an apt metaphor for America.

V. Jim Nantz will wait approximately six minutes before delivering his first overly labored play on words.

VI. Jim Nantz will deliver several extremely uncomfortable promos for How I Met Your Mother.

VII. Peyton Manning's insistent audibles and hand signals at the line of scrimmage will cause seizures among a class of Korean schoolchildren.

VIII. Within the first eight minutes, we will be subjected to eight (8) close-ups of Dwight Freeney's hideously swollen ankle.

IX. On the Saints' first drive, Reggie Bush will juke three defenders out of their socks, then fumble the ball in the open field.

X. On the Colts' first drive, Dallas Clark will catch a pass over the middle, get creamed, and stumble drunkenly to the sideline, only to return two plays later and do the same exact thing.

XI. Sometime in the first twenty (20) minutes, Jim Nantz will make a sympathetic reference to Tiger Woods.

XII. Sometime in the first eighteen (18) minutes, the cameras will close in on a major American pop star.

XIII. Said pop star will be wearing a Saints hat, despite fact that said pop star has no connection at all to New Orleans.

XIV. The Colts will score their first touchdown on a 37-yard screen pass from Manning to Joseph Addai.

XV. The Saints will score their first touchdown on a 52-yard pass from Drew Brees to Devery Henderson.

XVI. Sometime in the first twenty-six (26) minutes, Jim Nantz will explain the story behind Drew Brees' birthmark.

XVII. Before halftime, there will be at least three commercials involving talking animals.

XVIII. Before halftime, there will be at least seven commercials involving men doing unspeakable things in the name of beer.

XVIII. The Tim Tebow ad will be overshadowed by a more controversial commercial put out by a desperate corporation hit hard by the recession. Partial male nudity will be involved.

XIX. At halftime, approximately 38 percent of viewers will pose this question: That's Roger Daltrey?

XX. At halftime, Pete Townsend will attempt to shatter a guitar and fail.

XXI. At halftime, the Who will indeed perform a medley of their favorite songs, prompting 90 percent of major American bloggers to make Squeeze Box jokes.

XXII. The third quarter will begin with a trick play.

XXIII. Each team will turn the ball over two times in the third quarter.

XXIV. Phil Simms will question whether the game is getting "sloppy."

XXV. In the third quarter, Pierre Thomas will score on a 26-yard run. The play will be reviewed, and the review will be unncessarily long, prompting another round of commercials involving a talking marmot.

XXVI. In the third quarter, Manning will throw an 18-yard touchdown pass to Pierre Garcon, who will do something nice to acknowledge Haiti.

XXVII. Jim Nantz will call the moment "one of the greatest things I've seen."

XXVIII. Twelve percent of Super Bowl parties will run short of french onion dip at the end of the third quarter.

XXIX. During the break between the third and fourth quarters, an ad for a major American beer company will feature six buxom women and a Shakespeare-quoting rhinoceros.

XXX-XL. Manning will complete ten consecutive passes in the fourth quarter, prompting Nantz to refer to him as "The Manning" after each one.

XLI. The game will come down to the final minutes, at which time Jeremy Shockey will make his only catch of the game, and immediately stand up and taunt several defenders.

XLII. In the final two minutes, Brees will be lauded for his poise immediately before throwing a crucial interception.

XLIII. In the final two minutes, a major American beer company will unveil a commercial involving a sea turtle who is also a renowned quantum physicist.

XLIV. Regardless of who wins, Nantz will punctuate it with a thoroughly vetted play on words that will cause 84 percent of Super Bowl party attendees to hurl corn-based projectiles at their television sets.

On The Greatest Super Bowl Week of All-Time

They held a parade in New Orleans for Buddy Diliberto on Sunday. That name might mean nothing to you; it didn't mean much to me until I started researching this book.* In fact, I didn't know until I read this story that Diliberto, a local broadcaster, had a cult following in New Orleans, that he had once pledged to wear a dress and dance through the streets if the Saints went to the Super Bowl. I really only knew one thing about Buddy Diliberto, which hearkens back to the most interesting Super Bowl week in history. Never before--not even, I would argue, in the era of Namath--has one person so defiantly courted controversy on the biggest stage in sports, and it just so happens that Buddy Diliberto was one of those people swept up in the force of nature that was Jim McMahon.

If you weren't alive in 1986, it's kind of difficult to fathom a performance like McMahon's; in the matter of a few days, he started a controversy over Eastern medicine, mooned a helicopter, urinated on Bourbon Street, and then, thanks to Diliberto, dealt with death threats for the one insult he never actually uttered: Calling the women of New Orleans "sluts," something that Diliberto reported after hearing it had been uttered on a Chicago radio show, even thought McMahon had never appeared on said radio show. By the time the game arrived, McMahon told me, his greatest concern was not the Patriots' defense; no one on that Bears team ever believed New England had a chance, and they were right. And so by gametime, McMahon's primary concern was keeping an eye out for snipers.

Every day, one longtime Bears beat reporter told me, whether intentional or not, McMahon made himself the story. Never, I would argue, has there been a better match between a sports personality and the time in which he lived. In the years before he showed up in New Orleans, the game had become staid and uninteresting; in the years after, it became micro-managed and pre-packaged. McMahon and that Bears team fit into a narrow window of opportunity, when sports and celebrity were just beginning to merge, and when the very idea of sports marketing was in its infancy, as the gaudy and self-aggrandizing spirit of the '80's reached its peak. Those Bears were full of characters, but it was McMahon who set the tone, McMahon who pushed the boundaries, McMahon who made this the most interesting (if not the best) team in the history of the NFL.** We should get a better game this weekend (or at least, I hope we do), but there may never be a better Super Bowl week.

 *Available for pre-order!
**Are there any other teams with enough lasting popularity to reprise a 25-year old video clip for a company looking to "rebrand itself"?