Football is over and Peyton Manning is the story: Does Eli pass the Matt Ryan test →

The idea that the NFL is a passing league isn’t a new one, but the inequity between the two conferences has never been clearer. The three best passers in the NFL are all playing in the NFC, and the relative dearth of talent at the position in the AFC is the reason that Vegas has the conference as a 3-point underdog in next year’s Super Bowl already.

Here’s a way to determine whether a team has a decent quarterback in place or not — let’s call it The Matt Ryan Test. Matt Ryan, the Atlanta Falcons quarterback, is an above-average player whose best years are still ahead of him, but he’s unlikely to ever be confused with Joe Montana or Johnny Unitas — the very definition of “decent.” The Matt Ryan Test is this: If you’d trade your team’s quarterback for Matt Ryan in an even exchange, then your team doesn’t have a decent quarterback in place.

In the AFC, only a handful of team’s pass the Ryan Test — the Patriots, the Chargers, the Steelers, and the Texans are the only teams with a starter in place who’s at least as good as Matt Ryan. There’d be serious conversations in Oakland and Cincinnati about it, and regardless of what Broncos fans think, John Elway would have Tim Tebow stuffed in a suitcase before the Falcons hung up the phone.

As football season comes to a close, so too does my Culturemap football column, Down And Distance enter its offseason. Thanks to everybody who read it and wrote in, except for those who threatened me for pointing out that Ben Roethlisberger has been credibly accused of rape more than once (fuck y’all!) and give this last column a read!

We introduce the concept of The Matt Ryan Test, speculate about what the speculation surrounding Peyton Manning will be like (boners swordfights around the ESPN offices!), and lament the fact that during the rest of the primary season, there will be no easy football metaphors to reach for, leaving us woefully restricted to comparing the candidates to baseball and basketball players until things heat up as the 2012 NFL season kicks off…

Seriously, though, getting to write a weekly column where I wrote about football as a social, political, and cultural force through which we view ourselves as Americans has been a dream project of mine for a very long time, and I had so much fun doing it that I am apparently right now typing a weird acceptance speech on Tumblr. But thanks, sincerely, to the people who read it and wanted to talk about it with me, and especially to Culturemap for saying yes to a kind of weird idea (when they were just launching, no less) that they knew would take half a year to complete. This was so much fun for me, seriously.

The Best Football Fan Raps →

I spent a lot of last week putting this together. Sadly, it required kind of a lot of research, but I was tasked with creating a comprehensive history of the NFL fan rap for Adult Swim.

It started as a thing players did for themselves in the 80’s — see the aforementioned “Super Bowl Shuffle” — and fell out of favor in the 90’s. That part has been documented before, but did you know that the modern era of football fan raps traces back to… Seattle in 2005? It was the perfect storm: The Seahawks in the Super Bowl for the first time, YouTube as a distribution means; the technology that meant that every fan in a bedroom could suddenly produce a track that sounded halfway competent.

From there, this shit is cray — there’ve probably been 5-6 new Giants/Patriots raps uploaded to YouTube per hoursince Championship weekend. If you want to see how the form has evolved from “Let’s Ram It” to “Arizona Diss Rap,” click the link, y’all.

Marcia Mount Shoop: "NFL stands for 'No Family Life.'" →

Links ahoy today! This one is neat: Marcia Mount Shoop, wife of former Chicago Bears offensive coordinator John Shoop, blogs about what “long hours” mean when you’re talking about working on an NFL coaching staff, and what it’s like to be married to someone who is expected to be at work 19 hours a day during the season. (Imagine how hard it is to be married to a coach whose playcalling is more complex than “three runs up the middle, then punt”!*)

Anyway — she talks about how she has a career, too, and the inequities there. Which is stuff that most people who read this blog are well-versed in, but it’s interesting to hear a woman who is married to a football coach write about it in her own words.

*Obligatory “John Shoop is not popular amongst Bears fans” snark, sorry, Marcia.

Rating the storytelling potential of the four possible Super Bowl matchups →

The New Orleans Saints are done, and Drew Brees’ absurd year of disrespect from the sports establishment — dude had the best year of any quarterback probably ever and was an afterthought in MVP discussions — will likely last for another season. The Green Bay Packers — the NFL’s most dominant force — were clobbered by the New York Giants so convincingly, and with their offense sputtering so badly, that you could practically hear Brett Favre furiously masturbating throughout the fourth quarter all the way in Texas…

…and even Tim friggin’ Tebow, the blue-and-orange messiah, was utterly exposed by a merciless Tom Brady with hate in his heart, determined to make the kid go from looking like Moses to looking like Job.

Yeah, those are the stories we are done with. Oh, you’ll hear Tebow’s name plenty, and up in Wisconsin the “what the hell just happened” posts will be penned by bloggers with their foam cheeseheads still jauntily askew from the tailgate party for the next two weeks. But if there is one thing that the NFL has in common with the political world and the broader American culture, it is that it forgets quickly what it cared about deeply only weeks earlier.

Tim Tebow is a punchline for the next few months, at least, and the Discount Double-Check commercials will make grown men from Fon Du Lac tear up until the start of free agency — and all that matters now is what becomes of the teams who are still in this thing.

I’ve tried this year through the Down And Distance column at Culturemap to offer a type of sportswriting that’s a bit more thoughtful, conscious, engaged-in-the-larger-world, and culturally aware than most. Except this week, where it’s all immature jokes, masturbation gags, Ron Paul slights, and mean-spirited personal attacks on Boston sports fans.

Sometimes, you just have to say fuck it.

The playoffs versus the primaries: At least the NFL requires you to be good before you can win →

[W]hile parity rules in the NFL, random arbitrariness isn’t usually the way things work: losers, typically, are exposed as losers in the playoffs. The football-watching establishment may be nearly as bored with the long-presumed favorites in Green Bay as the Republican base is with Mitt Romney, but that boredom doesn’t mean that they’ll randomly select the St. Louis Rams — the football equivalent to Rick Santorum — to advance in the playoffs just because it’d be kinda neat.

Which is the point: America, especially in the conservative worldview, likes to see itself as a pure meritocracy. “Jim Abbott,” they like to say, indicating that hard work and determination are enough to make anyone a success. But the Republican primaries, whoever ultimately wins them, indicate something else. You don’t necessarily need to be good in order to win. In the end, it looks like a tight three-way that resulted in Santorum — but that doesn’t make him a winner. It only makes him the person who did less badly than everybody else, because someone — statistically speaking — had to.

So, I filed this week’s Down And Distance last night before Romney pulled off his decisive eight (8) vote victory after every precinct reported. Still, the point seems to be more or less intact (though I’ll lose the super mature Santorum pun) — this is as arbitrary a primary season as has happened in my lifetime, to say the least. While it’d have been hugely unexpected for something as competitive and fascinating as ‘08 to occur a second time, especially with an incumbent as one of the guys in the race — but geez. This makes the loser class of ‘04, which at least had a clear narrative (outsider obviously torpedoed by establishment in favor of their favored Massachusetts empty suit), seem positively high-concept.

You have to assume that, if the primary season had lasted just another 2-3 weeks, and the Santorum surge had been pushed against by some negative ads, the 75.4% who’ll never vote for Romney would have ended up giving Huntsman some love. This isn’t really even anybody but Romney, it’s anybody but everybody, and that’s not how America is designed. Or, at least, not how America sees itself working.

The playoffs are how we wish America worked. The primaries are how it is at its most depressing. That’s never been more clear than this year.

So, I got a lot of hate mail yesterday. →

It’s weird — I don’t usually get hate mail. Negative comments? Those I get like crazy. I’ve had pseudonymous people on the Internet publicly declare that I am stupid/retarded/fat/gay/black?/racist/etc in response to things that I’ve written loads of times, but this is the first time that a bunch of people independently took it upon themselves to email me to let me know how much of those above things I am.

In any case: This was a response to this week’s Down And Distance column for CultureMap, which talked about Ben Roethlisberger. The emails, naturally, were from Steelers fans who felt like I was picking on their guy unfairly, since it’s been over a year since the last time he was accused of raping anybody.

I will admit that it’s not the freshest of topics, but that’s why I wanted to re-visit it. Because while I am certainly aware that 20 months are an eternity in football-time, I bet it doesn’t seem like several lifetimes ago to the young woman in Milledgeville, Georgia who offered horrifying details to the police (who, hah, posed for pictures with the QB when they got there) about what Roethlisberger did after he had her cornered. That’s part of the point.

The other part of it is that the dude gets to just go and play football now, 20 months later, after a Super Bowl appearance and a few stressful weeks with a publicist have rehabilitated his image. And we will watch, and when we do, we should remember who we’re watching, and what role our enthusiasm for watching played in the fact that he avoided prosecution.

But the article isn’t some you shouldn’t root for the Steelers guilt trip. And that’s why I’m so surprised by the angry emails. Because I know how it is. You were a Steelers fan long before Ben Roethlisberger joined the team. There is an emotional connection to the black and yellow colors and the uniform that is very real and very significant, and I don’t think that people should feel like they have to give that up in order to be a good person — that is not productive. It doesn’t work that way. And ultimately, it’s got nothing really to do with the Steelers. They’re just the team that drafted Roethlisberger. Whatever team he ended up on, they’d be the bad guys. It’s a thing that all of us who care about football share responsibility for.

So I also didn’t propose that we should stop caring about football, because the problem isn’t football, either. Ben Roethlisberger could have played baseball, and people would have argued that the women were lying; the police would still have posed for pictures and called the one in Georgia a drunk fucking bitch; the investigation still would have been dropped because she still wouldn’t have wanted her name in the news. That’d be true if he played baseball, or played in a killer band, or starred in movies, or ran for office. The culture that values Famous, Important Dudes more than the women that they may have raped, is bigger than football.

So what I proposed in the article that got me a couple dozen hate emails was really just a gesture, inspired by the #10ForTebow thing a couple weeks ago: put your money where your mouth is, and prove that you care about the women who may have been raped by the people that our participation in this culture has helped empower. If you want to watch Ben Roethlisberger play football — whether he’s throwing touchdowns and you’re thrilled, or interceptions and you’re rooting against him for whatever reasons — then every time he scores, or tosses a pick, donate $10 to RAINN. Pay for your interest in what he’s doing on the field by offering support to the women who nobody’s cheering for. It doesn’t solve the problem, but at least it says that they’re not forgotten.

And apparently that sentiment is still so upsetting to dudes — not a single letter or comment from a lady! — that they felt the need to fill my inbox with shit about how much I suck for suggesting it.

Charles P. Pierce on Tim Tebow and religion in the public square. →

Tim Tebow became “compelling” because he became a character in the great national dumbshow that is our culture war. And we should be very clear about one thing — he wasn’t dragooned into this. Nobody drafted him. He walked into this role with his eyes open. Before he ever took a snap in the NFL, he appeared in an anti-choice television ad with his mother that was sponsored by Focus on the Family, an influential anti-choice, anti-gay-rights organization founded by the Rev. James Dobson. He knew what he was doing. […]

Which made a lot of the chin-stroking about Tebow’s religion over the past weeks pretty much beside the point. It has been argued paradoxically that his faith is both vital to his success and off-limits to criticism. This is, of course, nonsense. He put his business in the street that way, and he did so by allying himself with the softer side of a movement that contains other organizations that the Southern Poverty Law Center, which knows about this stuff, recently designated as hate groups.

I still write a column for CultureMap about sports, American culture, and politics (go read it!) but I am trying to limit the number of them that are about Tim Tebow, even though he really is a beautifully-wrapped Christmas gift for someone who writes about how those three topics all go together.

So I’m glad that Charles P. Pierce, writing at Grantland, gets at some things that are very important in this discussion here. The notion of whether or not Tebow’s religion is “fair game” for his critics is a huge debate.

One of the prime talking points in the debate is this: “If there were a Muslim player openly displaying his religion on the field, would mocking his faith still be okay?” If you read sports media, some jackass poses his ultimate gotcha question and settles in for checkmate. We’re too PC for that!

It’s a fucking stupid point, though, because there are Muslim players in the NFL and they don’t do that. The fact is that Tebow performing his faith is an act of extreme privilege in America. “Imagine if [non-Muslim players] mockingly bowed toward Mecca, too, after tackling him for a loss or scoring a touchdown,” the Fox link up there posits, but there’s no opportunity for it, because when Muhammad Wilkerson scored a safety by sacking Luke McCown in the end zone when the Jets played the Jaguars, he didn’t perform an overt religious display.

If he had? Holy shit, guys. Can you imagine the freakout that would follow? Can you imagine the bullshit organizations with the word family in their name protesting the Jets organization like they did Lowe’s?

Muhammad Wilkerson may want to honor his god when he plays well, but if he were anywhere near as overt about it as Tebow is, it would be a huge controversy. It would not be the subject of some good-natured ribbing from players who most likely identify as Christian themselves (most at least offer lip service that direction). And Muslim players in the NFL aren’t stupid — they are aware that they don’t share Tebow’s privileges. (Here’s a quick editorial from idiot Debbie Schlussel about the “special treatment” that Vikings safety Hussein Abdullah got because he was excused for a day from training camp to attend a Ramadan celebration at the friggin’ White House.)

In short — there isn’t a Muslim player who performs his faith the way that Tebow does, at least partly because we do not live in a culture that accepts Muslims the way that we do Christians. the fact that Tebow is in a position to have his faith mocked is a result of how overwhelmingly privileged Christians in America are.

And I like Tebow. I like watching him play, anyway. He’s neat. That touchdown against the Patriots in the first quarter yesterday, where he uses his body as a battering ram to get into the end zone over a whole bunch of New England defenders? That was awesome.

But I also donated $10 for each of Tebow’s touchdowns to the Lilith Fund, an Austin non-profit that funds abortions for women who need them but can’t afford them. He has his privileges, and part of exercising them is that other people get to respond to them. That can be with criticism, mockery, or with support of causes that Tebow or his supporters oppose. Maybe next week I’ll donate to the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. This is what comes with being a political figure in America, and as Pierce points out so effectively, that’s a role that Tebow has embraced.

You can't be an underdog if all you do is win: How Tim Tebow undercuts Rick Perry's Culture War nonsense →

Here’s a variation on the old theological question about whether God could make rocks so heavy that he couldn’t lift them: Could you have an overwhelmingly privileged segment of the population so utterly unrestrained by anyone else in the country, and so capable of doing anything that it wants, that it can even declare itself an oppressed minority?

This is the question that first occurred to me after watching Rick Perry strut around in Heath Ledger’s Brokeback Mountain jacket to complain about how icky gay people have more rights in America than good, old-fashioned Christian schoolchildren whose interlocked prayer hands are being pried apart by secular humanist teachers. You’ve seen the ad by now, and probably the parodies that followed. “There’s something wrong in this country,” Perry smirks, yanking the “oppressed minority” badge off of the 30-40% of gay and lesbian students in America who’ve attempted suicide,  and placing it firmly on the 76% of them who identify as Christian. After all, they have to hear school officials acknowledge the existence of people who celebrate other holidays that occur this time of year.

It’s a neat trick, and one that he — and his fellow culture warriors — are able to pull off by virtue of having their voices amplified and opinions taken seriously precisely because they’re not members of an oppressed minority.

But that’s the thing about the Great American Culture War: Everybody likes to feel like a victim, and there’s no way to actually keep score. Except, with Tebow, there is.

In this week’s Down And Distance column, it’s time to talk about how Rick Perry and Tim Tebow are actually at odds in the Great American Culture War.

Interview tricks in action! →

How do you feel this situation is different than what Eli was facing when he came up?
Well, every situation is different. I’ve read a little bit, with people speculating, “Would they do that?” That was the situation a long, long time that involved the Colts and involved the Elways. When Eli came along, there were a lot of circumstances there. I’m not very comfortable talking about. I wasn’t then. I got beat up about it. It’s gone.

I think the great thing is that San Diego has a great quarterback there. They’ve had outstanding teams, and Eli is very happy where he wound up. He loves being the quarterback of the New York Giants.

You’re involved with the College Football Coach of the Year Award. Who have you been most impressed with, from a college coaching standpoint?
I think so many people do a great job. I’ve been involved with Liberty Mutual and the Coach of the Year, and we’re down to 25 finalists. Liberty Mutual rewards coaches in four different divisions for Coach of the Year. We’re down to 10 finalists in the Football Bowl Subdivision, and this is like a who’s who: Mike Gundy, Brady Hoke, what a job he did at Michigan, Mark Hudspeth, Mike London, who did one of the best coaching jobs of the country at the University of Virginia. We know about Les Miles and Nick Saban, who are both playing for a national championship. Bobby Petrino at Arkansas. I’m not sure Arkansas isn’t the third-best team in the country. Mark Richt lost two games, won 10 in a row at Georgia. Bill Snyder, I saw him last night. What a great story that is — what he did at Kansas State, getting them on the map and then coming back to coach them again to a great year. Dabo Swinney’s got his Clemson team going to the Orange Bowl. Pretty impressive group with five finalists in three other divisions.

This interview with Archie Manning from Grantland isn’t particularly interesting, but I love this bit for an absolutely textbook example of an interviewer realizing that the person that he’s talking to is done with the topic and is shutting down, and so asks a softball about something boring to 99% of his readers, but about which his subject is passionate. I know that bit well — anytime I’m doing a celebrity/musician/athlete interview and I want to push on something, I try to keep a “let’s talk about your charity work/side project/dream to direct!”-type question in my pocket for when I start to sense that they’re not going to talk to me anymore if I keep pushing.