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.

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.

"More Than A Game": Why we mythologize athletes →

[E]very exhibit, book, movie, etc about games or sports More Than A Game and it would be entirely appropriate. Try it – it’s fun! Rudy or Raging Bull or A League Of Their Own or Invictus or “Despite Outcome, U.S. Women Earned Respect” or something about poker or Dungeons & Dragons or Halo. Every story about games is about how they transcend the actual mechanics of gameplay, or about how those gameplay mechanics are executed with such grace and elegance that they can make us feel better about being human and alive.

I wrote about the “more than a game” thing over here a few weeks ago, but I didn’t feel like I finished saying what I had to say about it. In this week’s Down And Distance column for CultureMap, I expand on those ideas. Featuring Game Of Thrones jokes (spoiler: The New England Patriots are the Lannisters), great pictures from Neil Leifer’s new book of football photos, and some thoughts about why whatever game you love — whether it’s football or Magic: The Gathering or Words With Friends — really matters.

“More Than A Game”

Reading this post on the just-launched CultureMap Austin about an exhibit at the Texas History Museum on high school football called “More Than A Game” reminded me of something I think about every time I browse the sports section of the book store and see the staggering number of books called More Than A Game, or the various documentary films with that title. Which is: if we have so many games whose importance we feel the need to justify by declaring that they’re more than a game, maybe we should instead just all agree that games are actually pretty important to us? 

What a weird, condescending point to make. Oh, this isn’t just a game — people really care about what happens in this one! There are things at stake here! In fact, I am fairly certain that every exhibit, book, movie, etc about games and sports could credibly be called more than a game and that would be entirely appropriate. Try it — it’s fun! Friday Night Lights or It Never Rains In Tiger Stadium or Raging Bull or A League Of Their Own or “Despite Outcome, U.S. Women Earned Respect” or something about poker or Dungeons & Dragons or Halo or whatever. Every story about games is ultimately about how they transcend the actual mechanics of gameplay, or about how those gameplay mechanics are executed with such grace and elegance that they can make us feel better about being human and alive.

We care, a lot, about games. There’s no need to be so self-conscious about it.

Down and Distance

(I kept a football column on the hip-hop/politics/culture website Troubl.org a few years ago. It was called Down and Distance, and it was about the places where football, politics, pop culture, and the other parts of contemporary American culture intersect. The site was down for a long while, but recently relaunched — albeit without archives. I need to have some of the old columns online at the moment, and this seemed like a good place to keep them. This one is from October 13, 2008.)

I spent Saturday at the Three Points Ranch, just outside of Marble Falls, TX, for a wedding ceremony. Evan, a college friend of my wife’s, was getting married to his boyfriend, Addison. They’re both Manhattanites, upwardly-mobile members of a social class I rarely spend time with. The ceremony was conducted in Texas, as that’s where both of their families hail from, but the actual wedding papers, by law, were to be filed in Massachusetts- except the day before the wedding, Connecticut ruled that gay folks could get married in their state, saving them a trip further north.

It made for some interesting table-talk at the reception, let me tell you. My wife and I sat at a table with six well-dressed, well-coifed men, all couples, as well as an elderly uncle, a widower who wore his cowboy hat, boots, and belt buckle emblazoned with the words right to bear arms without a trace of irony.

So, where are you from? I asked the dude sitting next to me.

Memphis, he said. Originally, Memphis. I live in New York now.

Ooh, Tennessee? a young fella across the table said. Have you been to Dollywood?

The rest of the table looked at him with stark interest, and he nodded profusely. Only four times! He laughed.

Oh, god, I want to go so bad, the man seated next to my wife said, his voice thick with an Australian accent. I just love her.

I kicked my wife under the table, delighted to have a stereotype as innocuous as a group of gay men’s devotion to Dolly Parton validated, when the old cowboy spoke. That woman is a national treasure, he said with a thick West Texas drawl, something like Couch Taylor on Friday Night Lights mixed with a hint of Sam Elliott.

I turned to the guy who started this, the one from Tennessee, aware that the novelty of this conversation would quickly wear off. Enough about Dolly Parton, I implored, what do you think of the Titans this year?

Oh my god, they’re so good, he squealed, we’re going all the way this year. Definitely.

No way, his boyfriend shook his head. It’s a Giants repeat!

At this point, the old Texan glared at the young gay Manhattan socialite. Now boy, he said, there are some things that just aren’t okay in Texas.

My wife tried desperately to steer the topic of conversation back to Dolly Parton, even bringing up the fact that she briefly met Madonna at a theatre in London earlier in the year, but it was no use. This was football season, and we were all American men. We were lucky that the shouting match over Vince Young, Eli Manning, and Tony Romo didn’t end up coming to blows.

[something to celebrate] After the cake was cut, my wife approached the old cowboy to ask what he thought of the ceremony.

I got choked up, he said. I don’t usually get teary at weddings, but this was something. I never saw nobody get gay-married before.

And it was strange, watching these two people celebrate a powerful, touching milestone in their lives together as a vastly disparate group of family and friends cheered them on… only to realize that it’s actually illegal.

It’s fucked up, and we’ve all known that it’s fucked up for some time, but it didn’t connect with me until I saw firsthand what a joyous occasion it was for everybody involved, from aged West Texans to young Manhattan hipsters, and realized that the very thing we were all celebrating was illegal for no goddamn reason. But it wasn’t political, not that Saturday. It was just a Good Thing.

It was the last good thing there was.

[then, on sunday…] Lord, fuck the NFL. Every one of us gathered around the televisions in the ranch the following day, straining to catch updates on our various games, had our hearts broken. Whether it was my pathetic Chicago Bears giving up a hard-earned single point lead after a kickoff with eleven seconds on the clock, or the Dallas Cowboys getting clobbered by the Arizona Cardinals in overtime, or the Redskins coughing up blood and allowing the Rams to claim their first win of the season, football looks like a dire game to follow this year.

Yeah, the parity the league is based upon works, but that sure equals a lot of broken hearts on Sunday. Monday, too- as of this writing, the miserable Cleveland Browns are two minutes away from claiming victory over the undefeated New York Giants. Of the 14 games played this week, five of them were decided within the final thirty seconds of play. And every heavy-hitter favorite in the league, from the Giants and the Cowboys and the Redskins to the Brady-less Patriots, went down to a team they had no business losing to. When they say any given Sunday, what they’re really talking about was October 12, 2008.

It was a rough weekend, with the stuffing showing through the shoulder pads of even the mightiest names in the game- we learned that Peyton Manning had a secret second surgery, that Tony Romo would be out for at least a month with a broken pinky, that Adrian Peterson could be contained by a team as godawful as the fucking Detroit Lions, that Brian Urlacher and Lance Briggs could be made to look like goddamn college ballplayers against Matt Ryan… All of which means that any attempt to define the power rankings in the NFL right now is pointless. No one has any idea how good anybody is. Right now it looks like Tennessee and Indianapolis will make a run for the AFC title in January, while New York and Tampa battle it out to represent the NFC, but who the hell knows? Any team not based in Cincinnati or Detroit has at least a 50/50 shot of winning the Super Bowl right now. Hell, Kansas City and St. Louis have both proven their ability to win games, so long as they’re up against good teams- a few lucky turns and you could see an all-Missouri Super Bowl!

We fled the ranch to head back to Austin before Sunday night’s embarrassing match-up between the Patriots and the Chargers- Loser Bowl ‘08, a grotesque, Bizarro-world parody of last year’s AFC Championship Game. The fake New England Patriots lost by 20 to the fake San Diego Chargers, but I was not there to see it. It’s for the best- the occasion was meant to be joyous, if illegal. But think for a second how fucked-up that is: it’s goddamn criminal for two dudes to get married, but there’s no legislation that would outlaw a week of football as shitty as Week 6 of the 2008 NFL season?