Gimme That Internet

For awhile, I was planning on trying to tote up all the words I wrote during the week before the Super Bowl. Why I was going to do this was a question that didn't occur to me until later than it probably should've, but it did occur to me. Not only would it not be much of a conversation starter -- especially when I'd have to later allow that, averaged out, I got something like seven cents per word -- but it would also probably be something of a bummer. More so to me than to the poor human stuck listening to me talk about it, but probably to both of us.

Luckily for me, though, some of those words were kind of a big deal for me. Over the last half of the week, I crashed through a story for the Wall Street Journal that was pretty easily the biggest thing I've yet done for them, and definitely the biggest journalistic "get" of a career essentially devoid of them. Which is fine, since that's not really what I do -- I compare athletes to deli meats, first and foremost. But I can see what's cool about this sort of thing, now. The piece is about the rediscovery -- after 44 years of being presumed lost -- of the network broadcast of the first Super Bowl. That one's here, and I'm pretty proud of it.

I also wrote what will probably be my last Kicked Off column for The Awl, and it is -- spoiler alert -- about the Super Bowl, and also has some more description of Super Bowl I (and more profanity, and more adjectives) than I was allowed at the Journal. I'm probably prouder of it, because my affection for my own voice overshadows my desire to be a scoopy newspaper dude. I also think I came closer to saying what I've been trying to say all year in this one than I previously have.

It's not a failure of taste that leads NFL owners—all of them owners of profitable teams, all of them beneficiaries of a television deal that pays the league $4 billion per annum—to boldly demand massive concessions from the players union because Of These Difficult Economic Times. Or that leads Sports Illustrated's NFL hagiographist/coffee-critic Peter King to write a tone-deaf piece fretting over the prospect that commissioner Roger Goodell—"sandy-haired and fit at 51," recipient of nearly $10 million in annual pay, point man on the owners' plan to extract those concessions and add two regular season games (which fans don't necessarily want) to the NFL's already brutal schedule—might be working too hard, according to friends. Or, at the most distant pole, that led Chuck Klosterman to get up at the Varsity Letters reading series on Thursday night and extemporize to the effect that the prospect of a NFL player dying on the field is something he likes most about the game. "Think about it," Klosterman said, tipsy off his own contrarianism, "they're putting their lives on the line out there." Klosterman seemed, beneath his grin and that beard and at the distance from which I regarded him, to be moved by how moved he was at the prospect, and amused at how amusing he found it.

That is all rotten, of course. But while the above are not in good taste, they are failures of perspective first and foremost. They reflect an inability or unwillingness to see beyond the self-flattery of dumb comforts and acknowledge complicated circumstances and context. Or, if you prefer, those distinct idiocies are different symptomatic presentations of the same disorder—a terminal inability to give a shit. The NFL, as it presently exists, is built to elicit this response in people—it makes emotion cheaper and easier to digest, it takes the laziest arms-length cruelties and ignorance and processes them until they are rich and filling. But the bigger the NFL makes itself—the more it gorges on synergies and succumbs to the distorting, obliterating appetites of irresponsible wealth—the more obese it becomes. The reason why the long march to the Super Bowl is exhausting—and why the entire NFL experience is increasingly obscene in an increasing number of ways—is that the NFL is not presently in shape to make a journey this long. It is too big, and getting bigger.

So, after what was certainly the busiest week of my professional life -- I even did a Sunday Daily Fix this morning -- I feel mostly physical sensations. I fell on the ice in New Haven this morning, so I've got this shame/ache cocktail going on there, and I've some of the expected carpal tunnel/brain issues. But feeling even a little bit of pride is nice, and sort of a surprise. I look forward to resting, whenever I'll get to do that, but I didn't expect all this to feel as worth-it as it currently does. This could all be undone by another slip on the ice, though. Young septuagenarian over here. Jeez.

Tom Brady Speaks Out On Ugg Apparel

So, Tom Brady is endorsing Ugg men's apparel. It's a pretty huge deal, which is why the sports media is covering it. It's obvious that this could be what apparel-market watchers and total buttheads call "a game change." But it's also clear that men will never buy Ugg apparel. So, it's complicated.

I did what journalists do and called Tom Brady for comment on this. What I got was a very long statement, a lot of it about hair care and a small portion of it about the difficulties of shaving when your chin looks like his does. But I've edited the most salient bit and put it below. I think it's quite illuminating.

BRADY: And you see this happen every time someone tries to branch out and try something different, push himself. When Justin Timberlake -- close friend, we watch DVR'ed episodes of Entourage on Tuesdays, sometimes via Skype but every Tuesday since 2005 -- wanted to get into restaurants, people were like, "You're spreading yourself too thin, concentrate on your acting." That's just an example. There are a bunch of others. Bruce Willis and his vodka brand, and this one's near and dear to me because Bruce and I were co-chairs of this Anti-Death Tax Gala that Robert Kraft threw last year, but Bruce put his heart and soul into that vodka, and everyone in the media's like, "no, famous people can't have vodka brands, but maybe you can have yours as long as you don't go back to making music."

I'm maybe off topic, but my point being that Ugg clothing is a product I believe in, it's a natural fit, and so partnering with them isn't the sort of thing I really like seeing criticized. And there's this argument that Uggs, you hear this argument, sometimes: "Ugg boots are just for women, and more specifically they're just for women in certain parts of Nassau County and that Pamela Geller woman who goes around stopping up the toilets in Middle Eastern restaurants with paper towels because she hates Sharia law so much." And that sentiment is ignorant, that sentiment is stupid, okay. Because I buy the boots for my offensive lineman every season, and they love them. Logan Mankins wears them during practice. You can't see it, but Tully Banta-Cain wears this fur-lined Ugg hat that I got him for Secret Santa last year under his helmet when it gets cold. It's disgusting, by this point, it looks like a giant hairy pancake and smells like microwaved diapers, but Tully swears by it. And these are men. Tell Tully Banta-Cain that men don't wear Ugg apparel, you know?

But my point is that I'm branching out -- because I'm not just a football player, you know, any more than Bruce Willis is just an actor. He's a bluesman. He loves vodka. He's a PERSON, okay. And people have interests, and some of us have brands, and those brands need cultivating the same as any other person's brand does. So I feel like people need to get over it. And anyway, I'm trying to focus on the Jets. That's job one.

(The Awl Yakkin' About Football thing has been delayed this week, but this will be discussed, when Jeff and I finally get around to discussing things)