Tag: Football

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Harrison Butker’s Beautiful Nobody Wife

Someone on Facebook posted this, in response to the ridiculous controversy over the speech made by football player Harrison Butker of the Kansas City Chiefs to the graduates of Benedictine College in Atchinson, Kansas.

Oh no, a catholic gave a pro catholic speech with catholic views to catholic students at a catholic school, the horror, the misogyny, the… idiots love to go out of their way to be offended. The same crowd that preaches acceptance cannot stand living in a world where other people aren’t like them apparently

I responded:

Agree. The same way a male state legislator with no medical training or background and expertise in psychology or physiology should not be telling parents what they can or cannot do to address a child’s issues with sexual identity. Nor should the same state politicians be telling libraries what books they can stock on their shelves. Or if people who are fearful of communicable diseases can wear a mask. Or if teachers can teach about the fundamentals of the U.S. economy before 1865. Idiots love to go out of their way to be offended.

I initially thought the entire “scandal” was just media masturbation: a trivial event and a trivial offense sparking trivial outrage and then trivial blow-back, and so on, with everyone losing sight of the utter triviality of the original event along the way.  Harrison Butker is a nobody, a fucking football player, of no particular consequence, and certainly of no importance to culture or intellectual life in the U.S.

His comments were not as anodyne as his defenders would have it, nor as caustic as his critics would have it. They are just unbelievably mediocre.  Seriously?  In this day and age?  Women should stay home and cook and clean and have babies?

He says:

On the day before Mother’s Day, he said, “I can tell you that my beautiful wife Isabelle would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother.

I can’t think of anything more deeply insulting to Isabelle.  You had no life before you met the wondrous Harrison Buttkiss?  You were not a whole person, because this amazing, virile, intelligent, paragon of testosterone had not yet laid you?

He went further, attacking diversity and inclusion in general, gay marriage, and so on– the usual litany of ignorant white male grievance.  He attacked abortion, which is odd because his party has left him in the dust on this issue.   Have you checked with Mike Pence lately?  And what other bedrock principles are you and your party eager to shed the moment they become politically inconvenient?

Shame on you Benedictine College!  Not because Butkisser gave you a mind-numbing divisive grievance-laced litany of intellectual dishonesty, but because you chose an athlete of mediocre intelligence to give your graduation address.  Someone who is famous for one-dimensionality, or achievements in the stupidest, dullest major sport in the world.  Please– the entire secular, consumerist, celebrity-addled world worships these masters of inanity.  Can’t a college — especially a Catholic Christian College– stand up and say, we will be different!  We will not kowtow to the worldly vice of idolization of professional athletes and materialistic success!  No, we will invite someone with real achievements in really important, consequential areas, like literature, journalism, painting, music, engineering, science, social services, or perhaps even ministry.

But then the administration of Benedictine College wouldn’t get to go home and tell their wives and mommies, “Guess I got to meet?” and really impress them.

 

 

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School is Football

The Story

It is really depressing to read this story in the New York Times about two impoverished Philadelphia high schools who were rivals at football and who were forced to merge because of declining enrollments and public debt. The New York Times, who should know better, thinks this is a feel-good story because the two schools together produced a football team that could win.

It is not unusual at all to see articles in the U.S. press about how important it is to have schools and universities and colleges so that there can be football. The Times notes that the coach of the football team mentioned academics once. And the writer keeps trying to insist that the football success has some bearing on other apple-pie issues like school violence, attendance, and just how wonderful these poor, mostly black kids can now feel about themselves.

Personally, I think the schools in the U.S., at all levels, should give up the academics entirely and do the only thing they are really good at: exploiting children for adult gratification. It’s the coaches and parents, who turn out in droves for the matches, who are driving this process, living their own competitive ambitions through their children, and their children who pay– the football players at King now have to do year-round weight training. Isn’t that great? Wow! What self-discipline and ambition and drive! Oh– and maybe he’ll do his homework too, but who the what cares?

Doesn’t the New York Times care about the academic performance of this school? Of course it does. Then why this exuberant account of the success of big bad dudes crashing into each other? What does that have to do with the mission of a school, with the students’ social lives, with poverty, with inadequate funding for the arts, with math and english and science and music and drama and poetry and history and philosophy?

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The Zambian National Soccer Team and Perceptions of Athletic Supremacy

In 1994, the entire Zambian National Soccer team– save for one player– was lost when a military plane carrying them to a tournament crashed into the ocean. These were the players who were believed to be the best starting 11 in the nation.

Given the reverence with which superstars are treated around the world, you would think that the Zambian national team, now comprised almost entirely of second place substitutes, would fail miserably. Instead, they proceeded to make it all the way to the final of the African Cup of Nations. They lost to Nigeria, 2-1, in the championship game.

What this means is not that Zambia had remarkably able second-stringers. It means our perception of “superstars” is way off the mark. I believe that, far from being a fluke, the performance of the second-stringers was probably an accurate representation of the actual difference in skill sets between world famous athletes and the athletes no one has ever heard of who labour in their shadows. That is because superstardom is less a function of real achievements than it is of real achievements and insanely obsessive media coverage which wildly inflates the public’s perception of an athlete’s real worth.

The leading scorer in any sport receives boatloads of publicity and exposure.  The second place man is almost unknown, even though he ranks just behind the famous leading scorer.

The second level of players, the ones who wait on the sidelines for someone in the first string to be injured or retired, are not substantially inferior to the top tier of players they replace. Quite often, they are better, because many of the first-stringers have passed their prime and are coasting on their reputations.

So where would you rank Derek Jeter in terms of shortstops in the American League last year?

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Penn State University

Penn State rakes in $70 million a year from it’s football program. The University eats, breathes, and suckles football.

It’s stadium holds 107,000 people.

State College– what a dumb name for a town!– only has a population of about 50,000.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that Coach Paterno and assistant coach Mike McQueary didn’t call the police because it was former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky raping that ten-year-old boy. The more I think about it, the more ridiculously lame Paterno’s excuse– that he notified Penn State’s administration and trusted them to do the right thing– sounds.

Let’s leave that aside for now.

My question is, why do they even bother with the “university” aspect of their operations?

All those professors and non-football-playing students and courses and books and libraries and museums and lectures and panel discussions and seminars and sororities and fraternities– why bother? Who needs them? Who wants them? Why not just convert all the big universities into sports franchises, like the NBA, NFL, or MLB?

The football is obviously the only real focus of the institutions that devote so many resources to the sport, and whose mostly highly paid employee is the football coach.  Why are you pretending to give the slightest fuck about education?

Let’s say you’re interested in learning. Yeah, lets say you are a total weirdo by American standards. If you really wanted to, you could probably buy a few buildings, hire a few smart, educated people who know something about history or English or physics or economics, and see if you could get them to pass on their knowledge to young people who think there might be some value to it.

You could have a place where learning is valued, where knowledge is prized, and the imagination is appreciated.

Some young people who didn’t think the life of the mind was a mere after thought, a tiny, insignificant garnish to the gleaming athletic trophies, might sign up. You could have dorms and cafeterias. You could name the place after a brilliant writer or artist or economist or scientist.

And once in a while, if the kids need to get their yah-yahs out, there could be a game of football or something.

But just imagine:  place devoted to learning and knowledge and the arts and intellectual development!  Would that be amazing.

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Rudy

I watched and admired a movie called “Rudy” several years ago. It’s the “true” story about a devoted Notre Dame football fan named Rudy Ruettiger, who saved up his money and enrolled in Notre Dame so he could try out for the football team. He tried out and practiced hard and trained with determination and sucked up to the entire football department for four years and got to be a second-stringer, without once getting a chance to play. Finally, in his last year, his teammates all threw their sweaters onto the coach’s desk and declared that they would not play if Rudy was not put onto the field.  So he was allowed on the field– for one play–  in the last minute of a game that was already decided.

I thought the film was intentionally funny. I thought it did a reasonably good job of showing how Rudy wasted four years of his life under a delusion. I thought most people watching the film would realize that if Rudy had devoted half the energy he gave to the Notre Dame football team to almost any other pursuit, he would have had something important and meaningful or even beautiful to show for it.

I thought it revealed that our so-called heroes– athletes, especially– inevitably use people like Rudy because that’s the way the system works.

Years later, I realized that I had it all wrong: it was meant seriously– Rudy was to be admired for wasting most of his college life waiting for a chance to play while he had none of the skills or attributes required to be a good player. He was a hero. He never quit. The lesson we were supposed to take away from this film was: never give up on your dreams.

Even if your dream is to flap your arms and fly, or marry Angelina Jolie, or be nominated to the Supreme Court.

Well, the one thing that didn’t occur to me was that most of the movie was pure hokum. It didn’t occur to me because I assumed that a film made of an unremarkable man who led really an unremarkable life would at least adhere to a few unremarkable facts.

The main “facts” are that Rudy tried out for the team, never got to play until the very last moment, and in that very short moment, had some peripheral involvement in a quarterback sack. The crowd did not know Rudy’s story and did not cheer wildly because he had just realized his dream (as if). They did not chant his name. The play-by-play announcer did not note his presence. The opposing quarter-back did not mutter, “who was that man!” under his breath (all right — I made that up — it wasn’t in the movie). He didn’t have a brother. The coach did not oppose him going into the game– in fact, he insisted on it. His team-mates never dropped their sweaters on the coach’s desk as a protest gesture against Rudy being denied a chance on the field.

Without those delusional Rudy’s out there– the losers in this scheme of things– how could we have winners?

So, aside from the facts, yes, it’s a true story. Does it still inspire you? I have an investment opportunity, if it does…

A real comment by a real fan of the film on IMDB:

If this movie doesn’t get you motivated, then something is wrong with you. This movie proves that good things happen to people who work hard and don’t except[sic] the circumstances they are dealt. I’ve seen this movie more than 30 times in my life, and i still cant get through the end of this movie without getting tears in my eyes. Another thing this movie teaches you is to listen to the people in your life who believe in you and want you to succeed, don’t listen to the people who want you to fail and constantly remind you that you are going to fail. “The best revenge is success.” One of my favorite quotes comes from this movie as well, when the coach dan devine tells rudy and the rest of the team that “Nobody, and i mean nobody, comes into our house and pushes us around.”

And thus the viewer becomes complicit in the hoax.

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The Rolling Stones at the Superbowl

Let me get this straight:  the NFL wants to provide a half-time show that will attract the coveted 18-25 demographic– free-spending young adults who like geriatric rock stars, apparently. Would these people like to watch the Olsen Twins? No. Jessica Simpson? Well, all right– the meaning of “wholesome” has changed a bit. I know– we’ll get The Rolling Stones. Hey, aren’t they a bunch of perverts? Of course they are.

While simultaneously announcing that they have booked a filthy, disgusting, perverted band for the half-time show (by their standards, not mine), the promoters, the NFL, assures viewers that the entertainment will be quite wholesome. Suitable for the entire family. You won’t be embarrassed if your kids are watching. But your kids will want to watch.

Is this belated recognition of the fact that any interesting culture in our society seems to come from rebels and outsiders? Why on earth didn’t they book Garth Brooks or Tammy Wynette, if they wanted something wholesome?

How will the promoters ensure that the audience is spared anything shocking or inappropriate? They will have a five-second delay on the broadcast.

And it worked. During “Start Me Up” (the real obscenity here is that “Start Me Up” was sold to Microsoft as the theme for Windows 98 for millions of dollars), Mick Jagger alluded to the fact that this woman of whom he was singing was so sexy that she could cause a dead man to become aroused. But not in so many words. So the microphone went dead and Mick’s lips moved alone and silently.

All right. Everybody’s happy. The kids get to be entertained by the world’s greatest rock’n’roll band, and the adults get to sleep easy knowing that their children are still infused with good, wholesome, Calvinist virtues.

But the Rolling Stones, worried about their credibility with the in crowd, announce that they are disgusted with the censorship. But the NFL announces that if they were so disgusted with the censorship, why did they agree to play in the first place? The Rolling Stones respond, just because we knew about it in advance and agreed to it doesn’t mean we don’t think it’s stupid. Pay us first, then we’ll tell you how stupid it is.

The answer is: all of the above.