On God and the Draft

My recent little Jets draft blunder item, from Toni Monkovic of the Times:

Dewayne Robertson was cut by the Broncos. The Jets moved up in the 2003 draft, trading two first-round picks, to get him at No. 4. That strategy almost never works. And certainly didn’t in this case.

(from Rotoworld):

Broncos released DLs Dewayne Robertson and John Engelberger, LBs Jamie Winborn and Niko Koutouvides, TE Nate Jackson, and SS Marquand Manuel.

The moves save a cool $22.2M under the salary cap. Robertson’s cap figure was $16M, a ridiculous amount for a league-average wave tackle with bum knees. The No. 4 overall pick in 2003, Robertson is 27 but may not have more than a season left in him.

Extra point: The Jets gave up their No. 13 and No. 22 picks to get Robertston. Had they stayed put, they could have chosen from among Troy Polamalu, Calvin Pace, Willis McGahee, Dallas Clark, Larry Johnson, Nick Barnett and Nnamdi Asomugha, all of whom went in the 16-31 range.

Monkovic also quotes Mike Florio of PFT on the relationship American football players (rarely the smartest kids in your college Psych class) have with their understanding of the will of God. Though I sometimes think the draft is God's curse on Gang Green, I remember that the Jets are just inept. God love them.

Dolphins 24 Jets 17

There is nothing left to be said, other than the fact that I'll be watching the playoffs with a lower blood pressure. This has actually been a fascinating football season. There were so many unexpected performances, so many normally given factors that went lame or dry. It was a fantasy football nightmare. It will make for a great playoffs.

The hardest part of watching the Jets lose was listening to Phil Simms make his post-mortem, his can-you-believe-that-this-team-was-8-and-3-a-few-weeks-ago?
Yes, Phil. I can. If you want to fill the space in a slow fourth quarter, then just keep talking about how the Jets lost four of their last five. It's been a tough year. Keep talking about it. Who would have believed that the tables would have been reversed - Favre out and Pennington in? Well, I guess would have. In my harshest nightmares.

In the midst of it, my wife said, "Fuck you, Phil Simms. Who would have thought when you walked down the aisle of your wedding day that your marriage would someday collapse. You didn't."

Here I reflected aloud whether or not Phil Simms was actually divorced. I believe he is happily married. My wife, undaunted, laptop in front of her, took a few minutes and then readjusted.

"Who'd have thought in 1994 that Phil Simms would still not be in the Hall of Fame by 2008."

Not me, I said.

The New York Jets are a young team with enormous potential for the future, but they will have a bigger quarterback problem than the one they had this summer. They will - I hope - have a new coach by then, too. It should be an interesting next season, culminating in what will be the last game in a stadium that the Jets will be sharing, not borrowing, from the Giants. As always with we Jets fans, it's the little things. And though I am absolutely heartbroken, I have plenty of experience with this. I'll be fine, and so will the Jets. Our curious adventure together will continue, with all of the expected pit stops in purgatory and hell.

And finally, the ridiculous Philadelphia Eagles are in the playoffs after showing America that America's Team is just a bunch of idiot circus clowns. But, above all, I thank the God of my youth that Those Of Whom We Do Not Speak will stay home this January. The Jets' victory over them in an earlier part of the season (a happier time) was one piece of Jenga off the Patriot pile. It's the little things.

Jets 47 Rams 3

When I came into this game, I fully expected something reminiscent of the Jets' loss to Oakland a few weeks ago, a game that left me silent, troubled and withdrawn. Well, I'm always a little troubled, but that's an issue more appropriate to discuss with my mental heath care professional. No, I expected the Jets to let me down as they have done, historically, week by crushing week, year after year. But for all the wailing and gnashing of teeth that goes into the hype of being a Jets fan, most of it occurs when the Jets win.

I've said this before - it's actually more stressful when the Jets win because winning raises the stakes of hope. Last season had its dismal sides, but after a while most of it had to do with my job. Things at the Meadowlands went quickly from bad to worse and didn't really get better in 2007. I got used it, I accepted it (I've had plenty of experience) and felt...well, not comfortable, but at peace with it, just as one must always finally accept the prevailing limitations of human existence, living as we do with free will and subjective powers of abstract consciousness. On the other hand, though, some bad shit was going on last year at work, and I had to really fucking deal with it. And deal with it I did, and with much better aplomb than the Jets did with Brian Schottenheimer's offense scheme.

In this way, the losing Jets are the dulling reminder, the momento mori of human existence. Things suck, don't they? You can get that message from a lot of places, too. From the local or international news, perhaps, or maybe even just by looking outside, like in Walt Whitman's "I Sit and Look Out." Or from Dylan's "Blind Willie McTell." This Rams team appeared ominously tidal coming in; one of the reasons why I was doubtful about the game was because the Jets were exactly the kind of team that the Rams would find appealing for a rebound matchup from a previous loss. But this was a win so effective that the Jets' starters got a rest for Thursday night's game. And when the Jets win, they tend to conjure the ubiquitous refrain of "Yes, We Can!" over and over, a cry so encompassing that it becomes the truth in one's mind, the way most political slogans do. The Jets won by 44 points, a franchise record. (Yes, we can.) Thomas Jones ran for 149 yards and three touchdowns. (Yes, we can). Brett Favre didn't throw any interceptions. (No, he didn't! Yes, we can). Jay Feely hit one from 55 yards away, another franchise record! (Yes, we can). Eric Barton had another great game. (Yes, we can).

But hold on there, little dawgie. There's Thursday. Then there's the unbeaten Titans (I wish we could wear our Titans unis for that). This is only the flush of excitement before the wash of gloom. There's still a crumbling economy, a plummeting stock market, a vanishing workforce, a lost sense of international respect. What about that stuff? Can we handle that? There's no other way to frame it. Right? Big wins like this one always raise questions, like how big? If the Jets managed this kind of domination of a team like Those of Whom We Do Not Speak, then it would be different, wouldn't it? Ah, the crushing spectre of hope again. Against the Rams, the Jets' front line was scarily effective, opening up enormous holes for Thomas Jones. In the image above (photo taken from New York Times) you see the lyrical poetry of an offensive line performing their job. Click on it and it suddenly seems as if you are looking at a work of art, a neo-classical painting, complete with the master's sure eye for symmetry, depicting the tableau of some ancient combat. Even D'Brickshaw Ferguson lying on the ground to the lower far right seems an intentional touch. With such an inspirational image, there's no way we can't keep hope alive. Surely now there is a means for opening the holes up the middle for Jones that were missing in week 2.

Ugh. God help us.

Anyway, regarding my earlier, strained metaphor above between economics and football, it seems as if the Jets' financial prospects are in good shape, especially after successfully selling their PSL's at inflated prices for next year's opening. One guesses that most of their seat buyers weren't CEO's for companies recently bailed out by the Federal Government, but were probably regular folks of a variety of backgrounds and incomes likely hurt by this economy. Go team, huh? Yeesh. Woody Johnson invested his money in Alan Faneca, Damien Woody, and Brett Favre, so apparently the Jets are a much more appealing expenditure for fans who mortgage their livelihoods for PSL's. King Woody's investments have yielded rather a merciless profit for the company. Next time take note, General Motors.

It's All True

I've always had an odd smattering of knowledge. I recall one instance when I was about nine where I first used this knowledge and simultaneously experienced the doubt of the general public. Mom, Charlie and I were at a department store together. She was buying a rug or something, putting a salesman through what my brother and I like to call "The Treatment." She would have sales personnel eating out of her hand by the end of a trip to A&S. No question. And she wouldn't buy anything in the end.

While watching another salesman fall to pieces around her, I noted a flurry of activity. A man was walking through the rug department and setting off excitement as he passed. "It's Richard Dreyfuss!" someone exclaimed. Another person took up the cry, while the man in question, realizing the fuss he was causing, started to make for the escalator. People pointed and exclaimed. They had seen a movie star, one whose prime was the period of which I speak, the late 70's.

He could have passed as Richard Dreyfuss, but it wasn't him. For whatever reason, at nine I could recognize Richard Dreyfuss in the rug department if I saw him, and the man running like a spotted celebrity for the exit was not Richard Dreyfuss. I said this aloud enough for the adults around me to hear.

"What's that?" a woman said, looking at me with surprise.

I thought I was being helpful. This way they wouldn't be mistaken. "That wasn't Richard Dreyfuss," I said. "That's a guy who looks like him, but he's not."

The woman looked at me with the mild annoyance of one who has been asked to buy the Brooklyn Bridge. She addressed me with a wave of her hand.

"What did that kid say?" her husband asked after seeing the Richard Dreyfuss imposter finally vanish.

She looked at him with a dismissive gesture. "'Thinks I don't know what I'm talking about. Like I'm crazy or something. That was Richard Dreyfuss!"

*****

Like I said, it's been a strange week. Take for example my conversation around the lunch table. Our two English Department faculty lounges are two classroom-sized rooms, each with a long table for teachers to sit and talk over lunch. For reasons that our community could offer, one lounge is often populated with young men between the ages of 25-30 and the other with women just a little bit older. Almost all are younger than myself. The men speak of sports, politics and media outrages. The women discuss clothes, food, light television fare and children.

At the men's table, the issues can be occasionally sublime and often ridiculous. "Which is the greatest beer commercial of all time?" "Who is the shortest shortstop ever?" "Who is less talented - Mariah Carey or Madonna?" "Who is your favorite Russian psychic?" The other day, a question I could field came to the table: "Who is responsible for the longest punt in football history?"

I allowed a few names - good ones - to pass through. "Ray Guy?" "Reggie Roby?" "Randall Cunningham?" That last one isn't ridiculous. Randall could basically do anything, including punt.

"I'll take this one," I said. "Steve O'Neal, New York Jets. Ninety-eight yards."

To be honest with you, I know it sounds a little silly, too. He was a rookie when he did it, and he's almost unknown to history otherwise. But it's true, all true. They look at me like I'm making it up. Sure, they seem to say. Spoken like a Jets fan. Right. "I doubt the Jets even have any records, Marty," one says. Actually for a while Richard Todd held a NFL record he set in 1980 for passing attempts in a game. They look at me as if I fell off a truck and wouldn't know the slightest piece of football miscellany. This is how Dad felt when he told me the Giants used have a quarterback named Y.A. Tittle. I didn't believe him at first, either. That was a ridiculous name.

But at Mile High Stadium in 1969, #20 Steve O'Neal punted the ball some seventy plus yards, where it then took a Jets roll another fifteen or so to the Bronco two.

This is a general problem as I'm getting older. (And how old am I really? I turn 40 in March, for God's sake, but in public school, that can seem like 50, which isn't even that old.) The more I age, the more unreliable my information seems to people younger than myself. This is what used to make my parents mad. Why is it so impossible that I'm actually right about something? Mom would ask. Because you're old, I would think. Now I know why the woman in A&S was pissed at me. Why would some snot-nosed kid know about the star of The Goodbye Girl? Except I was right about Steve O'Neal, and the woman in the rug department was wrong.

It was worse this past Wednesday when, after the Obama win, the only thing my all-white Advanced Placement class had to say about it was that Black Panthers intimidated voters throughout the United States on election day. Really? I asked.

Their evidence consisted of two guys standing somewhat ominously in front of a polling place on Fairmount Avenue in Philadelphia. When I speculated that these "Black Panthers" of which they spoke were actually representative of one local instance, the kids didn't believe me. The Black Panthers, they insisted, changed the flow of the election.

That's insane, I told them. There really is no Black Panther movement anymore. The real Black Panthers eventually graduated to become Crips, convicts, worm food, professors, business owners, drug addicts or Republicans. There is Black rage in America, yes, but no Black Panthers. Here were two guys menacing people in front of a door, dressed in all black clothes and berets they probably bought at I. Goldberg's, looking angrily into the camera, having the thrill of their lives, but it didn't mean that the spirit of Huey and Cleaver was alive and well across the United States, or even in Philly for that matter. In fact, I'm convinced that the little guy "Panther" in the video is a local crackpot King Samir Shabazz, a guy so ridiculous he actually got thrown out of Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam. Only the Philadelphia Weekly takes him seriously, and that's as an eccentric character.

But, the kids almost suggested, if I didn't know that for sure that it wasn't a nationwide ploy to scare white people, then how could I deny the viral web evidence of Black Panthers intimidating voters - even if the evidence shows it was the same lame Philly story, originally told by Fox, repeated over and over?

Whether young or old, this has been my problem. I don't know everything, but what's the point of having my eclectic and nearly useless knowledge of history, sports and popular culture if no one believes me? It's not like I understand science or math. As Uncle Morty asks in My Favorite Year, "Do I look I come from Minsk? I know what I'm talking about."

A Day in The Jets Fan's Life - 10/11/87

OK, it's time to, y'know, continue my personal campaign to make myself sound like the most miserable person on the face of the Earth for being a Jets fan...

But first, I would be remiss if I did not admit to being miserable for lots of other reasons, too. Maybe rooting for the Jets is merely a symptom of a larger predilection for misery I have masochistically enjoyed all my life. It has been the most nourishing feed for the beast, not the root cause. I can't blame it all on the Jets. But sometimes where the Jets' miseries and mine begin and end can be confusing.

Take October 11, for example - technically week six in a 16-game NFL season. On this day in 1987, I experienced a singular day of misery that showed the remarkable interactions between the depression of my own life and the ineptitude of my favorite football team. These were in perfect syncopation on October 11, 1987, when the Jets played the Colts in Indianapolis. My family had moved hundreds of miles south from where we lived in New York, and I had moved further north to New England where I was in my freshman year of college. Most of my days were spent staring into the slate gray of the autumn sky, wondering when the gods would lift me off the ground and hurl me somewhere else, some dark, numb oblivion where I wouldn't feel anything anymore. I guess I was a little suicidal, but maybe not seriously so. I don't know. I studied for my exams. I got good grades. I was miserable.

Everything that I had taken for stability had vanished, minus the fact that there was money there for my tuition, room and board. So I worked hard. I made a few friends, but they looked at me like I was a mangy cat sometimes. They kind of walked around me. Could the simple, evocative routine of following the Jets provide the relief?

No. Because as Fortune would have it, this was the year of the replacement players, the football strike. On the 11th of October, the replacement Jets lost to the replacement Colts 6-0. As an example of maddening futility, you could find no better example than two phony professional teams playing one another under the Hoosier Dome - a ceiling as numbingly white as a New England sky - in front of as many as maybe a couple of hundred human beings.

But on the day of the game I was nursing the very first true hangover of my life, one brought on by my first ever Saturday night binge drinking. I had been an awfully good kid in high school, but now that everyone had left me to my own devices, I finally decided to get really, really drunk for the very first time. Josef from Switzerland, Phil from rural Maryland, and I bought a couple of six packs of Molson and watched the NLCS from San Francisco on the tiny black and white TV propped on a desk chair. I drank a great deal, taking Pepto Bismol as a chaser in anticipation of what I assumed would be a night of intestinal failure, only to wake the next morning with a black tongue. The morning was spent vomiting, begging God for release from this life, with assurances that this was the only time I would ever let this happen to me. Ah, youth.

As I moved in my blanket from toilet to bed, toilet to bed, I finally found some peaceful slumber, the kind where the body is too exhausted even to hurl anything more. When I woke up, Maryland Phil was kind enough to lean over me and give me the Jets score, 6-0.

I spoke to him like the Gipper to Rockne. I mustered the strength to speak my last words:

"What quarter?"

"Quarter?" he asked. "No quarter, man. That's the final score."

Perhaps I was delirious. That was impossible. "Wha...what time is it?" I asked, not comprehending.

"It's dinner time. Me and Joe are going down. It's Cordon Bleu."

But it had been morning only a few minutes ago. Or maybe it had been afternoon. Hadn't it?

"Dude," he offered, trying to speak a measure of reason to the dying, seeming simultaneously amused by my blanched, awful state, "you're still sleeping it off. It's nighttime. It's six o'clock. You want anything from the dining hall?"

But it couldn't be. But it was. Six-nothing. Six o'clock. "Get me a roll, willya?" I said, before lapsing back into unconsciousness. I don't know how they greeted that ridiculous request. They had been kind enough to share the score with me, probably because the only thing they knew about me was that I was a Jets fan, because that was pretty much the only thing anyone could really probably draw out, even with a lot of Molson in me. But how else was I to respond to the unfamiliarity of losing a day in the wake of a bender? How else could I respond to the results of what was probably a crushingly dull scab game?

A week later, the Stock Market would crash, but on October 11, 1987, I had missed Mass for the first time in my life and, even more, missed following a Jets game for the first time in my life. I had missed lunch. And aside from following the Jets, I had found a new hobby. Oh brave new world...

****

One final note - on October 11, 1992, the Jets lost to the Colts in the Hoosier Dome by an improved score of 6-3. There were no scabs or replacements. Just bad, bad, bad football. I was living in an unfamiliar city, drunk, unhappy, isolated and alone...

Well, you get the idea.

By the Bye

I've been a little occupied lately with work and life. Lame excuses, I realize. So I'm writing this entry while overseeing a senior study hall in the cafeteria, hoping that Brett Favre is using his study time more wisely than the students whose heads are sealed in sleep on the tables all around me.

Someday when I'm awfully low, I'll look back on these days and ask myself, "Was I not thinking enough about the impending game against the Bengals?" The answer - particularly after watching Cincinnati challenging Dallas - is I'm clearly not thinking hard enough. The Bengals really took possession of the game clock at different points, despite being eternally behind, and that should give us some pause. Still, Tony Romo had forever to throw the ball because his front line is composed of concrete abutments. And the Tigers gave up a crushing open-field touchdown to T.O. from which they never recovered. Maybe the Cowboys just really aren't as good as everyone says. We're wasting so much breath on "who's the best in the NFL?" now that Tom Brady is injured. It's a senseless obsession. Maybe if the newly updated Brett Favre model is in residence, we may yet break .500. Or not. God bless us all. Everyone.

But is there a God? If you're Chad Penningon, then yes. He beat the San Diego Chargers a week after beating New England. The fact that this God might not regard me very highly is kind of irrelevant. But then what do I have to gripe about in the cosmic scheme of things? I grew up in the cradle of the American Dream, maturing comfortably in the greatest of all economic booms. I have craved a Jets Super Bowl in my lifetime, but that's a paltry petition considering the healthy gifts my life has offered me.

The Almighty asks if I have any additional concerns:

Me: Um. Are the Jets going to, y'know, go to the Super Bowl...?
Almighty: (glowers noticeably)
Me: ...uh...any...time...y'know...?
Almighty: Super Bowl III.
Me: -soon?
Almighty: (shakes His Head) Super Bowl III.

So Chad Pennington gets what he wants, whereas I already have, apparently. Make it feel that way.

****

Finally, a dream last night. My brother and I had both been drafted by Chelsea FC in England and we were required to show up at Old Trafford to play Manchester United. This is ridiculous. Charlie plays soccer even now, but the last time I did in any organized fashion, I was eight and was told by the coach to just "follow the crowd up and down the field." In the dream, Charlie and I are of high school age - he is a small freshman and I am an anxious senior. We're supposed to be on the field momentarily, and I can't tell if he's in the locker room or still outside the stadium. I've got to find him. I'm supposed to keep track of him.

Suddenly, there's Arsene Wenger. Whew. He can help. He and I take the escalator down to the field level. It's a very long escalator ride.

I gather my courage. I'm new on the team, after all. Coach? I ask him, like a typical American, I'm worried that my little brother isn't inside yet. I just wanted to make sure before we get into the changing room that he's put on the roster. OK?

He looks at me without comprehension. I can't help you. I manage Arsenal. My boys aren't playing today.

Ah, shit, I think. Dammit. That's true. So where was Chelsea's manager, Luiz Felipe Scolari? It doesn't make any sense. Why was I put in the embarrassing position of asking Wenger for help when the last person he would want to help was a player from Chelsea? What's he doing here, anyway? Does Arsenal have the Bye in the land of dreams, like the Jets do in the here and now? Who screwed up in the slumbering world of FA scheduling? Better yet, who's screwing up in subconscious casting? The production crew needs reorganization. Somebody's getting a pink slip.

Jesse Chatman Positive for Diuretic

It's bizarre, this ridiculous world. We share our lives with one another in ways that defy the basic codes of privacy and personal space. But that's the way it is. I write a blog that is almost exclusively read by myself, but even still I can't pretend that there isn't an enormous world out there gaping at its own senselessness, wondering at times at how stupefying is the scope of human life, how bloated the need for human domination of the natural world, how awful the infinite dimensions of the universe by comparison. You can believe you are alone, but every thought, every word and deed has already had a precedent somewhere out there. Even if you don't believe in the Almighty, you are not alone in the universe.

I will now offer the crudest possible story to illustrate my point. One afternoon last year at work, I experienced a particularly uncomfortable churning sensation in my lower intestine that I instinctively recognized - experienced man of 38 that I was - as my body's signal to unburden itself of solid waste. The sensation was more dire than usual, so I made quickly for the restroom. The event itself requires no description. We have literally all been there before. In situations such as these, I often seek a facility removed from the more traveled restrooms on the first floor. The fact that these washrooms are marked "Faculty Men" is only a slight relief. As a boy, I lived in horror of using public restrooms. This neurosis grew into a cathartic meltdown when I needed to similarly act without hesitation in the toilet of the boys' locker room as a high school freshman after a particularly grueling cross country practice. The olfactory remnant of this event was greeted by the suddenly incoming varsity football team with horrific blasphemies and genuine promises to violently end my life. I was so mortified that I would have submitted had they caught me before I ran out of the locker room.

Back at work, after completing the necessary task, I left the Faculty Men's in a similarly condemned state. However, I quickly realized to my horror that a trusted, respected colleague was about to enter with his own intentions, not knowing what aromatic horror awaited him. We locked eyes, and, coward that I am, I was unable to communicate the truth that I had made the Faculty Men's Room an uninhabitable place of business. There are euphemistic phrases like those employed even in this very entry. But my own sense of shame, combined with my feelings of failure at being to keep this mortification to myself, left me without the ability to speak. I smiled wanly, pathetically, and walked on.

Naturally he found me later. I was sitting in the faculty lounge, grading. I could feel his eyes on me. There was nothing I could do but look up and say what needed to be said.

"I don't really know what to say," I said. "I really have no excuse. I'm sorry."

"Not at all," he said compassionately. He opened up the newspaper. "Although I do feel like I have a window into your soul."

* * *

What was I saying? Did I have a point here?

My wife asked me about the Jets' injury status in preseason and I answered, "We're fine. We're great. Pity the Giants, really." It was then that I immediately got word of Jesse Chatman being suspended for violation of the NFL's substance abuse policy. The story on him was that he has a weight problem that disappeared while with Miami last year, hence giving him a second chance at a career. When you lose 60 pounds, how do you gain it back in all the right places? I myself suggest a diet of SSRI's and donuts. I don't know what Jesse did. His agent has pointed out that Chatman's positive test was from last December, not from a recent test.

But what's interesting is that the actual results only showed the presence of a diuretic often used to mask the presence of a steroid. It's probably not Ex-Lax. (Does Ex-Lax still exist)? Neither was it very likely coffee, oatmeal, McDonald's fries, cauliflower, watermelon, broccoli, Granny Smith apples, cigarettes, or any of the other things I find efficacious to my spastic colon on any given workday. I realize that the very thing that brings shame to a grown fallen-away Catholic man - the business of taking what a college roommate and fellow Jets fan once called a "Mark Duper" - is also essential to the maintenance of an athlete's weight and his masking of the rules of fair play.

But is the business surrounding this offensive diuretic also a window into Eric Mangini's secretive, isolating soul? After all, Chatman is being suspended for only four games. A friend of mine laughed off Chatman's suspension when I mentoned it to him - a natural response in an age when football players are shot, shot at and changing their names to "Ocho Cinco." It's only the four-game kind of suspension. Sort of like what the kids who've done hard time say when they react to a three-day suspension from school.

But did Mangini know the results of Chatman's December tests when he brought him on? Chatman did have an awesome game against the Eagles, but will he be similarly talented five weeks from now? Will he be flabby or thin? Does the coach know something we don't? If anything, maybe now among all three - Washington, Jones and the potentially modified Chatman - might equal one good running back.

I really haven't got any further cohesive theme to tie together this entry. I'm waiting on the final cuts of the preseason. I confess that the brief, stalwart performance Jesse Chatman put in against the Eagles threw me into sensations of hope for our backfield, and I feel like the news of his positive test left me in a catharsis that might yet spaz my colon a little more than Sumatra coffee. The volume of unrealized expectation and hope has built up so profoundly, that if it doesn't put me back into the crapper, it might yet make me bear the contents of my soul to my colleagues. It's what being a fan is all about. You cannot exist alone, harboring hopes and dreams, rooting for a team that plays in a division that also houses a club that could easily roll off another 18-1 season. It's no use hiding it. You have to perform your manly task and run the risk of exposing yourself to a world that will know the putrid truth. I am a Jets fan, though in exile. The very same colleague (and Eagles fan) who became the unfortunate witness to my intestinal ruin that sad day last year heard me complain yesterday about Chatman's failed diuretic test.

He smiled, obligingly. "Well," he said. "Tough shit, I guess."

Vanity Fair

Hope is the thing with feathers.
-Emily Dickinson

Under how many labels can one entry fall? L'Affaire de Favre has become something so outlandishly bizarre that I am left oddly mute. Brett Favre will actually be paid to retire, stay retired, and be part of the Packers "product," working from home in Mississippi. All the while he has played the Bucs and the Jets, perhaps to raise the dollar value of what the Pack will pay him to stay retired. He will quarterback for no one now, which was what he said he would do - or not do - earlier this spring. But now we know that these earlier plans probably included this mime show of interest in front of the gullible press. I suppose the notorious paucity of post-retirement for most players in the NFL has driven him to this extraordinary shadow play. Even I, for brief periods of time, had some ridiculous notion that he would wear our green, finding that by doing so, I too was only covered in more feathers. Look on yourself, Jets fans. There are probably a few on you, too.

Michael Vick Pleads Guilty

Well, the plea has been registered, he is suspended indefinitely, and with it the end of one public chapter in the nightmare Michael Vick inadvertently created for all of us. Soon new chapters will follow: books, interviews, self-reflections, jail house intimations, recriminations toward the media, rumors of religious conversions (Christianity or Islam optional; we assume that Hinduism's belief in the integrity of the animal soul disqualifies it from consideration), and some kind of unpredictable wild card. Even in media culture, there are things you cannot predict. Like Jim Brown actually saying on ESPN that Vick needs to make hansai.

Last year, the New Orleans Saints were one of my probational favorites. Vick's dog scandal is not exactly a Level 5 Katrina, but it has rendered the Atlanta Falcons franchise - one that has had a hard time maintaining a fan base - a deserving team. Normally, I wouldn't dream of rooting for them. Any team from a state that was once lead by George Wallace will always have a 50-year ban on my affections. Still, just imagine if Namath had been out of the Jets lineup for such an extended period of time. Actually that describes Namath from 1970-73. Oh well.

Even I am really, really ready to move on. It hasn't been easy. This is America, after all, and when celebrities collapse, it must "mean something" for all of us. It's just that usually when they fall, celebrities tend to behave not quite so monstrously as Vick did. Or maybe it's just that when famous athletes behave badly, they usually do so toward other people, and it ironically fails to disgust in quite the same way.

The controlled violence of football was not enough for Michael Vick, and in his case, he needed to literally kill the combatants who had lost their worth in his ring. Now he will have to face the metaphorical same in banishment (albeit temporary) from the league. The NAACP was hilarious in its defense of Vick's supposed dignity. According to R.L. White of the Atlanta chapter, the uproar over dogfighting is not fair "when hunting deer and other animals is perfectly acceptable."

This is absurd. No, I don't know how decent people go hunting, either. It's creepy. But a deer does not form a relationship of trust and loyalty with humans as dogs do, and I do think there is basic decency lacking in a human being if he or she is repeatedly cruel to a dog. Furthermore, if the person uses his extraordinary wealth to finance a miniature corporation of dog cruelty, then he has voluntarily shed the skin of his own humanity, and people like that are dangerous with money. He has abdicated his right to both wealth and freedom. Compassion and decency, not intimidation and fear, are at the core of real human dignity. Even rich people can find it within themselves to behave. It's been known to happen on occasion. Being nice to dogs is a good place to start.

Showing compassion to people like Michael Vick is also an interesting challenge for those whose spectator sport is reveling in the troubles of others. Me? There are other lost souls more worthy of my compassion than Vick - like Eddie Griffin, the kid who graduated from Roman Catholic High in Philly as the most highly touted high school basketball star in the country. He spent a little time at Seton Hall, then crashed to personal failure in the NBA. He died on a train track in Texas this week. He was a true lost soul. It seems only yesterday he was just some talented kid with his future ahead of him, and now it is over. There's someone worthy of sympathy - not that it can do him much good now.

Will Vick be a quarterback somewhere someday? Maybe in the CFL? Arena football? Certainly not with the Cincinnati Bengals. Will he professionally wrestle with Pacman Jones? Appear on "The Surreal Life?"

Will he try his hand at what it feels like to be in an ultimate fighting ring? To further appease the crude bloodlust of the common man, perhaps the fighting organizers will take a cue from Michael Vick and strangle their chronic losers in the ring. Football players occasionally batter their wives, but no one decries their actions with the same urgency as what people have shown Vick. I fear he is closer to the deep down norm of American violence than we like to admit.

I told you the temptation to read meaning into this madness was very strong, so I better stop now. Jim Brown - no slouch in the Big House - said that it is in these moments of bottoming out that people have the opportunity to literally remake the moral landscape of their lives - so too for Vick, I guess.

Bad Dog

As a kid, I believed big guys were supposed to be like Rosey Grier or Mean Joe Greene - gentle giants. I don't even think kids would believe such illusions anymore. Large professionals are obviously like Michael Vick and Chris Benoit - bloated, erratic, probably homicidal. They cannot be content with being large and powerful; they must be more so, and at the expense of others.


Seeing that this is a blog written from the point of view of being a football fan, it's more appropriate to talk about Michael Vick. If the indictment against him is to be believed, more than fifty dogs were found on Vick's property, presumably bred and kept for fighting alone. Yes, it sickens me. Yes, it's inhumane. My wife is a dog lover who notices and makes noises about every dog she sees on the sidewalk. I can't help but think of the countless links lost in the chain of human psychology between someone like her and someone who hangs dogs after they lose their fighting ability.


I think it's also ironically damning to American spectatorship. Overlooking the longstanding rural American tradition of dogfighting, there will always be something American about having other people do your fighting for you. It's a luxury you earn, and while Vick may not have appreciated the jeering he got from Atlanta fans last year, he knew he had to apologize for giving them the finger because he is paid so much. He's still doing our fighting for us on the field, and he is being compensated accordingly. Yet he is, ultimately, disposable. No, he will not be drowned or beaten to death like the dogs he is alleged to have killed without even a thought. However, the disposability of the competing animal is something I find intriguing here, especially as both the NFL and the Players Association look the other way at competing cases of long-term injury among the league's retired players.

In this way, someone so disassociated from his humanity as Vick is alleged to be deserves to be punished for stupidity as well as cruelty. He does not even possess the basic intelligence to recognize that his actions serve as a metaphor for how athletes thrown into the ring are treated when they're not needed anymore.

It is the essence of American sports to keep playing to win, even when you have nothing else to gain. Instead of going on a nice vacation, pursuing a graduate degree in something, doing volunteer work, or even devoting his talents in his free time to addressing the forgotten players of the past, someone like the kind of person Michael Vick is alleged to be will always fall back on the limitless need to compete. How is it that we do not see that, stripped of all the money and celebrity, people like Vick and Chris Benoit are never trained to be anything other than dogs in the ring? No wonder retired players who suffer from the long-term effects of football's violence have such a hard time making their case to the very same fans who cheered them on in the first place.

With Feathers

Obviously for a Jets fan, Long Island's Newsday will probably provide logically better coverage than, say, the New York Times because one of the Jets' spiritual homes is Long Island, not Manhattan. Anyone needing an illustration of this needs only to turn to the lengthy, prolonged, needless and embarassing slap in the face the team got when we tried to get a stadium on the West Side.

Tom Rock's Newsday articles on the Jets are helpful. In one piece on the talented Nick Mangold, Rock (I can't call him T-Rock; feels too personal) mentions that players are cozying up to the new Jet Thomas Jones, searching for evidence of the afterglow, looking for insight into what a Super Bowl appearance is like. He is their one player who can say. An entire set of X and Y Generation fans are wondering that same question. I don't know any Bears fans or Colts fans to consult; I mean, I know bandwagon fans for the former, and I don't actually think anyone outside Indianapolis roots for the Colts. I've been to Indiana once. There are dunes, by the way, off of one of the Great Lakes there. They're pretty amazing. Real sand dunes. No kidding. I don't even know if people from Indiana know they're there. I assume now that they know the Colts are not in Baltimore anymore.

So I sit here and wonder. A Super Bowl. What i-

Stop.

"Hope is the thing with feathers," said Emily Dickinson, and I have already noticed the familiar feathers of minicamp. In a few months I will use them in a metaphorical sense to fly to Hofstra and see the Jets for a day in training camp. I am a sucker - but better yet, a servant to my faith. The early Christians first believed that Jesus, as He promised, was coming back imminently. Like, any day now. And when that didn't happen, it wasn't as if the next generation took up Jainism or something. They hung in there. They revised their predictions, even forgot the misplaced predictions of the past and got ready for the long haul. That's what belief is. That's why I know that this business has got me and will not let go.

So I wonder. Helplessly, one might say. But with feathers, all the same.