Blog

‘Dare to be different’: Thomas Davis challenges NFL

February 1, 2015

The night before the Super Bowl is traditionally reserved for the “NFL Honors,” a combination of the Academy Awards and a glorified high school assembly program.

It’s easy to make fun of the show. The clothes. You would think with all that money, these guys would have their suits custom-made. But no, instead we get jackets that are definitely too tight across generous butts and suits that might be appropriate for a Rotary Club meeting but not for a televised awards show. Among the exceptions – the legendary running back Emmitt Smith, looking snazzy in a purple suit, and San Francisco 49ers’ quarterback Colin Kaepernick, James Bond-sleek in a tux. Perhaps he could offer some fashion tips to Defensive Player of the Year, J.J. Watt. J.J., the 1970s called: They want that plaid jacket back.

Then there was the actress who kept pronouncing “OFfense” “offense.” And the less-than-poker faces. Football players aren’t actors. They don’t hide their disappointment when they lose an award. Even the poised Green Bay Packers’ quarterback Aaron Rodgers looked less than pleased when Seth Meyers, the show’s somewhat tame host, poked fun at the Packers’ collapse against the Seattle Seahawks in the N.F.C. Championship game. ...

The QB: alone at the top of the world

January 30, 2015

Much of the hoopla surrounding Super Duper Bowl weekend revolves around the two opposing quarterbacks – one of whom, the New England Patriots’ Tom Brady, is trying to perpetuate a dynasty; the other of whom, the Seattle Seahawks’ Russell Wilson, is trying to start one.

Both are featured in the superb new coffee-table book, “Sports Illustrated NFL QB: The Greatest Position in Sports” ($29.95), a tome you’ll want to tackle again and again. It’s one I particularly love poring over as I prepare my novel about a gay, biracial quarterback’s quest for acceptance in the NFL, “The Penalty for Holding.”

“NFL QB” takes you down to the field and past the locker room into the mind, body, heart and soul of the quarterback, who more than any other player on the world stage represents the quintessence of masculinity. Walter Iooss Jr.’s double-page photograph of New York Jet Joe Namath – shirtless and hirsute, casting an appreciative leer at two ladies of a certain vintage as he sits on the beach surrounded by equally admiring males – says everything you need to know about the QB: He’s the big man on the campus of life.

But being special cuts both way, and both Tim Layden’s introduction and former Cincinnati Bengals’ QB Boomer Esiason’s foreword do much to capture the aloneness, pain and vomit-inducing terror of a job on which cities as well as teams rise and fall.

As in Sports Illustrated itself – from which most of the words and images were taken – the words and images here serve as a counterpoint as they chart the course from the blocker of the single-wing formation to the QB taking the snap from center in the T formation; from the pocket passer (Brady, Peyton Manning) to the running QB (Wilson, Colin Kaepernick, Cam Newton, Robert Griffin III); and, perhaps most important of all, from sideshow to icon.

While “NFL QB” captures the glamour – what a babe Peyton Manning was on the September 1997 cover of Esquire – what lingers is the grit (brother Eli bloodied yet unbowed in a local showdown between the New York Giants and Jets in 2010). ...

Days of reckoning for Pats, Fedal

January 27, 2015

I’ve been so busy charting the farce that is Deflate-gate – a narrative that keeps on giving – that I forgot all about Rafa’s and Feddy’s balls, or lack thereof, at the Australian Open. They’re both out, with Rafa falling most recently in the quarterfinals to Tomas Berdych in straight sets.

Is it all over for Fedal? Possibly but Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer singly will go on, injuries notwithstanding.

Meanwhile, it was Media Day, which brings out the loonies during Super Bowl Week. (Think sporting event plus Mardi Gras/Halloween/Comic Con.) The arrogance just dripped as Bill Belicheck refused to answer any more questions about squishy balls, and Seattle Seahawks’ running back Marshawn Lynch, who refuses to talk with the press, simply repeated, “I’m here so I won’t get fined.”

One person who’s been happy to talk is New England Patriots’ owner Robert Kraft, who’s demanding an apology from the NFL if its investigation finds the Pats had nothing to do with the 11 deflated balls they played with in the first half of their victory over the Indianapolis Colts in the A.F.C. Championship game. This as the investigation zeroes in on a “person of interest,” a Pats’ locker room attendant who was alone with the balls in a locked room for 90 seconds after they were certified by officials. (Maybe he just wanted a quiet moment with them.) ...

Belichick for the defense

January 26, 2015

Boy, you gotta hand it to Bill Belichick. Operating under an assumption that guides many coaches – that the best defense is a good offense – the Terse One held an impromptu news conference to reveal that the New England Patriots had conducted their own investigation into Deflate-gate, no doubt in an attempt to seize control of the narrative.

And guess what? The Pats have found that when you leave footballs on the field in cold, wet weather, yep, they deflate.

There you have it – an act of God, who has yet to hold his press conference or inform us of the results of his own investigation.

Good attempt to cut us off at the pass, Bill. But no first down.

If atmospheric conditions during the A.F.C. Championship game were the cause, then why didn’t the Colts’ balls deflate as well?

Belichick opined that he is no scientist or expert on footballs. But, he added, "at no time was there any intent whatsoever to try to compromise the integrity of the game.”

OK, let’s pause for a pet peeve – the misuse of the word “integrity.” ...

You gotta have balls to play in the NFL

January 24, 2015

Goodness, we’ve certainly learned a lot about balls these past few days.

We’ve learned that there are squishy balls and hard balls. We’ve learned that there are balls that are mysteriously underinflated and balls that are purposely overinflated in an attempt to sneak one by the refs.

We’ve learned who has possession of the balls. But what we haven’t learned is who might’ve touched the balls while those who have them weren’t looking.

Whoever it was, it wasn’t Bill Belly-check and Tommy Brady. We know it wasn’t them, because they told us so in a press conference that needn’t wait for a “SNL” parody. It was a “Saturday Night Live” skit unto itself, right down to the bad hairstyles (Belly-check) and even more egregious hats (Tommy).

In a world in which the NFL has been in deep denial of its three Ds – dementia, domestic violence and drugs – the continuing saga of the deflated balls that the New England Patriots used in its winning A.F.C. Championship game against the Indianapolis Colts seems a thin story line. Except for the fact that the story line keeps circling back to its deniers, suggests Tim Hasselbeck, a former NFL quarterback who was a Patriots’ ball boy during high school:

“The balls were evaluated at halftime and the only reason you do that is there is some concern,” Hasselbeck told The Times. “If the balls were O.K. before the game but not by halftime, and it was only New England’s balls that were suspect, then obviously something happened to the balls between the initial inspection and the second half….

A season in hell for the NFL

January 23, 2015

A year that began badly is ending badly for the NFL. It’s a cliché to say that there are no winners here, but there are no winners here, just liars, cheaters, abusers and deniers.

It’s fitting that the Baltimore Ravens should be the ones to tip off the Indianapolis Colts to the New England Patriots’ use of deflated footballs, which makes it easier for the quarterback to grip the ball and the receivers to catch it. The Ravens, after all, are the people who gave us two troubled Rays – Lewis, who pled guilty to obstruction of justice in the fatal stabbing of two men; and Rice, who coldcocked his fiancée in an Atlantic City elevator, setting the year of crisis in motion. (The Ravens also win the award for tweet of the year when they had Mrs. Rice say she was very sorry for her part in being coldcocked by her husband.)

Bitter losers and no lovers of the Patriots, the Ravens seemed only too happy to pass along knowledge of the Pats’ cheating ways to the Colts. But the Ravens aren’t to blame here anymore than the Adderall-using Seattle Seahawks are or Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers is. Rodgers, to borrow from his State Farm Discount Double Check commercials, likes to pump (clap) footballs up. Which begs the question: Was someone on the Pats trying to achieve yogic balance by deflating theirs?

Several wrongs cannot make a right. The only questions that really matter in this Nixonian narrative is, What did the Patriots know, and when did they know it? ...

Of inflation – over and under – in the NFL

January 22, 2015

Well, it looks like we’re all set for a Super Duper Bowl between the deflated (literally) New England Patriots and the inflated (metaphorically) Seattle Seahawks.

First, the crafty – or should that be Kraft-y, after their owner Robert Kraft? – Pats, are apparently up to their old tricks, using deflated footballs in their blowout A.F. C. Championship win against the hapless Indianapolis Colts, who, let’s face it, don’t require cheating.

It was in 2007, that the Patriots – led by head coach Bill Belichick, alias the Emperor from “Star Wars,” it’s the hoodie – and quarterback Tom Brady, aka Darth Vader, were caught spying on, yes, the hapless New York Jets in an incident that has become known as Spygate. Nothing like stacking the deck. So they’re always suspect.

But wait, the NFL – which is so anal-retentive that it cares about Colin Kaepernick wearing his outlaw Beats headset on the podium – allows each team to play with its own footballs? Everybody gets to play with his own toys in the sandbox?

Speaking of kindergarten, we’ve learned that Aaron Rodgers likes to overinflate his balls, so to speak...