Loving the Bad Guy

The NFL needs villains. It always has. Those Raiders teams of the ‘70s are as big a part of the fabric of the NFL’s identity as any other great team, from that era or any other. They were mythic biker renegades from the grungy part of Valhalla, sent to terrorize mortals and pistol whip squares. They were glorious, and they perfectly captured an era – dirty, long hairs with drunken love in their hearts and iron hate at the end of their fists. They were the ‘70s in all its savage, ugly, stinking beauty – decaying monsters dying even as they fought like hell to live for just one more frenetic, glorious second, human supernovae at the heart of a cultural supernova.

I’m starting to get carried away here. The point is that the NFL needs villains almost more than it needs heroes, and if you can’t tell by my rapturous intro, to some people - a lot of people – those villains are actually the heroes of the story. After all, the Cowboys were America’s team. But those Raiders were America’s team. I won’t explain what that means because you either understand completely what I’m saying, or you don’t and not even God can help you sort it out.

These days, the heroes and villains of the NFL are more sordid than ever. And that’s only all too appropriate given the strange and terrible times in which we live. No one knows who’s evil and who’s good until someone gets tossed out of an elevator unconscious. Everything is magnified and under the magnifying glass everything gets distorted, myths are laid bare and all we’re left with are bullshit narratives. It’s easy to vilify someone like Ray Rice, but it gets harder when someone like Ndamukong Suh gets busted by the Great Eye In The Sky stomping – or gently stepping, depending on your perspective and rooting interests – on a fallen Golden Boy.

Everything becomes slippery then, and that word – perspective – becomes all that matters, and when that happens, nothing really matters. You pick your sides based on what you want to believe, and really, nothing could be more fitting in this twitter age of deep tribalism and outrage for outrage’s sake than that.

But it also reinforces that weird NFL world in which heroes are villains and villains are heroes and nobody really knows what the hell is going on. That is when the NFL is both at its best and its nauseatingly worst. The noise gets turned up, Joe Buck starts hooting like a chimp on angel dust, and the only thing you’re left to conclude is that everyone is secretly an asshole or a monster, and in that decayed wasteland of the human condition, you just pick whichever monster you like best and hope he doesn’t embarrass you by maiming a loved one or, you know, deflating footballs like a coward.

And that brings us to the strange case of the New England Patriots, who exist in that sort of zombie purgatory between good and evil. Everyone hates them, and why not? They do scandalous shit that isn’t even cool, they win all the goddamn time and they have a quarterback who seems like some sort of golden ice king, untouchable and terrible, both easily mockable and somehow infallible. And the whole thing is led by some ogre in sack-cloth who holds everyone in the world, from the media to the fans to his players to his own family, in open contempt. It is a weird situation and I understand why people don’t like it. The Patriots are easy to hate, and so most people do the easy thing and hate them.

But the Patriots are fascinating to me, and I don’t hate them. I am totally biased here, largely because I am a huge Michigan dude and thus for tribal reasons, Tom Brady is my guy. That is the easy take, and you’re not wrong. But where everyone else sees a model-boning, Uggs-wearing, frost-prince, I see a dude with an almost sociopathic need to win, a heart of fire beneath the frozen surface that never stops beating, burning him up from within and making him into a psychotic jackass on the field. But he’s the good kind of psychotic jackass, I think, the kind that wins and the kind that wins simply because he has to, because he can’t not. I can respect a man like that even if nobody else does. I get it, I do. He is not an easy man to love because he looks like everything you’re supposed to hate these days and he’d rather chill in a wine bar in Aspen than hang out at Lowe’s with Peyton Manning.

But he’s also a dude who wins and keeps on winning even though the Patriots seem less and less talented every year. Every year seems like the End for the Patriots, doesn’t it? Everyone licks their chops, sneers and waits for Brady to meltdown or get his knees chopped off by some crusader of justice, but it never happens, and every year that he survives, that he thrives, it seems like he gets crankier on the field, both his sneer and the fans’ sneer grows and everyone hates him even more. But I can appreciate and respect a man like that, a man whose sneer says “Fuck you, come at me, bros . . . you will miss.”

And everyone does miss and Tom Brady goes to another Super Bowl. I think I like him the more people hate him, tribalism aside, probably because I’m a contrarian, but also because people are dumb. Tom Brady is great because he wants this shit more than you’ve wanted anything in your lives. I see him and I see those Raiders teams of the 70s. Beneath all the noise, beneath the biker gang mystique, beneath the Uggs and Giseles, there is an almost psychotic need to win, and for me, that trumps everything else. Because they don’t care whether you love them or hate them. You are beneath them, and they are just there to win. Get with the program or get the fuck out of the way.

But it’s not just Brady. It’s also Bill Belichick. Together, they are what make the Patriots truly fascinating, fitting villains for our times. Brady is the golden, smooth exterior, the rich veneer hiding a decaying interior, dragging the Patriots to glory even while the rest of the team struggles to rise above the barest mediocrity, living off the reputation of those that came before, depending on Brady to carry them through one more game, one more season. And Belichick is the ugly, Dick Cheneyish ogre behind the scenes, keeping things going with ruthless and grim precision. He is a monster, a human being utterly without redemption, shuffling along in his hobo sweatshirts, scowling at everyone and everything, from the media to the sun and the moon and down to his own shriveled heart. He is easy to hate, and he doesn’t give a fuck.

There is something admirable in that, though, isn’t there? It’s easy to hate people who don’t care if you hate them. It’s easy, but who cares? There is no worth in despising people who actively ask for it.

Compare that to someone like Peyton Manning, a dude who desperately wants to be seen as both a winner and a good guy, but whose true colors come out whenever he fails. He’ll throw anyone and everyone under the boss – remember his “our liquored up kicker” line when he was with the Colts? – and then he’ll go right back to shaking hands and doing his middle-manager at Lowe’s routine that the Nascar masses lap right up. That is the sort of dude who is easy for me to hate.

And then you have dudes like Ndamukong Suh, who end up neither deserving my hate nor my love, because they become almost tragic figures, deserving something closer to pity. They can’t decide whether they want to embrace being the hero or the villain. Suh seems like he wants to embrace his villainous nature, but he can’t let himself truly run with it, and so he sort of vascillates between that “Fuck you, so what?” attitude and the “I’m really a good guy, I swear…” attitude, and the result is a sort of mushy incompetence, an ass-kicker who never really embraces the “Win or Die” attitude that is so essential to becoming a truly successful NFL villain.

I’ll take dudes like Brady and Belichick, who understand they are the villains, but don’t give a fuck. That’s what those old Raiders teams used to do, and that’s what these Patriots do.

I know that comparison sounds ridiculous, but think about it. The Raiders used to do all manner of petty shit to gain an edge – remember Fred Biletnikoff’s stickum? – and that’s what the Patriots under Belichick have done.

The Raiders used to grease their jerseys. They had bowls full of amphetamines in the locker room. Their trainer shot dudes up with adrenaline extracted from the glands of corpses (!!!) They did whatever they had to win, no matter how petty or crazy. Sound familiar?

Sure, Belichick isn’t shooting his dudes up with corpse adrenaline (probably not, anyway) but he will deploy spies, he will deflate some footballs. They are schemes that seem almost hilariously incompetent, almost Austin Powersish in their parody of super-villainy, and who knows if they actually help? But Belichick doesn’t give a fuck. He does it anyway because even if there is only a .00001% chance that they help him, it’s worth it to him. And why not? After all, he doesn’t give a shit if he gets caught. The NFL will slap the Patriots with some symbolic penalty, Belichick will shrug and shuffle back to his lab to cook up something heinous with Brady. They just don’t care. Either what the NFL thinks or what you, the fan, thinks.

I, for one, actually find that refreshing. The NFL sucks. It is a horrible organization and anyone who tells it to fuck off is okay by me. The enemy of my enemy and all that. And most fans are drooling idiots, obsessed with horse’s ass talk-radio bullshit. Always remember, the Dallas Cowboys are the most popular team in all the land. Fuck what the fans think.

The Patriots are cheating jerks, but they own that shit. All they want to do is win. Everything else is just noise, and I’m good with anyone who understands that. That’s what those old Raiders teams knew, and that’s what Brady and Belichick’s Patriots know. That’s why I’ll be rooting for the Patriots in yet another Super Bowl and why, damn it, I’ll say it . . . I’m a Patriots fan. Fuck you.

The Emperor Has No Clothes

The NFL has always been a cesspool of idiocy and arrogance. At least to anyone paying attention. The Lions getting boned by incompetent refs in the 4^th quarter, leading to lynch mobs being formed, blood orgies in the streets and one dude even calling sweet, gentle Ty Schalter a fucking retard (Excuse me, it was actually YOU ARE A FUCKING RETARD) for daring to suggest that the Lions probably could have played a little better despite the dicking they got from the refs, was just the latest in a long line of examples of the NFL’s rotten bullshit.

The truth is that it has been there for everyone to see for a long time now. Lions fans are already intimately familiar with it. Just go back to the Process of the Catch nonsense that stole an obvious touchdown away from Calvin Johnson in Chicago. That’s what makes this so hard for most Lions fans, I think. It’s not just a revelation of a combination of incompetence and arrogance by the NFL, but a confirmation. And it happened at both the worst possible time, and the time when long-suffering Lions fans expected it to happen. That is a terrible combination that leaves grown dudes and lady dudes shivering and shaking like broken junkies, sniping at each other bitterly and imagine dark deeds involving Emperor Goodell and a trash compactor.

It’s not just the incompetence. Refs in all sports suffer from that particular malady, and hey, we all make mistakes. To err is human, blah, blah, blah. But it’s the NFL’s almost unbelievable arrogance that is at the core of this rotten business. It manifests itself most obviously, and most publicly, when something like this happens. Or something like the Process of the Catch ruling. The NFL obviously fucks up, but instead of owning up to it, they just try to remake reality to fit the horrible New World that they have created with their inanity. It’s why I’ve compared the NFL’s rulebook to a Necronomicon. It’s a dark wizard’s tome that only fell sorcerers and wicked magicians can read. The Emperor clears his throat as the rabble starts to get out of hand, and the Minister of Propaganda, Mike Pereira, rolls his bones, smears cow blood on the face of a baby, watches the pigeons for signs and then declares the NFL’s obvious misdeeds just.

But it also manifests in other, more insidious ways. It can be as simple as the NFL fining dudes for not wearing Official NFL Merchandise during press conferences. Years ago, back when Jon Kitna was with the Bengals, they fined the dude for wearing a hat with a cross on it during a press conference. Kitna, for those who don’t know, is big into the Jesus thing, which… whatever, that is his deal and you have to respect that. But the NFL didn’t give a shit. They fined him because it was not an NFL Licensed and Approved cross, which… that’s some shit, isn’t it? I mean, that’s some straight out of the Bible money lenders in the temple kind of shit. That’s old school wicked fairy tale villain kind of nonsense.

And then there’s the Ray Rice incident, or any number of off the field incidents over the last several years, which have finally laid bare the arbitrary and ridiculous nature of Emperor Goodell’s punishments. He’s set himself on the throne and just arrogantly waves a dismissive hand at anyone who bothers him, offering barely thought out dictates that people are not allowed to question. It all depends on his mood, whether or not he’s paying attention and what he thinks he can cover up. It’s arrogant and stupid, and, well, those two things often go hand in hand. Hell, next season he’ll probably decree that a contract dispute can only be resolved by cutting a baby in half.

But it’s not just the NFL. No, the NFL is just the root of the problem, the festering poison that effects anyone else who spends too much time around it. NFL insiders soon end up exhibiting the same diminished mental faculties as a dude who fell asleep in his running car with the garage door closed.

All you have to do is look at how NFL insiders dealt with Jim Harbaugh’s move to Michigan. Their arrogance and lazy dismissal of what was happening right in front of them was almost shocking. It was a mirror image of the attitude of the league that they love and cover. While Michigan insiders were adamant that something big was happening, never wavering in their coverage of the deal for weeks and months, the NFL insiders refused to even acknowledge the possibility because no one leaves the NFL.

That shit is chilling. That’s a rotten, fucked up attitude right there, the sort of thing normally seen only in cults. NOBODY LEAVES THE NFL. That was the refrain heard from countless reporters who couldn’t imagine a better world outside of their twisted utopia. It was arrogant and stupid at the same time. Sound familiar?

Of course, they were wrong, just like the NFL is so often wrong. And just like their beloved NFL, they immediately tried to reshape the story to fit their bullshit narrative. It was pretty clear that Harbaugh and Michigan were a match made in heaven all along. The insider stories that have come out make that clear. But oh no! That doesn’t fit with the NFL’s vision of the world. They say the world is flat, so fuck you, Columbus. First, it was Harbaugh is never leaving the NFL for college, then it was Harbaugh turned Michigan down but changed his mind after a desperate Michigan made a last minute offer of a bajillion dollars that no one could match, then it was Harbaugh will still stay in the NFL because he’s only using Michigan for leverage (an idea which never made sense given that Harbaugh pretty much had his pick of jobs in the NFL, he didn’t need to use Michigan – a lowly college team according to NFL insiders – when he had several NFL franchises ready to try to outbid one another), and then when he finally took the job and made them all look like fools, it was that Harbaugh only did it for the money, and when that was proven to be bullshit (Harbaugh is making the same amount he made with the 49ers) they turned around and said that it was because he couldn’t find a job in the NFL, which… what the fuck? That level of intellectual dishonesty is staggering, usually only seen in, well, the NFL.

But the NFL can’t change reality, no matter how hard they try. And neither can its slappies, those Defenders of the Shield who have allowed themselves to be coopted and perverted into little more than propagandists, mouth-pieces for a corrupt regime intent on greedily raking in as much money as it can and glorifying its own image at the expense of everyone else, from the fans who make its existence possible to the dudes who concuss themselves into an early grave for a few tosses of the coin from the Emperor and his minions.

The NFL won’t acknowledge reality, and will try to change it to meet some alternate-universe bizarro-world that they’ve cooked up for themselves like meth-heads in a dirty trailer. They’ll tell you that somehow that bullshit call against the Lions was justified. It’s gotten so bad, though, that even Mike Pereira can’t bring himself to lie and twist the truth for his Emperor. He admitted it was a bad call, which probably means he’ll be hauled away for electro-shock treatment and “reeducation” by the Emperor’s goons.

The NFL will still try to twist it, to somehow make all their bullshit “true,” and if they can’t, they’ll just try to sweep it under the rug and pretend it didn’t happen because fuck your memories, peasant. The Emperor makes reality.

And doofuses like John Clayton won’t acknowledge reality either. They’ll still say shit like Harbaugh took the Michigan job as a “soft landing” because the NFL which was so hot on his trail only hours before, so hot in fact that one dude tried to claim that the Raiders would give him $16 million a year (no, really, an “insider” actually “reported” this) suddenly had no room for him and he was forced to lick his wounds with a lowly college team. (A college team that routinely draws over 100,000 fans, has an alumni and fanbase that any NFL franchise would murder small children for, is laden with tradition and is a financial powerhouse that can pay their coach whatever they damn well please, but… okay, sure, it’s just the Minor Leagues) But why wouldn’t the insiders do this? Why wouldn’t they lie and twist and play intellectual shell games? The world that they live in, the world of the NFL, has made those things into virtues. They are merely doing what daddy taught them.

But anyone with eyes to see and a brain to think can see reality, can see just how rotten and absurd the NFL has become. It has been this way for a while now, and you can even make the argument that their arrogant bully tactics are at the heart of the league, interwoven in its origins and its staggering growth through the years, much like a crime family. But regular people are starting to see this shit. The Emperor has no clothes and while his advisors and the Baghdad Bobs who cover him and his kingdom insist that he’s got on the finest of furs and the best silks from all across the world, the peasants can see him standing naked in the window, his doughy ass hanging out for all the world to see.

The NFL isn’t going anywhere. It’s too big and its sheer momentum means that it will remain the Big Boss in the sporting world for years to come. But that doesn’t mean that I have to pretend that it is righteous or good or worthy of my adulation. Fuck the NFL. This isn’t about my team getting screwed or throwing a hissy fit because I don’t like what happened. I blame the Lions for fucking up that game just as much as I blame the refs. Well, maybe not just as much, but I’m certainly willing to say that they could have done a lot more to make sure that call would be little more than an unfortunate and irritating footnote.

I say this because I want you to understand that this is not the result of irrational anger of the lynch mob variety a la what we saw on twitter while it was all going down in real time. No, this is the result of years of arrogance, of heavy-handed megalomania, of having the NFL’s bullshit shoved down my throat for far too long. I see you, NFL. I will always see you. You are too big to miss. I am not going to make outrageous claims about burying my head in the sand and pretending that you’re not there. That would just be letting you get away with it. You see, I am a football fan. And you are fucking with that, and I don’t like it. You will not drive me away from being a football fan because you are not football. You are the NFL, and there is a world of difference between the two, and it’s about time everyone sees that.

The NFL is not football. Football is football. The NFL is a corporate wasteland of rotten souls and diseased brains. I am a football fan. The NFL can go fuck itself.