Two larger than life figures – one literally, one figuratively – went down this weekend: Rex Ryan and Brett Favre. And I’m conflicted about both of these guys.
Let’s start with Rex. I want to hate Rex Ryan, I really do. As a Giants fan, I am predisposed to hate him. His father Buddy coached the early 90’s Eagles, one of the dirtiest teams of all time and a team that gave the Giants fits. On the sideline with the Oilers, he punched future Giants offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride in the most ridiculous old-guy sports fight till Zimmer charged Pedro. And Rex himself exemplified the arrogance of the Ray Lewis Ravens teams, the defense that humiliated Big Blue in the 2000 Super Bowl.
But my main problem with Rex is that he has, in abundant quantity, my least favorite human trait: hubris. The definition of hubris is “overbearing pride or presumption” but I like to define it as loud-mouthed unearned arrogance. He has been bellowing and bragging on this team since the moment he arrived, a team that at the end of the regular season had the same record that got the last coach fired. And likely wouldn’t have been that good if the Colts played to win in week 16.
And yet…and yet…for two reasons I can’t help but like him. The first is that the hubris seems to work. Ryan’s incessant bluster would go over poorly with a veteran, professional team like the Colts, one that already knows it is good. But he’s a perfect fit for the Jets, a team whose players and fans have been a psychological basket case. He got this team to believe in themselves and that matters in football.
But more importantly he also has my favorite human quality: a sense of humor.
When he arrived in New York declaring that he did not come to kiss Bill Belichick’s rings, I thought to myself, what an ashhole…but I smiled as I thought it. It’s a great line and captures perfectly what he wants this team to believe about themselves. He’s the best giver of press conferences this town has seen since Parcells became a serial job-chaser.
As for Favre, my feelings are more complicated. He was, for a very long time, my favorite player in all of sports that didn’t play on one of my teams. I loved watching him play – the fun he brought to the game, the way he leaped on teammates after touchdowns, the little jump-throw he did to sell a handoff, the way he let his hair go gray. Even the interceptions * – there was something about his boyish refusal to play it safe that appealed to me.
* Whenever Favre throws an awful interception, I’m reminded of what the great historian Shelby Foote said about Robert E. Lee: Gettysburg is the price the South paid for having Lee.
And his performance in There’s Something About Mary was the best performance ever by a quarterback in a movie since Terry Bradshaw in Hooper.
But then…well you know what happened. First, the canonization by the media went way over the top. John Madden and Peter King, the head honchos of spoken and written football media, became so slobberingly infatuated with Favre’s every move that no self-respecting contrarian could keep rooting for him.
And this paled next to his agonizing off-season will-he-or-won’t-he-retire dramas. The way he held up the Packers was disgraceful, rendered more so by the class with which Aaron Rodgers comported himself. You know this story already so I won’t torture you with another retelling, especially since we’re about to begin Act IV of this interminable play.
And yet…and yet…all the reasons I liked him are still true, arguably more so since he keeps doing it at age 40. The word courage is overused in sports but for a man born in the 60’s to stand in the pocket while ferociously big and strong 25 year-olds are trying to kill him – to stand there for that extra second knowing he’s going to get creamed – to do it knowing he has already accomplished everything you can in this game – takes courage.
Not only that, he still looks like he’s having more fun out there than anyone. His much younger teammates are energized by it. And it’s a reminder that even his anguished off-season decision-making came from a genuine place – an aging body that feels every ache combined with a youthful enthusiasm that still wants to go out and fling it.
I'm very glad to see Peyton Manning, Drew Brees, the Colts and the Saints in the Super Bowl. On the surface, at least, none of the key players display the frenzied egotism we've seen Brett Favre and Rex Ryan.
But still, I think I'm gonna miss those guys...
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
National Hat Day
Happy National Hat Day! I bet you didn't know it was National Hat Day. But that's why we here at FreeTime exist - to share facts with you that you didn't know you cared about it till the moment you read it.
In honor of National Hat Day, I'm re-posting a piece I originally wrote in December 2008 called Men Without Hats, in which I argued for a glorious return to our head-covered past. Here ya go:
On January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the youngest elected President in United States history. As he went through the carefully orchestrated ceremony of the day, he did so hatless. Kennedy believed hats made him look old so he refused to be photographed in one. Considered the most glamorous and sophisticated man in the world, JFK’s bare head was a dagger to the hat industry, whose sales dropped precipitously and never recovered.
That’s how the story has always been told anyway. An entire book was even written about it (Hatless Jack: The Presidency, The Fedora, and the History of American Style). It turns out to be a myth, though, effectively skewered by Snopes.
Still, something happened. Men used to wear hats. Picture large crowds at a baseball game from the first half of the 20th century and every guy’s got a fedora, a bowler, a derby – some kind of stylish headgear.
The ubiquity of hats was perfectly captured in this exchange from Seinfeld*:
Elaine: You should have lived in the 20's and 30's. You know men wore hats all the time then.
George: What a bald paradise that must have been! Nobody knew!
* Seinfeld is to 21st century Americans what the Bible was to Western Civilization for thousands of years – the text that provides wise and relevant quotes on nearly every subject.
Government Bailout for Hat Industry?
I bring all this up because we’ve had some nasty weather in New York lately. Snow, sleet, howling wind, freezing rain. And as I walk the city streets I see men in suits coping with the weather in one of four ways:
The first two look ridiculous with a suit. The third is overkill. And the fourth is too stupid to merit comment.
* There are two types of umbrellas. The tiny ones, which aren't much bigger than a hat. And the huge golf umbrellas. I have a message to those guys with the huge ones, the ones that are designed to cover Tiger Woods, his caddy, his golf bag, and the entire 14th green: Everybody hates you.
A handful of us, me included, were wearing wide-brimmed hats. Mine is a brown Indiana Jones-type thing. I get a lot of abuse for this hat, best summed up by my son as I returned from work one evening. “You wear that in public?”
But it’s a wonderful thing. It keeps my head warm. The wide brim collects flakes and repels light rain. And in my opinion, it’s rather stylish. All I need now is for hats to come back in style so I can wear it with slightly less embarrassment than I do today.
And there is one man who has the power to bring it back. On January 20, 2009, the glamorous and sophisticated Barack Obama will take office. Will he go bareheaded, a la the mythical Jack Kennedy? Or will he don a snap-brim fedora, tilted at a rakish angle. If he does the latter, look for the comeback of the hat industry.
Now that’s change I can believe in.
In honor of National Hat Day, I'm re-posting a piece I originally wrote in December 2008 called Men Without Hats, in which I argued for a glorious return to our head-covered past. Here ya go:
On January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the youngest elected President in United States history. As he went through the carefully orchestrated ceremony of the day, he did so hatless. Kennedy believed hats made him look old so he refused to be photographed in one. Considered the most glamorous and sophisticated man in the world, JFK’s bare head was a dagger to the hat industry, whose sales dropped precipitously and never recovered.
That’s how the story has always been told anyway. An entire book was even written about it (Hatless Jack: The Presidency, The Fedora, and the History of American Style). It turns out to be a myth, though, effectively skewered by Snopes.
Still, something happened. Men used to wear hats. Picture large crowds at a baseball game from the first half of the 20th century and every guy’s got a fedora, a bowler, a derby – some kind of stylish headgear.
The ubiquity of hats was perfectly captured in this exchange from Seinfeld*:
Elaine: You should have lived in the 20's and 30's. You know men wore hats all the time then.
George: What a bald paradise that must have been! Nobody knew!
* Seinfeld is to 21st century Americans what the Bible was to Western Civilization for thousands of years – the text that provides wise and relevant quotes on nearly every subject.
Government Bailout for Hat Industry?
I bring all this up because we’ve had some nasty weather in New York lately. Snow, sleet, howling wind, freezing rain. And as I walk the city streets I see men in suits coping with the weather in one of four ways:
- Baseball hat
- Wool cap
- Umbrella*
- Bare head
The first two look ridiculous with a suit. The third is overkill. And the fourth is too stupid to merit comment.
* There are two types of umbrellas. The tiny ones, which aren't much bigger than a hat. And the huge golf umbrellas. I have a message to those guys with the huge ones, the ones that are designed to cover Tiger Woods, his caddy, his golf bag, and the entire 14th green: Everybody hates you.
A handful of us, me included, were wearing wide-brimmed hats. Mine is a brown Indiana Jones-type thing. I get a lot of abuse for this hat, best summed up by my son as I returned from work one evening. “You wear that in public?”
But it’s a wonderful thing. It keeps my head warm. The wide brim collects flakes and repels light rain. And in my opinion, it’s rather stylish. All I need now is for hats to come back in style so I can wear it with slightly less embarrassment than I do today.
And there is one man who has the power to bring it back. On January 20, 2009, the glamorous and sophisticated Barack Obama will take office. Will he go bareheaded, a la the mythical Jack Kennedy? Or will he don a snap-brim fedora, tilted at a rakish angle. If he does the latter, look for the comeback of the hat industry.
Now that’s change I can believe in.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Thick-Necked Cliche Machines
It’s time for the FreeTime NFL playoff predictions!
While other “analysts” and “experts” try to predict who will “win” the “games”, we go about things a little differently here at FreeTime. That is because we have no idea who will win the games. This is a league, after all, in which the 5/6 seed has won two of the last four Super Bowls, and four of the last twelve.
Bengals-Jets: who knows? Pats-Ravens: you got me. Cowboys-Eagles: beats my two pair. Packers-Cardinals: seriously, I’m not kidding, I have no idea.
But I can confidently predict that an army of large, thick-necked men of limited vocabulary will appear on your television screens over the next month loudly and emphatically spouting cliches that have no basis in established fact.
Here are some of the things you'll hear:
"Defense Wins in the Playoffs, Boom."
This statement is absolutely true…except when it’s not. Since 1970, 15 top-ranked defenses have appeared in the Super Bowl. But 17 top-ranked offenses have appeared. In the same time period, 42 top-five defenses have played in the Super Bowl, while 45 top-five offenses got there.
For every Super Bowl Champion that relied mostly on defense to win (02 Bucs, 00 Ravens), I can name a Super Bowl Champion that relied mostly on offense (99 Rams, 06 Colts). Super Bowl champions, except for the rare exceptions like the four in this paragraph, are teams that are very good on both sides of the ball.
Bonus FreeTime Trivia question: only 3 Super Bowl champs have finished the season #1 in offense and defense. Name them (answer below).
(Hat tip to Arrow Head Addict)
"JB, Momentum is Really Important in the Playoffs."
Last year the Cardinals lost 4 of their last 6, and were blown out in 3 of those losses. They went on to beat the Falcons, Panthers, and Eagles in the playoffs and came within a spectacular Santonio Holmes catch of winning the Super Bowl. The 2007 Giants went 4-4 in the 2nd half and lost 2 of their last 3 games, including a home game against the non-playoff Redskins. They won the Super Bowl.
Oh, and everyone who thinks the Jets are a lock against the Bengals because they blew them out 37-0 last week, consider this: The Eagles destroyed the Cardinals 48-20 in Week 13 last year. Naturally, they lost to the Cardinals in the NFC Championship game two months later.
"As you know, Terry, experience is Really Important in the Playoffs."
On February 3, 2002, Tom Brady walked on the field for Super Bowl XXXV. He was an NFL rookie. It was his 17th NFL start. He started the season on the Patriot’s bench and was only starting because of an injury to Drew Bledsoe. The vast majority of his teammates had zero rings on their fingers. The Patriots won the Super Bowl.
On February 4, 2008, Tom Brady walked on the field for Super Bowl XLII. He was an NFL veteran. He’d had over 100 NFL starts. He was a 3-time Super Bowl winner, a 2-time Super Bowl MVP, that season’s MVP, and a sure-fire Hall of Famer. Most of his teammates had extensive playoff experience and some had multiple Super Bowl rings. The Patriots lost the Super Bowl.
In fact, since 2001 every Super Bowl has been won by a QB appearing in their very first Super Bowl, except for Brady’s 2nd and 3rd, and Roethlisberger’s 2nd. And Roethlisberger’s 2nd was won by a rookie head coach. The head coaches of all those winners (again, except for Belichick), were appearing in their first Super Bowl.
"Special Teams is the Key, Cris."
Yeah, special teams is the key, way more important than scoring points on offense and preventing them on defense. This is too stupid for me to even refute with statistics but I do guarantee these words will be uttered at some point this month. I can, however, explain why people can’t stop themselves from uttering this stupidity once in a while.
Special teams are usually boring, predictable, and uneventful. Punts are rarely returned more than 10 yards, and kick-offs rarely more than 30. Short field goals tend to go in and longer ones are a little sketchier. But every once in a while a kickoff is returned for a touchdown or a field goal is blocked and because that is so unusual it is given more importance than the 120 plays that occurred that day.
But if special teams were so important, they wouldn't put all the backups there.
"In the playoffs..."
What all of the above nonsense has in common is the idea that playoff football is demonstrably different than regular season football. Oh sure, the rules are the same and the field is the same and the scoring is the same and the players are the same and the officials are the same and the equipment is the same…but it’s the playoffs. And different things matter in the playoffs.
Now I’m willing to concede that these thick-necked mastodons have actually played in the playoffs, whereas I mostly watch them on television and occasionally from Section 303 in Giants Stadium. But it seems to me that playoff games work out pretty much the same ways as regular season games. Sometimes it’s a blowout, sometimes its close. Sometimes a handful of big plays are decisive, sometimes it’s a long grind of a game. Sometimes teams win by throwing it 50 times and sometimes they win with a committed ground attack. Sometimes there are dramatic comebacks and sometimes there aren’t. Line play, a balanced offensive attack, putting pressure on the quarterback, turnovers – these things that are so important in regular season games are also important in playoff games.
So whenever you hear the announcer preface any observation with “In the playoffs….” put your b.s. monitor on alert. Oh, and one more thing: take the Packers and the points.
Trivia answer: 72 Dolphins, 89 Niners, and 96 Packers
While other “analysts” and “experts” try to predict who will “win” the “games”, we go about things a little differently here at FreeTime. That is because we have no idea who will win the games. This is a league, after all, in which the 5/6 seed has won two of the last four Super Bowls, and four of the last twelve.
Bengals-Jets: who knows? Pats-Ravens: you got me. Cowboys-Eagles: beats my two pair. Packers-Cardinals: seriously, I’m not kidding, I have no idea.
But I can confidently predict that an army of large, thick-necked men of limited vocabulary will appear on your television screens over the next month loudly and emphatically spouting cliches that have no basis in established fact.
Here are some of the things you'll hear:
"Defense Wins in the Playoffs, Boom."
This statement is absolutely true…except when it’s not. Since 1970, 15 top-ranked defenses have appeared in the Super Bowl. But 17 top-ranked offenses have appeared. In the same time period, 42 top-five defenses have played in the Super Bowl, while 45 top-five offenses got there.
For every Super Bowl Champion that relied mostly on defense to win (02 Bucs, 00 Ravens), I can name a Super Bowl Champion that relied mostly on offense (99 Rams, 06 Colts). Super Bowl champions, except for the rare exceptions like the four in this paragraph, are teams that are very good on both sides of the ball.
Bonus FreeTime Trivia question: only 3 Super Bowl champs have finished the season #1 in offense and defense. Name them (answer below).
(Hat tip to Arrow Head Addict)
"JB, Momentum is Really Important in the Playoffs."
Last year the Cardinals lost 4 of their last 6, and were blown out in 3 of those losses. They went on to beat the Falcons, Panthers, and Eagles in the playoffs and came within a spectacular Santonio Holmes catch of winning the Super Bowl. The 2007 Giants went 4-4 in the 2nd half and lost 2 of their last 3 games, including a home game against the non-playoff Redskins. They won the Super Bowl.
Oh, and everyone who thinks the Jets are a lock against the Bengals because they blew them out 37-0 last week, consider this: The Eagles destroyed the Cardinals 48-20 in Week 13 last year. Naturally, they lost to the Cardinals in the NFC Championship game two months later.
"As you know, Terry, experience is Really Important in the Playoffs."
On February 3, 2002, Tom Brady walked on the field for Super Bowl XXXV. He was an NFL rookie. It was his 17th NFL start. He started the season on the Patriot’s bench and was only starting because of an injury to Drew Bledsoe. The vast majority of his teammates had zero rings on their fingers. The Patriots won the Super Bowl.
On February 4, 2008, Tom Brady walked on the field for Super Bowl XLII. He was an NFL veteran. He’d had over 100 NFL starts. He was a 3-time Super Bowl winner, a 2-time Super Bowl MVP, that season’s MVP, and a sure-fire Hall of Famer. Most of his teammates had extensive playoff experience and some had multiple Super Bowl rings. The Patriots lost the Super Bowl.
In fact, since 2001 every Super Bowl has been won by a QB appearing in their very first Super Bowl, except for Brady’s 2nd and 3rd, and Roethlisberger’s 2nd. And Roethlisberger’s 2nd was won by a rookie head coach. The head coaches of all those winners (again, except for Belichick), were appearing in their first Super Bowl.
"Special Teams is the Key, Cris."
Yeah, special teams is the key, way more important than scoring points on offense and preventing them on defense. This is too stupid for me to even refute with statistics but I do guarantee these words will be uttered at some point this month. I can, however, explain why people can’t stop themselves from uttering this stupidity once in a while.
Special teams are usually boring, predictable, and uneventful. Punts are rarely returned more than 10 yards, and kick-offs rarely more than 30. Short field goals tend to go in and longer ones are a little sketchier. But every once in a while a kickoff is returned for a touchdown or a field goal is blocked and because that is so unusual it is given more importance than the 120 plays that occurred that day.
But if special teams were so important, they wouldn't put all the backups there.
"In the playoffs..."
What all of the above nonsense has in common is the idea that playoff football is demonstrably different than regular season football. Oh sure, the rules are the same and the field is the same and the scoring is the same and the players are the same and the officials are the same and the equipment is the same…but it’s the playoffs. And different things matter in the playoffs.
Now I’m willing to concede that these thick-necked mastodons have actually played in the playoffs, whereas I mostly watch them on television and occasionally from Section 303 in Giants Stadium. But it seems to me that playoff games work out pretty much the same ways as regular season games. Sometimes it’s a blowout, sometimes its close. Sometimes a handful of big plays are decisive, sometimes it’s a long grind of a game. Sometimes teams win by throwing it 50 times and sometimes they win with a committed ground attack. Sometimes there are dramatic comebacks and sometimes there aren’t. Line play, a balanced offensive attack, putting pressure on the quarterback, turnovers – these things that are so important in regular season games are also important in playoff games.
So whenever you hear the announcer preface any observation with “In the playoffs….” put your b.s. monitor on alert. Oh, and one more thing: take the Packers and the points.
Trivia answer: 72 Dolphins, 89 Niners, and 96 Packers
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