Why Must the NFL Suddenly Become Gay For One Week?

So while trying to get the Bug to fallthehellasleep tonight, I came across this rather bizarre lament by Y!S columnist Michael Silver about how gay the NFL Combine has become. There's no hate in Silver's column: he just thinks there shouldn't be a sexual undercurrent in a professional situation.

Which is fair enough, although it's weird to look at a situation where a bunch of young bucks are:

• Asked to strip down to their skivvies so that they can judged like Westminster dogs
  
• Surrounded by speculators who insist on referring to adult men as "boys"
• Utterly unable to control their own destinies, instead waiting for old men to bid on them
  

... and think the apt comparison is to a singles scene. Yes, there's an uncomfortable parallel here, but you can find its antecedent down in Charleston, not Chelsea.

Furthermore, I refuse to believe there's any homo-eroticism inherent in the Combine that isn't inherent in every NFL locker room.

It's pretty indisputable that if you put a bunch of people from one gender together for an extended period of time with no members of the other gender to look at, they'll start looking at each other (You may have heard of such phenomena among prep schools, single-sex religious communities, prison gangs, inner-city gangs, fraternities, sororities, the nomes des blog over at the Powerline blog, Ohio lacrosse teams, Greek philosophers, and the Taliban).

Yet Silver seems to be suggesting if we sprayed Gay-B-Gone on the Combine, the whole league would come off free of the kind of homoeroticism that seems weird to outsiders. But it's notable that the athletes Silver interviewed seem to shrug off any sexual undertones. That may be because each prospect can remember the first old man who took notes on the "strong, shapely ass" the prospect was already developing at age 14. Once you get over that kind skull penetration, it's probably all downhill.

So, do me a favor. The next time the guy next to you at the bar comes up with the wholly original query of "Why do they have to slap each other's asses after a good play?" just calmly explain that they do it because they're athletes and athletes are by and large into that kind of thing. You may feel obliged to add, Don't worry, that doesn't mean you and I have to do it while we watch.

If you can do that, I'll get the baby down.

Column via tMMJD, image by XKCD by the talented Pete Holiday.

Some Kid on Acid Has Already Seen This, and His Brain Has Imploded

Akeemstradumus.

Ideally, This All Would Have Come Out In Week 14

What I keep coming back to in the articles I read about Belichick is his hubris, which is $10 word for a guy who believes what David Halberstam wrote about him.

I mean, hey, steal signs from your team if you want, but don't be stupid enough to use video technology, which is explicitly banned by the NFL. You don't have diplomatic immunity or anything.

If by any chance you're going to be dumb enough to do that, then stop when other teams call you out on it. Don't just keep on videotaping when you know you've gotten a reputation for it. You're not the only one who keeps track of perceived slights.

And on the outside chance you're going to do all this, then please don't be stupid enough to do it in front of the man who used to run your defense. Wait until next week. Because your old defensive coordinator might have some idea how you run that whole "stealing offensive signals and giving it to the defense" thing. And he might have read in Halberstam's book that you're so smart no one will ever catch you, and he might want to call bullshit on that.

Wildly successful people just inevitable becomes reckless asses. I do not know why.

Viva Schrutebaggus

Schrutebag took to the radio yesterday to whine about NBC hiring Olbermann to cover the NFL:

Olbermann is bright and talented and a really good broadcaster, but he’s about as middle-america as a transgender film festival. He’s a Northeast intellectual baseball guy ... he doesn’t speak to the NFL fan at all!

Emphasis mine, obviously. This just annoys me, because:

1. I was raised in Ohio, got my collegiate education in the South, and have worked my whole professional career in Manhattan. Consquently, I have heard a hundred mouth-breathing renditions of 'That region of the country just doesn't know how stupid it is.' (Though I heard this kind of thing least of all in Ohio. Which, after checking my map, looks to be somewhere in this 'Middle America' SB speaks of.)

I have deduced: Those who toss the tritest versions of these regionalisms are what the Brits call 'tossers.' People who talk like this have never left their state. (Or, and I guess this is a new corollary, their studio.)

Such folks are just lonely/needy and desperate for some kind of bogus community feeling. They try to create it by attacking stawmen who are far, far away.

2. Latching onto the predictable 'Northeast vs. Middle America' is among the weakest of the weak stuff. If that is the best you can bring, I advise you to not take on Keith Olbermann.

PS. My complaint has nothing to do with this. (I have no problem enjoying Buckeye-bashing when it's capably done. See Monday, Carl) Though I do enjoy the unsubstantiated rumor in comment #5. WLW rules.