Just when you thought the NFL couldn’t be any dumber, they go and up the stakes.
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How is it possible that the NFL is so incredibly savvy and myopic at the same time? So logically illogical that it succeeds at great lengths and then fails even farther upward? It is the truest personification of golden teflon: a substance whose sheen is so lucrative that nothing sticks to it.
I’m never not surprised (amazed, disgusted, amused, enthralled, pick your adjective …) with the NFL. We have a Harry Dunne, Lloyd Christmas relationship, The Shield and I: just when I think it can’t possibly go any lower, something manifests and the league totally one-ups itself.
I mean we’re talking about an entity that has buried a year full of abuse issues (substance, domestic and child) under the narrative of under-inflated footballs. A league that champions breast cancer awareness and honoring troops as little more than a slick guise for profiteering. And a business whose entry interviews to college kids has included inquisitions about whether a player’s mother was a prostitute.
At this point, we really shouldn’t be surprised when some cockamamie story comes out from the league. Yet this tidbit about Marcus Mariota being viewed cooly by a team, simply because he didn’t have any “red flags,” comes to light and here I am again: jaw on the floor, hand smack against the forehead.
Mark Helfrich was told by a head coach & GM before NFL Draft that “Marcus Mariota not having any red flags was a red flag” #NFLthinking
— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) July 29, 2015
Take whatever kinks there are in Mariota’s game (of which there most certainly are some), set them aside for a moment and really consider how completely stupid that off-the-field assessment is. “Marcus Mariota not having any red flags was a red flag.” In what world – sports, business, personal relationship – does that even remotely make sense?
We want a QB who’s a bad kind of good, you know? A few parking tickets, maybe a drunken bar fight or even a rogue d–k pic circulating the web. Just something to show he’s human, ya dig?
The logic is even more flawed when you juxtapose Mariota to the pre-draft narrative of fellow first-round pick and Heisman winner, Jameis Winston. The only red flags for Winston were that he was a knucklehead away from the field. Apparently for at least one coach and general manager the S-curve for the perfect player falls in-between soft-spoken signal-caller and crab-loving gunslinger.
Have we become this jaded as a society that there is such a thing as “too good”? That a person who is “too nice” is now a turn-off? Writing about sports and entertainment for a living, I’m preconditioned to wield a strong BS detector and think that every person is an entitled a–hole, yet this is too much for even me. What’s wrong with a guy who keeps his nose clean? Hell, even if there is something there, he apparently has Winston Wolf on his side cleaning things up – not a bad ace in the hole.
But then again, therein lies the beautiful hypocrisy of the National Football League. God only knows what you’ll see next, but you can bet the farm it’ll make you shake your head, question what the hell is going on out here, and then come back for more when the next jaw-dropper comes along. The NFL: It’s the perfect drug.
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