“Deflate-gate” may be one of the few public scandals appropriate to its overplayed suffix; in a home game against a grim, turbid Indianapolis team, the Patriots didn’t need to deflate footballs to beat the Colts any more than Nixon needed to break into a hotel to beat McGovern.
> more
“I question how much attention is given to football,” former St. Louis Rams center Jason Brown said at the time. “But it’s tough. It’s a huge machine that I’m benefiting from.”
> more
In which I attempt to explain why I'm a football fan in the first place.
> more
The North Carolina State Wolfpack are a popular upset pick over the higher-raked Saint Louis Billikens. The Billiken was a fad toy from the early 20th century; it’s the 1908 equivalent of naming a basketball team The Beanie Babies. I don’t know whether I love this or if it makes me never want to take college basketball seriously again.
This year, in my annual Super Bowl preview for The Rumpus, I tell the stories of five players in this year's game: A straight-A student from Compton, the survivor of a Midwestern school shooting, a former pro baseball player, the grandson of a female cocaine kingpin, and a children's book author.
> more
My final football column of the year: Evan Gratz explains the duties of an NFL chaplain. Calvin Johnson & the NFL's middle class. Why no one should be surprised by Tampa Bay's Bobby Rainey. And two young students at 826LA, ages 8 and 11, make Super Bowl and Week 13 football picks.
> more
This week, the wildly different stories of three young players, all healthy, who have quit their lucrative, high-profile NFL careers in 2013.
> more
A young lineman leaves the Miami Dolphins after over a year of hazing, T.Y. Hilton's "slow music" inspires a huge day, and the success rate of NFL players in the restaurant business (not high).
> more
This week at The Rumpus: Family man Marvin Jones finally gets his shot; Disgraced college quarterback Terrelle Pryor's second act as a record-breaking Raider; the elective sadness of being a Minnesota Vikings fan.
This week: Why Kellen Winslow and Connor Barwin are the NFL's biggest bicycle enthusiasts (and why Connor may also be the NFL's biggest hipster); amateur magician Knowshon Moreno beats paper, rock *and* scissors in the Denver backfield; football's longest consecutive games-played streak is broken on a bittersweet night in Indiana.
> more
What’s remarkable about Arian Foster isn’t just that he’s been one of the highest-scoring players in pro football while being “mostly vegan,” but also that every NFL team passed on him.
> more
Jacksonville coach Gus Bradley is like a mom that puts cat food in your lunch box every day for years, and whenever you complain about it, says, “cat food is the lunch of the future,” and “we’re sticking with cat food” and “We know that there’s a box of Thin Mints in the freezer (Tim Tebow) but we like cat food and so will you.”
This week: The two best Scrabble players in professional football, four wildly disappointing teams get a week off, and five-foot-seven Danny Woodhead's long journey to the NFL.
This week: Jimmy Graham's harrowing childhood, Rashad Johnson's missing finger, and the week that (for once) a Cleveland guy won.
My football column for the subscription-only Weekly Rumpus is now being expanded to The Rumpus site. This week, I discuss the bizarre, beautiful Bears tight end Martellus Bennett, who hates Johnny Cash, prefers a certain kind of cereal for lunch, and made the most incredible catch of the year that wasn't a catch.
Along with fellow writers / sports fans Jim Ruland, Lincoln Michel, Patrick Somerville, and more, I wrote a wildly brief literary-themed preview of my favorite NFL team for the upcoming season. Find it here. Huge thanks to editor Jess Stoner.
Sad that there hasn’t been an NFL football game in almost seven months? After reviewing the AFC yesterday, all of the credible, influential, and relevant news of the NFL offseason concludes today with the teams of the NFC. (Apologies to Jhumpa Lahiri, Edward Albee, Samuel Beckett, James Baldwin, and James Tate.)
If you haven’t been following your favorite NFL team since you saw them last winter, it’s time to catch you up on all of the relevant news of the offseason. I’ll begin with the teams of the AFC today and conclude tomorrow with the NFC. (Apologies to James Joyce, Alice Munro, Wislawa Szymborska, and Allen Ginsberg.)
This year for Hobart, I wrote short pieces on new players likely to appear in the American League in 2013. The first segment (AL East) was released on April 2, with the AL Central and AL West in the weeks to come.
In 1993, my brother saw Nazareth, Blue Oyster Cult, Wishbone Ash, and Uriah Heep play at the same concert for $10.50.