Football is Reality TV!

Recommendations if you like gossip more than sports

Shakespeare could never

Last week was NFL Week 1 — or, as I like to call it, the Season Premiere of Football!

[Also the week in which I annually update my relationship status from “Golf Widow” to “Football Long-Distance Girlfriend.”]

Week 2 started tonight, and I’m excited about it! I like football for approximately four weeks in September/October when it’s still new, the air is getting crisp and nostalgic, and I can rewatch a couple episodes of Friday Night Lights and feel great about America.

My friend Clara invented the term “jock princess” to explain people like us. She defined it as “bougie but enjoys sports.”

We enjoy sports! In moderation! We enjoy a crisp sauv blanc at a baseball game. We’ll wear a baseball cap if we absolutely must! We appreciate athletes who know how to dress. But actually playing sports? That is not my calling! When the Lord reached into his bag of spiritual gifts to bestow a generous amount upon me, he did not pull out a spherical object. If ball security is job security, consider me a trophy wife!

So, let’s get to know Y’ALL: Are you a football fanatic? Are you a jock princess [gender neutral!]? Are you anti-football for all the completely reasonable and moral reasons we could all be? Let’s hear it!

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This week we’re discussing sports — in the key of pop culture!

I watched FOUR shows about football recently and loved them all because they were all about the relationships, feuds, quirks, and traumas of the players themselves.

Like: Sports, but make it HBO! Football, but with a dash of Kendall Roy’s daddy trauma. Jock princess heaven! [The more I say it, the more I hate it.]

Let’s go!

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Hard Knocks on HBO (aka: the Unsuspecting Shakespearean Tragedy of the NFL)

Hard Knocks is the HBO series that follows one NFL team during their preseason training camp every year. It’s basically watching football practice as if it’s an episode of Planet Earth: Sports à la Nature Documentary. [“The defensive end moves in on his target. The unsuspecting quarterback is easy prey.” Etc.]

But this year, it became the unsuspecting prelude to a gruesome tragedy we shall call The Fall of the House of Rodgers.

This is Kendall Roy in the Succession Season 1 finale. This is Tony dying in Maria’s arms. This is Marissa Cooper’s car crash. Remember when we were all watching “that new Sean Bean show about dragons,” and then they chopped off his head?? The football scriptwriters are really going for their Emmy this year, that’s all I’m saying.

Except that it’s painfully, sadly, real.

So, if you aren’t paying attention to the news: The biggest story in football for the past year has been whether or not Shailene Woodley’s ex-fiance, football superstar Aaron Rodgers, would leave his home team in Wisconsin and go play for the New York Jets.

First he was! Then he wasn’t! On again! Off again! A classic flirtation was afoot! Then he went on a Darkness Retreat and heard from his anti-vax deity that he should join the Jets! A contract was signed! The cake was cut! The Jets became a Super Bowl favorite! This was Simba Assumes His Rightful Throne on Pride Rock levels of Main Character energy from Aaron Rodgers and Co. The only way to explain it to someone not paying attention is that this football season was about to be The Aaron Rodgers Show.

And then, in one play, it all dissolved—along with your fanatical coworker’s fantasy football team. Rodgers tore his Achilles on his first drive as a New York Jet, and he’s out for the season. YIKES. That is Sean Bean’s head rolling across King’s Landing. Joffrey is cackling on the parapets! I sincerely mean no disrespect to Aaron Rodgers when I say this, but: I bet he didn’t see THAT coming in his Darkness Retreat.

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Anyways, this season of Hard Knocks follows the Jets BEFORE Aaron Rodgers’ demise. They have no idea what’s coming. They’re just thrilled to have him on board for training camp.

So, if you’re into a little doom spiral, help yourself! It’s a good show!

Quarterback on Netflix

Here’s what I wrote about Quarterback a couple weeks ago:

Did I know who Kirk Cousins was before I watched this? Vaguely!

Would I sacrifice a kidney for him today? INSTANTLY!

This Netflix series follows three NFL quarterbacks: Patrick Mahomes [whose voice sounds like if an eight-year-old with a smoking problem swallowed a frog!], Kirk Cousins [biggest dork to ever play football! J’adore!], and Marcus Mariota [loves McDonald’s! family man!].

It’s good! So good, in fact, that I felt bereft when it was over. Like, what do you mean I can’t hang out with my friends Pat, Kirk, and Marcus? You really get to see into their day-to-day grind, their personalities, their homes, their rituals, their quirks, and meet their families.

[Meeting the families did unfortunately lead me to a very problematic opinion: Brittany Mahomes is so annoying? What’s wrong with me? I mean, she’s done amazing things for women’s soccer and co-owns the NWSL team in Kansas City! And what have I done for women today? Only complain about one of them, I fear! That did humble me!]

UNTOLD: Swamp Kings on Netflix

UNTOLD is a Netflix sports documentary series. Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote about “The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist,” the Manti Te’o documentary. Their newest series tracks the dominant Florida Gators team of the Urban Meyer/Tim Tebow years.

Pro: It was pretty entertaining and gave some insights into that team — and you could read between the lines to understand a lot more about how dark it was.

Con: It was absolutely a case of “sportswashing” — using entertainment and excitement about sports to cover up a buncha bad sh*t. They literally mentioned Aaron Hernandez [more on him below] one time in a list of recruits and never talked about him again. But they do an okay job of trying to show the darkness in the gaping cracks they left in the story.

“At the University of Florida, they were training like we were going to Iraq,” a player reminisces jokingly. You may conclude from the doc, like me, that Urban Meyer’s regime was ultimately abusive, using Tebow as a poster child to cover up the dark underbelly of verbal abuse, crime, CTE, and more, that plagued the team. They left it all on a sad note and that seemed purposeful.

The upside for comedy reasons: Tim Tebow was giving the absolute most “Hillsong Youth Pastor” vibes so hard in all his interviews; I laughed generously the whole time! Young Tebow could be played by like a young Dane Cook or, if he was lucky, Chris Pratt. This new, older, dreadfully sincere version of Tebow was really making the case for a Jared Leto casting. L-O-L. Weird!

Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez on Netflix

If you want a REAL football investigation that engages in zero sportswashing, this is the one for you. But I’ll warn you: It’s sad as f***.

Aaron Hernandez is a former football player from the Florida Gators and the New England Patriots when both teams were at their most powerful. And he ended up being convicted of murder and ending his own life while in prison. After his death, they examined his brain and found one of the worst cases of CTE they had ever seen in someone his age.

It’s very, very, very sad and will make you rethink football.

I think the podcast about him is even better than the documentary though you miss the visual element, obviously. But the reporting from The Boston Globe is so good, and the story is pretty important to know.

Whoof! That’s all for this week. Hope you enjoyed the football or, if you’re like me, the endless firehose of human stories that sports can deliver. Drop a heart or a comment if you enjoy this, and let me know what you think!