Voltaire, Narcissism & the NFL

In his short satirical tale “Zadig,” Voltaire describes the fictitious great lord Irax as “not bad at bottom but … corrupted by vanity and voluptuousness [who] breathed in nothing but false glory and false pleasures.” Zadig, the prime minister of the kingdom, undertakes to rectify the bad behavior. He does this with the cooperation of a vast entourage of the court's sycophants and via such an uninterrupted litany of fulsome praise for Irax, “expressly for all the good qualities he lacked,” that after five days, Irax, exhausted and chastened, begged for it to stop.

I was reminded of “Zadig” after watching the latest National Football League player corrupted by vanity and voluptuousness: the Buffalo Bills’ Stevie Johnson. His over-the-top touchdown catch-and-dance on Sunday afternoon mocked the New York Jets and New York City and resulted in an unsportsmanlike penalty that led to an immediate answering score. Late in that game, Johnson dropped what would have been a game-winning pass. It was hard to tell if he was exhausted or chastened.

Oh, for the gift of Voltaire to satirize the absurdity of such rampant narcissism! There are two trains of thought on the ubiquitous personal celebrations that accompany virtually every play in an NFL game. One holds that penalizing the celebrants is for party poopers who rail humorlessly against the joyful exuberance of self-expression.

The other point of view was first memorably voiced years ago by former USC coach John McKay. When one of his own players staged an elaborate bit of choreography in the end zone after a touchdown, McKay dryly told him, “Act like you’ve been there before.” 

NBC’s Bob Costas, on Sunday night, was more vehement in his denunciation of Johnson. He criticized the “mindless exhibitionism” and “obnoxious self-indulgence” and “pure selfishness and unprofessionalism [of players] detrimental to [their] team.”

Perhaps the better way to curb the gratuitous personal self-expression in sports is not to vilify it but to encourage even more manifestations of and attention to it. As Zadig understood, the remedy calls for overkill, or death by excess: more gyrations, more finger-pointing, more in-your-face taunting after every play.

We’re almost there now. After all, we see defensive tackles cavorting and flexing after stopping a ball carrier for no gain, sometimes with their team behind by two or three touchdowns. We see receivers with short memories and oversized egos flaunting a harmless catch while allowing a more meaningful pass to slip through their fingers.

Bring in additional spotlights to shine and television cameras to focus on every player demanding, “Look at me!” Because when everyone is screaming for attention, no one will be heard. If that begins to quiet the din, the NFL could thank Voltaire for bringing some humility back into its game.

JFK, the NFL & Jim McKay

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It brought to mind a story about the legendary sports broadcaster Jim McKay, who passed away in June 2008 after a long and distinguished career in journalism.

McKay was the first sportscaster to win an Emmy award; he also won Emmys for writing and broadcasting. The understated and eloquent McKay is best remembered for his role as host of ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” and Olympics coverage. During the 1972 Olympics in Munich, it was McKay who unforgettably told television viewers of the deaths of the Israeli athletes at the hands of terrorists. “They’re all gone,” McKay said.

McKay was a reporter for the Baltimore Sun and broke into broadcasting in 1947. He was later part of the New York Giants’ broadcast crew in 1963. His son, CBS Sports president Sean McManus, used to accompany him to the games back then.

“I went to a lot of Giants games with my father,” McManus told me. “His broadcast partner was Chris Schenkel, and I would squeeze in the little radio booth and sit between Chris and my dad and afterward go down to the locker room and see players like Sam Huff and Y.A. Tittle and Erich Barnes. They were my heroes in those days.”

McManus was at the Giants game with his father the weekend JFK was assassinated. The NFL games were not cancelled that day. I spoke to McManus a few years ago and asked him what he remembered about that day.

“I remember the discussion that my parents had regarding whether we should go to the game,” McManus said. ”My father had promised me that we would go, and he was trying to balance that promise with what was the right thing to do.

“In the end, I think he made a decision that he might have regretted, much like [NFL commissioner] Pete Rozelle regretted it. He might have made the wrong decision, but he did so purely out of, I think, loyalty and affection to me because he knew how disappointed I would be.

“When you’re an eight-year-old boy, you might not be able to comprehend what a devastating event the assassination of a president is. I was looking forward to going to a football game, and I think my father was very torn. In the end, he made the decision based on my feelings, I think.”

Roger Staubach and the First "Hail Mary" Pass

Roger Staubach had a storybook football career. He won the Heisman Trophy in 1963 as the U.S. Naval Academy quarterback, graduated and later fulfilled his military service requirement, and in 1969 joined the Dallas Cowboys, who had drafted him in 1964. He led the Cowboys to nine consecutive winning seasons, including their first Super Bowl championship in 1972, for which he was named the game’s MVP.

He retired in 1979 with the league’s No. 1 passer ranking. Six years later, he was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Staubach was well known for his ability to rally the Cowboys, directing them to 23 come-from-behind victories in the fourth quarter, including 14 in the final two minutes of regulation. Less well-known perhaps is the fact that he threw the very first “Hail Mary” pass. 

“That term had never been used by the press or anybody else,” Staubach said. “In the past, if you threw a pass at the end of the game, it was the alley-oop or the bomb or whatever you wanted to call it.

 “We were playing the Vikings in a playoff game and were behind 14-10. Drew Pearson made a heck of a catch —it wasn’t a great throw — and went in the end zone and we won 17-14. After the game, the press asked me what I was thinking about at the time.

“When I threw the ball I got hit. So I said, ‘I just closed my eyes and said a Hail Mary.’ The next day, the press wrote ‘Hail Mary Pass Wins Game.’ ”

Special K Endorsement

Here's an endorsement that would make sense: CC Sabathia for Special K cereal. It has more nutrients and fewer calories that Cap'n Crunch and thus could help to keep some of the weight off that talented arm. It would also serve as an example to youngsters of a healthy choice. Tie it in with a charitable pledge of x dollars for every special K (strikeout). CC and his agent can thank me later.   

Marv Albert: From Street Games to the Pros

Back in the 1950s, when he wasn’t pretending to broadcast sporting events from his self-appointed second-floor broadcast studio at his family’s home in Manhattan Beach, Marv Albert was just like any other kid in Brooklyn. He played stoopball, stickball, punchball, slapball, Wiffle ball, and other street games of the time. But in that era, before “play dates” were organized by micromanaging parents for their offspring, the children in neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs in New York City just came out into the streets and improvised their own games.

Later on, Albert acquired more formal education (Syracuse University) and experience (MSG, NBC, YES, Westwood One). One of the legends of sports broadcasting, Albert is well known in New York for his past play-by-play for the New York Knicks and Rangers and nationally for his coverage of boxing and baseball as well as for the NBA, NFL, NHL, and NCAA basketball. He now covers the NFL for CBS, the NBA for TNT, and college basketball for CBS and TNT.

During the course of research and a subsequent interview with him, I uncovered a few less-well-known facts about Marv, which he confirmed:

1. He is an honorary member of the Stoop Ball Society.
Albert: Right. That was a big game. Huge in Manhattan Beach in Brooklyn. It was full of stoops. They sent me a certificate. I get their mailings on a regular basis, so I am up on all the stoopball activities around the country.

2. Years later, he had a stoop built onto his suburban home.
Albert: I did. Very popular item. But there’s a skill to that because you have to work on it. You have to hit [the ball on the point] just right. It takes hours of preparation. And it’s worthwhile.

3. First on-air job was at a classical music station.
Albert: Yes. WONO-FM in Syracuse. Part of my philosophy of taking anything just to get on.

4. Fired on the first day for giving the listening audience more baseball box score information than they bargained for.
Albert: I was a little overly animated when it came to sports. It was not exactly what they had in mind. It was a little too much, yeah. I don’t think it adhered to what their listeners wanted. That was not the demographic group we were hitting.

5. Later worked for a rock station under the name Lance Scott.
Albert: They didn’t like Marv Albert as a name. What a thrill that was to get on the air. It was a regular station. That was a great thing about going to Syracuse, the fact that it had a very good broadcast journalism curriculum. You had opportunities in the city. Few of us were able to get on the air, either doing news or rock-type stuff. I started as Lance Scott and then I went on to one of the bigger stations. That was a great experience being able to do that, in terms of being able to ad lib and kid around and experiment on the air.

6. Tom Brokaw wanted to trade jobs with Marv at certain times of the year.
Albert: Tom is an enormous sports fan. As great as he is at what he does, maybe he’s a frustrated sportscaster, I don’t know. But Tom would be at games all the time and would always come by and chat. I get a kick out of that. When you do games in New York or L.A., people I have admired will come by at halftime and just talk basketball, from Jack Nicholson to Steven Spielberg to David Kelley.