Beneath the hoody

As a kid, I was obsessed with all things Watergate. This seems like a pretty odd thing for a kid to preoccupy himself with, but then, I was a pretty odd little boy inasmuch as you’d call any kid who asked Santa for Gordon Liddy’s autobiography “odd.”

I dunno — some boys alienate their classmates by never knowing when to shut up about Gandalf; I alienated mine by never knowing when to shut up about John Erlichman. While my friends worked through their impending sexual prime with the aid of a particular actress, model or USC song girl, I only had eyes for Maureen Dean. Even when I participated in a shared childhood rite-of-passage like flipping out at my mother about the deficiencies in my Halloween costume, it was Nixon-centric. She didn’t ruin my life when she forgot to buy the good fake blood for my zombie costume, she ruined my life when she forgot to buy the good flesh-colored putty for my Dick-Nixon-Wandering-Drunkenly-Through-The-Roosevelt-Room-On-His-Last-Night-In-Office costume.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m uniquely inclined to buy into conspiracy theories — especially those involving sports. I believe Game 7 of the 2002 Western Conference Finals was fixed. I think everybody in the Little League World Series is secretly 30-years-old. I’m convinced the average Ohio State football player makes $900,000 a year. I believe there are vast, far-flung conspiracies that threaten the integrity of the NFL.

Bill Belichick is a middle-aged Little Ivy alum who enjoys gray clothes and lacrosse. In this respect, he’s pretty much like every teacher I ever had at prep school. The only difference, really, is that the Internet message boards do not accuse my prep school teachers of spending every waking moment trying to undermine the integrity of professional football. Belichick ignores the press, treats tenured veterans as dispensable and doesn’t write books that give all the credit to Jesus. He’s like a character in a Hopper painting, or Robert De Niro’s bank robber character in “Heat.”  A needle going back to zero, a double blank. This is of no help at all when it comes to our national obsession with finding out what people are Really Like. And that’s the whole point — like the best horror filmmakers, Belichick is keenly aware of just how unnerving the unknown can be.

Case in point: Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws.” It took 80 minutes of screen time for the titular carcharodon carcharias to pop out of the water and thoroughly goose a chain-smoking Roy Scheider. Would that shark be as terrifying if it appeared in the first scene? Or paired with Matthew Fox to present the ESPY for Best Female Action Sports Athlete? Of course not. Bill Belichick hopes, fears and dreams; in other words, he’s exactly the same as everybody else on the planet (except more captivated with the drop kick). But he’s also keenly aware that the more he articulates about himself, the easier it becomes to beat his football team (or maybe just conceive of beating his football team). If the events of Super Bowl XLII taught us anything (other than that the Manning family is extraordinarily slippery), it’s that it is fully possible to find meaning and purpose in the simple act of Not Screwing Up Too Much.

For 16 weeks, the 2007 New York Giants were a lousy football team where everybody hated each other. They weren’t bad, not at all, but they possessed a paranoid, toxic group dynamic that made it seem like they were Tom Coughlin eye-roll away from burning down Giants Stadium for the insurance money. This was the situation until the final weekend of the season, when the Giants nearly knocked off Belichick and the undefeated Patriots at the Meadowlands. Immediately, the dynamic changed: The Giants were now a lousy football team where everybody hated each other that somehow almost beat New England. The Patriots looked tense and combustible in the final stages of their perfect season; New York drew teams coached by Jon Gruden and Wade Phillips for the first two rounds of the playoffs; New England had to deal with pictures of Tom Brady in a walking cast popping up on TMZ. These are the consequences of Bill Belichick showing too much, of letting people know he cared about going 16-0, of not ordering Tom Brady to spend the two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl hidden from cameras in the limestone caves of Missouri. Thus, the Sloan Wilson act — a man unmatched in the flamboyance of his banality.

For people who talk about football for a living, this notion is impossible to process (football writers, it should be noted, are generally more reflective about the Patriots, the remnants of English lectures they forgot to skip in college). Unfortunately, newspapers, magazines and every other form of written media that cannot be produced via a 150-character text message are evaporating. Online magazines such as the NFP will make in-roads, but as long as the majority of Americans cling to Caps Lock for CASUAL ONLINE CORRESPONDENCE, television and radio will dictate conventional fan wisdom in the NFL. This would be fine if more drive-time hosts modeled themselves after Charlie Rose, but they don’t.

The majority of people who talk about football sound like the unholy spawn of Emmitt Smith and one of the fat southern guys on “Around The Horn.” This would still be palatable if these people actually talked about the NFL, but they don’t, at least not with any kind of perspective. Scope is the most continually underrated aspect of pro football’s popularity. It is tailor-made for obsessives — baseball is set up to be more fascinating after eight beers, whereas pro football is never as interesting as it is after you’ve just pounded three Venti Lattes. Teasing out the worth of the 1,700 players on active rosters, 150 practice squad players, approximately 300 coaches, more than 100 viable free agents and 400 college prospects is yeoman’s work even before you consider the minutiae of schemes, team philosophy and the salary cap. Coaches roll over, new deals are signed, strengths become liabilities and vice versa. It’s like one of those online role-playing games, minus the exile and shame.

And then there’s the “other” NFL, which takes the vast, ever-evolving landscape of pro football and pares it down into a schizophrenic mobius strip: Terrell Owens might as well be Andre Rison, Rod Marinelli might as well be Rich Kotite, and Donovan McNabb is whoever you want him to be, depending on the week. Open-ended criminal recidivism is a serious problem, Ray Guy’s Hall of Fame credentials are the source of much tension, and, oh, boy, the Jets blew it again with their most recent draft class/free agency period/coaching search. As a template, this is both depressing and comforting. It’s like going back to a high school reunion — change all you want, but to your old classmates, you’ll always be the same person you were at 14. And that’s the NFL — there’s always somebody to tell you how nothing has changed since 2002, 1991, 1979 or 1958. The pillars of the game need to stay static, lest we consider our own mortality.

I’ve heard it said that Spygate robbed us of our innocence, which would be true if this were a nation comprised solely of lame eight-year-olds. To paraphrase Jeremy Green’s father, Spygate was what we thought it was — the football version of the old stealing-signs-from-the-dugout routine that happens every summer (and invariably involves Tony La Russa). Because there are only 16 games, the punishment needed to be 10 times as harsh. And it was, which settled things for non-lunatics. Nobody except for Kurt Warner looks askance at the totality of the Patriots dynasty.

The $750,000 in fines against Belichick and Bob Kraft have gone the way of history, along with the first-round draft pick the club forfeited (although it sure would be nice to have Brandon Flowers right about now). In the 35 games since NFL Security confiscated Matt Estrella’s video camera, the team is 29-6. But people will forever be looking for Belichick on the NFL’s grassy knoll. He’s not just a CHEATER, he’s the mastermind of a league-wide conspiracy. And I guess technically there’s no way to refute the first part of this sentiment, aside from just busting out the transcript of Tim Geithner’s confirmation hearing. Like your feelings for women who’ve dumped you, there’s no reason to let Spygate go completely, but it’s worth knowing what holding on to it says about you.

At Yahoo! Sports’ Shutdown Corner, Matthew Darnell somehow managed to one-up “what’s the deal with airline peanuts?” in terms of topicality and freshness in his breakdown of the Matt Cassel trade: “[Belichick would] cheat in a game of Connect Four against a poor orphan child” (As opposed to rich orphans, of whom Belichick is actually quite fond). Count on Jay Mariotti to ruin the fun of orphans and board games by going all crazy town. “First it was Spygate, the espionage caper that left a permanent cheating smear on Belichick’s legacy,” writes Mariotti on his new blog, quite possibly the first Web site that makes it seem like your computer is screaming at you. “Now we have the Pioli Scheme.”

It’s a time-honored American custom to just go ahead and hate anything that you can’t understand, which I suppose makes these men patriots (ha!), but it gives too much credit to Belichick and Scott Pioli. Pioli doesn’t even know if Gary Gibbs or Clancy Pendergast will be his defensive coordinator next year. Even with Belichick’s help, there are serious doubts as to Pioli’s ability to play the Ricky Jay roll in the Pats’ newest long-con/offseason. The white whale in any Cassel trade was long thought to be first and third round picks from Detroit should Cassel grade out higher than Georgia junior QB Matthew Stafford. This seemed inevitable, since everybody hates Stafford like poison, but the “Mean Girls” treatment didn’t deter some brave soul in Michigan from noting that when Cassel isn’t in the shotgun, he bears a striking resemblance to the man who was almost cut in preseason to make room for Matt Gutierrez. Meanwhile, the Vikings traded for a man named after a cooking spice, and Denver and Tampa wasted time chasing the Jay Cutler windmill. Kansas City posted the high bid by default.

The Brown family is allowed to continue operating the Bengals despite not being able to afford a scouting department. Dan Snyder soaks Redskins fans at every turn, brings home a league high $328 million in revenue, yet still lays off two-dozen front office employees. Al Davis is selling off chunks of the Raiders at a blinding clip, and yet these silent partners are seemingly content to let Uncle Al continue with his overhead projector demonstrations and market-altering contracts. It’s weird, wild stuff, and it has nothing to do with The Man in the Gray Cutoff Sweatshirt.

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