What got sports columnists talking this week? Here’s our roundup.
Taking on the NFL’s “office” culture
The NFL is considering a rule that would impose a 15-yard penalty for the use of derogatory language on the field. It’s a controversial idea that has even more immediacy because of recent revelations about abusive behaviour among the Miami Dolphins, and one of the major arguments hinges on locker room culture. This week there were two interesting takes on that: one outside, one insider.
Jason Reid is in favour. He argues the field is an NFL player’s office, and if discriminatory language and harassment is forbidden in other workplaces, it should apply there, too. “Many league observers likely would argue it’s unfair to hold players accountable for what’s said during the heat of competition. Playing in the NFL isn’t like working in an office or even on a factory assembly line, some would say, so professional athletes should play by different rules,” he writes. “But they’d be wrong.”
But Connor Barwin, an outside linebacker for the Philadelphia Eagles, disputes the idea that his job is like anything else most of us can relate to. He depicts a place where hierarchy and ritual are as beloved as in the Catholic church, all in the name of cultivating a tight brotherhood you can count on each Sunday. Rookies carry veterans’ pads and stock the room with candy, position groups spend more time together than most married couples and fines punish anything that suggests a lackadaisical attitude (the best detail: letting one rip during film study will cost you $100). “It sounds like a small thing, but when you can’t remember to turn your phone off in a meeting, maybe you won’t remember whether you’re supposed to drop into coverage on either the second or third receiver on the most important play of the game,” he writes.
But while it’s hard to argue the NFL isn’t a uniquely intense environment, Barwin doesn’t make much of a case that abusive language or behaviour is any more tolerable there, which is the point people like Reid are making. In fact, the linebacker concedes that the very things that make his workplace difficult for outsiders to understand also make it vulnerable. “What we end up with in the NFL is a room full of 65 of the most athletic, driven, and—let’s face it—reckless men in the country,” he writes. “With so much testosterone and so much ego in one room, the possibility of things going off the rails is very high.”
“You’d look scared and frail and timid”
Rick Reilly argues (in a tone that’s perhaps just a wee bit too folksy and har-dee-har-har) that Danica Patrick ought to take 76-year-old Richard Petty up on his half-hearted, dismissive offer to race her so she can prove she’s more than a pretty face. Reilly makes the solid point that while Patrick earns eye-rolls for having no wins in her short NASCAR career, there are plenty of others—including Petty, in his first two seasons—who fall into the same category, and no one is sniffing that they only get by on looks.
Still, he says, “It’d be a disgrace to lose to someone who hasn’t won a race since 1984,” Reilly concedes. “But you have even more to lose if you chicken out. You’d look scared and frail and timid. And those are all the stereotypes you got into racing to fight against, right?” Well, fine, but the best response to a chauvinistic good ol’ boy running his mouth is probably rolling your eyes and walking away, rather than trying to prove yourself based on his No-Chicks-Allowed treehouse dare.
Bleeding bleu, blanc et rouge
Charles Pierce writes a gorgeous hockey hymn that’s basically a grown-up version of The Hockey Sweater. He stitches together his snowy childhood nights in New England furtively listening for “Le but du Canadiens” on a transistor radio with the still-sparkling legacy that stares down on the likes of Carey Price and Brian Gionta from the walls of the Habs dressing room now.
Pierce’s most reverent praise is reserved for Le Gros Bill: “In his life, and in how he played this game, Jean Beliveau actually is everything people in New York thought Joe DiMaggio was,” Pierce writes. Whether you bleed bleu, blanc et rouge or that “Olé” song makes you want to claw off your ears and eat them, the mystique of the Canadiens is impossible to resist, and Pierce’s long-ago and still-bright devotion to the team drips from every word.