This Sunday, a Half Liter of Cortisol Will Get Released by Grown Men Watching Millionaires Play With a Ball 2025. Acrylic on cardboard, 11 x 14"
The following story was written in the year 2000, published in 2005, and appearing on the New York Times Worstseller list. Fish Are Very Capable of Destroying the World. Just Don’t Tell Them, OK? It’s about professional football after the class war:
The SNFL
The Dolphins have a slim chance of making it to the playoffs. Marino is feeling his age. Collins got arrested and might spend up to twenty years in prison. They have nine wins and could end up with eleven, but those damn Bills have the same record and a scrappy short quarterback who isn’t afraid of concussion.
I’m a Dolphin’s fan. It can’t be helped. I was hooked at age five. Still, by this point in the season, if they fail to make it to the playoffs, or lose to a better team in the first round, then I usually find the biggest underdog out of all the Super Bowl hopefuls, and root for their slim chances. So I’ll probably be rooting for Buffalo this January. I blaspheme. For a Dolphin fan to show any mercy on a Bill is high treason. Still, I like the downtrodden. I like the working class city. I like the old and forgotten. I like the Bill’s odds. A hundred to one all the way to winning the Super Bowl, and getting a victory phone call from the President.
I am not of sound mind.
I am looking forward to the cold winter weekends before February, when American men and boys, and women with trucks and beards, wear down a little further their ass prints on the sofa, the armchair, the plush green carpet. Just a few hours of chips and salsa, bottled beer, (coffee and cigarettes for the real die hards), sandwiches and soda pop for the innocent babes with their first crippling addiction, several hours in the snow, inside a house or a bar, cheering on their favorite team for a much needed dose of demented cultural satisfaction in this tired, worn-out, dry, mechanized world.
We need to know about football. It is my job to tell it like it is. So for the next month—from now, two weeks before the start of the playoffs, until late January when one team is proven dominant, and receives approval and license from the President of the United States to commit individual crimes and misdemeanors against humanity (during the off season of course), I will keep the reader informed of the latest developments in the NFL. That is, the real developments. A month of pro football highlights. The best catches, key blocks, rough hits, broken hearts, broken homes, the battle of cities and sexes, the idiot American man, the sport’s enthusiast, and the dumb professor ignoring the depressing fact that the sport’s enthusiasts run the country now. There are so many interesting things to write about! In a month I will take fine examples of the happy and glad, and with a shiny pair of metal cleats, pound bloody holes into them. I look forward to writing about the underdog quarterback and the underdog American man who will never become a professional football player, nor a proud human being.
Marino is prone to interceptions. He gets “hasbeen” doubts, but they shouldn’t quell his desire, nor cloud his thinking. Gadsen and Martin aren’t picking the defenders. Conrad is dropping the ball. The formations Coach Johnson is sending in are as complicated as the beginner’s set up in pee wee league. I don’t see audibles scrambling the offense before the snap. They don’t set up screens. It’s frustrating to watch millionaires pretending to be strong. They didn’t get rich from brute force. The NFL offense of today cannot dominate the playing field without very fancy formations, in motion. The players are simply paid too much to care. They are soft and weak. They’re tremendously large but psychological mice. My God, there’s a penalty for taunting! There are no rivalries. It’s impossible. Especially in Miami where, on a fair weather afternoon, while breaking from the huddle, it’s too easy for the pro to think about washing the car, perusing the portfolio, or stopping by one of his several restaurants after the game for oysters and beer. Millionaires don’t have real rivalries, unless the threat of losing their millions becomes a reality.
Millionaire jocks won’t get tough until they’re paid a hundred dollars a game. Each player, and no exceptions. No one is worth more than the other because a team must be socialist to realize its full potential. A hundred dollars a game, and ten dollars an hour for every practice and team meeting. Before taxes, a forty hour work week, plus the hundred dollar game bonus grosses each player $22,400 a year. Not bad for playing a game. But here’s the catch, and where the money can come into play. The team that wins the Super Bowl gets a million dollars to distribute fairly and evenly among its members.
Just think of the vicious rivalries developing under these circumstances! The typical player, rookie right tackle and first string quarterback alike, would arrive to the stadium in a used car, or better yet, pedaling a bicycle. Some might even walk. Wonderful! The boys got to work. I like to imagine what the player’s wives look like now. No more tight built blondes and brunettes with plastic cleavage and diamond earrings. They’re more plain nowadays, maybe even homely, looking as good as their husbands. Most can’t make it to the games. They take on part time jobs, or in some cases, become the bread-winners, and mow the lawn on Sundays while their husbands play.
Hoho! Now the folks watching at home can get ready for some real entertainment! Power plant Jim need not get depressed after a game because his favorite team bit the dust. Keyshawn, the wide receiver, won’t be laughing and joking with the defender after each play. Power Plant Jim won’t be left guessing if Keyshawn’s smile is a mocking one. The latter knows that every second on the field is a fight against paralysis. It’s either play hard or end up dead, or worse still, like Power Plant Jim. Marino can try to break more records, but it’s likely that he’ll break more bones instead. Bruce Smith ain’t gonna lay him down gently anymore. He’ll smash Dan’s old body to the turf floor. In the off season their families won’t get together for barbecue like they used to. In fact they won’t ever meet again. How could they afford it? There is only a week’s vacation in the new NFL, and the average player takes this time to visit relatives, work in the yard, watch billionaire baseball on TV, play catch with the kids...
In this cheaper NFL, all celebrity status would disappear. Dion Sanders would be the first to retire because he’s not “freakin’ crazy”. “It’s just a silly game,” he’ll say. The great cornerback philosopher can manage a Wendy’s for the same pay. And nobody will break his back over the deep fryer. Unless, of course, he opens his mouth. Power plant Jim can rest assured that the NFL will toughen up. Most of today’s incredibly overpaid stars would retire immediately if the change was to go into effect next season. All contracts null and void.
So the twenty-five million dollar quarterback is making $20,000 take home and worries about the phone bill. The ten million dollar wide receiver? Moonlighting as part time claims adjuster in an insurance company. The two million dollar nose tackle? The next six months in tractor trailer school. No more payoffs in college. No more college. NFL scouts search skeevy bar rooms nowadays. Some go to the city gangs and offer the murderous hoodlum youth a way out. No, they can make more and risk less in crime. Some scout the rural granges. “Are you kidding?” the farm boys laugh, “At least corn won’t kill us!”
It seems that all the tough kids aren’t tough enough. The most athletic high school jocks want to go to college to, get this—earn a diploma. How is the NFL going to recruit? Who will join their teams if the strongest and fastest have chickened out?
I will. I know a few old cooks who wouldn’t mind a career change either. I’ll go to training camp. I’ll walk to work. I want to play in the pouring rain and driving snow. I’ll stand beside Power Plant Jim and put on the meanest damn face I can. Sure, I’m scrawny, but I am one tough puppy. When I was a kid, we played street football. Street tackle football. We played hard for nothing. I’d go out of my way for any pass. And it wasn’t my five dollar a week allowance pushing me. It wasn’t the pretending to be Dan Marino, either. Back then the Dolphin’s quarterback was David Woodley, and he used to go out for passes. He would stop doing that if they gave him a million dollars. So they fired him.
I’ll join up. A hundred dollars a game? Ten dollars an hour? Bus trips to major cities in the continental U.S.? Oh, I won’t pass up the chance for $22,400. The new and improved SNFL. The Scrawny National Football League. Now it’s a thinking man’s game. Once it was simple to outsmart dumb millionaire jocks. Then the coaches had it easy. Not anymore. They get paid fifty grand because they’re worth it. It’s their brain work that keeps me from getting killed. They’re smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee on the sidelines. The referees carry handcuffs. Cheap shots are still illegal, but more prevalent. Because of the new low budget, the average ticket to the game costs a dollar. Teams can’t afford a listening device in the helmet, so the quarterback has to be smart enough for a memory. No more coaching from the booth. All minds are on the playing field. There’s a salary cap for the owners. They get two hundred dollars a game and have to play on special teams every first half.
All royalties go back to the people. That means, if I become a star, and Nike wants to take a picture of me with my teeth missing, all proceeds made from that picture goes to city, country, or world improvement. The specific charities can be decided upon later by the beneficent owners. I know they’ve wanted to help out all along. But business is business, and it can get so trying at times. It’s a wonder some of these billionaires find time to ladle beans in a soup kitchen. Now they’re in it for the two hundred bucks and playing special teams. I can’t wait to clothesline Jerry Jones’ Adam’s Apple.
Back to last week’s games. Marino threw a couple devastating interceptions. They weren’t his fault entirely. A receiver missed his route. A defender got in the way of another pass. My friend Scott thinks Marino should be out for the season, and Damon Huard brought in. Scott, like a million other hopelessly delusive monomaniac sports fans really thinks that Marino gives a shit what the fan has to say. I’ve been to a pro game. I’ve sat in the stands with Buffalo’s working class monkeys. Marie and I saw two broken noses before the game ever began. The fans got drunk, but they were dangerously stupid long before they got drunk. I use the same example over and over again to prove to Scott the stadium fan’s idiocy. Listen to the silence when the whistle blows before a play. 99% of the time it’s an illegal motion call against the offense. It could be called against the visiting team but the home field fans remain quiet until they get the call from the referee on the jumbo screen. Then, naturally, there comes a drunken roar that shakes the stadium. Can they possibly be that stupid? Well, see for yourself. Unless of course your self is one of those monosyllabic drunken monkeys cursing at your most beloved, or hated, millionaire.
Miami lost to the Jets. Jacksonville was beaten bad by Tennessee. Again Buffalo took a sure loss and turned it into an embarrassing victory. Seattle and Kansas City are neck in neck. Next week will decide their fate. I don’t pay attention to the NFC, unless one of its teams goes against Miami. The Dolphins play the Redskins next week, but the outcome of that game does not change the playoff picture. If Seattle or Kansas City lose, then Miami is in. If they win, Miami is out. Next week Seattle plays the New York Jets. Go Jets!
All the old cooks I work with are Bills fans. Yes, and I hate to admit it, but they are die hard fans, still dedicated and true after a long, abusive relationship. Something to be admired. Each season Matt tries to get tickets to all the home games. That’s quite a long hall every other Sunday. Expensive too, considering that poor Matt is just a prep and sandwich cook. Seven dollars an hour won’t afford many extravagant road trips to Buffalo. He has to work four hours to pay for a cheap seat ticket, and another four hours to cover alcohol and gasoline. If there’s room in his cooler for hot dogs, hamburgers, buns and ketchup, then it costs another two hours of labor. Matt has to work ten hours to pay for his bi-monthly football game habit. That’s a big chunk off his paycheck during the late fall and early winter months to fix a professional football addiction.
According to the salary listings that I retrieved off the Internet, the Buffalo Bills Corporation paid it’s players (not including those rookies making the minimum $144,000) approximately $48,992,380 in 1998. This total was taken from a roster of 56 players, an average salary of $874,863.93 per player.
Dave is an ornery, angry, alcoholic cook, who likes money but hates food. He butchers everything he touches. All his specials are thick creamy slops. It’s unfortunate that my old workplace caters to a Buffalo Bill fan clientele who often enjoy a thick creamy bowl of slop for dinner. So Dave is able to keep his job even though he is a bad cook and a nasty bastard. He makes eight bucks an hour; a dollar more than Matt because Dave works the night line and actually has to cook something. Matt doesn’t mind, until he has to work with Dave. Then you should hear how those two argue!
As soon as a new cook gets hired, the day cooks send George the dishwasher on a mission to sneak through the stack of paychecks to see how much the new guy’s getting paid. The new guy better hope for his sake that he’s not making more than Dave. If he is paid just a penny more, then watch out! The entire restaurant staff will suffer Dave’s rancor!
First, he will stop talking to everyone. This code of silence will not break until he’s good and drunk after work. Then he will talk a mean streak behind the new guy’s back, mock his cooking skills, question his work ethic, make fun of his soup. He will mimic and degrade the defenseless fellow in front of all the cooks and wait staff while drinking. But when sober, he will be angry and stewing silently all over again. It’s a sad and pathetic state that the Buffalo fan is driven to over the insignificant difference a quarter makes in pay. Dave actually hates someone who makes an extra twenty-five cents an hour.
My boss Tommy owns the restaurant. According to his accountant’s salary listings that I retrieved from his office, Tommy paid his kitchen staff of twelve employees $206,600 in 1998. That’s an average annual salary of $17,666. The only reason it’s that high is because the kitchen manager is paid nearly three times as much as the highest paid cook.
Dave hates the kitchen manager. With overtime, Dave makes about seventeen grand a year.
Ted Washington is a three hundred pound professional football player living in or around Buffalo, N.Y. His 1998 salary was $3,500,000. If he worked forty hours a week that year, then his hourly pay was $1682.69 per hour.
Bruce Smith made $1,864,000, or $896.15 per hour.
Sam Cowart made $525,000, or $252.40 per hour.
These three fellas play on defense for the Buffalo Bills. Look at those numbers. It’s obvious to me that no defense can play like a team when there is that kind of discrepancy in pay. Poor Sam Cowart has to take just as many hits. Bruce Smith is an all-star super star defensive end. He’s doubled-teamed almost every game. What can be going on in his head? He knows what Ted’s getting paid, and he didn’t need to send the water boy into the coaches’ office to find that out either. No, Ted’s pay gets posted on the Internet without cruel irony. Just another statistic. The public has no quarrel with a millionaire nose tackle as long as he SACKS THE GOD-DAMNED QUARTERBACK!
Now how do you earn your living? Are you the same sneaking coward to degrade and humiliate others over a lousy quarter difference in pay? The Buffalo Bills are playing a game, and making a mockery of every kind of work you do. For a doctor to make almost as much as Big Ted Washington, she would have to see thirty patients an hour. Power Plant Jim would have to beg his supervisor for a $1632.15/hour raise. My wife would have to work 1,246 more hours a week. And poor Dave, the grumpy cook, would have worked 9675 hours overtime a year, every year, until the end of his life.
How can anyone take Ted Washington’s movements seriously? He is a huge sloth! He can move four ways and one way never works, when a nimble running back leaps over his prone whale body. Is it true that his job pays $3,500,000 a year?
Yes. It’s hard for me to believe too. He is paid to occupy space. And if something runs near his space, Ted must cover it at put it on the ground.
Now here’s an interesting thought for the working man to ponder. The next time you feel insignificant, and the work you do really doesn’t amount to anything worthy of praise, when the bills can’t possibly be paid in full this month, or you’re wondering how you will afford dinner on your wedding anniversary—when you finally come to realize that even your friend, who seems to have everything including a good paying job, likes the Buffalo Bills because they got an awesome defense, then take a moment on Sunday to view the intense look on Big Ted Washington’s face as he steps out of the huddle. It’s instructive to look at, really. I know what he’s thinking. He thinks if he smiles too often they won’t buy any more paraphernalia. If he laughs too joyfully, a couple enlightened sewer workers just might march down onto the field and drive a pike through his blubber. He’ll stand on the artificial turf and in a half hour still make more money than 99% of the fans seeing double do in a year. He’ll be thinking, “Can they possibly be that stupid?”
All my friends and family are working overtime this week. I have an idea. We can pool our salaries together. Kevin can drop his sub delivery tips at my door. Tony can send me the fifty grand he makes at CNN helping America sink deeper into dirt. Debbie and Scott can send money made from the diabolical insurance racket. Dick can give the sour dough he earns installing computer systems. We’ll combine these incomes for a party and hire Big Ted Washington to stand in my living room for a month. For one hour a week he must go up against Beany, our viscous teething puppy. For the other thirty-nine hours I can have him finish the sheet rock upstairs. That is, if my second floor can hold him.
Dear Dave,
Here is a short letter to you, and anyone like you, who is blind. This letter is to those folks who have read thus far, and are rich enough to have everything they need. The man working next to you is your brother. He wants to play touch football in the park. The woman beside you is your sister. She’ll play football if you can convince her that furniture isn’t important anymore. You make eight dollars an hour. You make ten dollars an hour. All of us are stained most of the time with the embarrassment of making some amount of money an hour.
Stop it! You can’t let them get any richer. No more private jets because that means more televised football games, the playoffs, and finally the Super Bowl, and some start up company paying one million dollars to sponsor Ted Washington’s fat ass sweating. Every penny you make is entrapment. You don’t really want it. You didn’t ask for it. It was a set up, a trap. You were playing one-on-one with Matt one day. Then your drunk, stinky father kicked open the screen door and yelled, “Go get a job, you bum!”
And please Dave, don’t have your wife deliver McDonald’s cheeseburgers to the back door anymore. For Christ’s sake, you’re a cook! You can eat for free. Don’t eat that crap. No, a cheeseburger won’t kill you. But it has killed your spirit, and it’s gonna break your little boy’s heart as soon as he sits down on your lap to watch pro football on TV. He’s not going to be a football star. He’ll work at Walmart. He’ll argue in the stockroom with his manager that Big Ted Washington should retire because he’s simply just too fat to move.
If you are not a cook, get out of the kitchen. Go play professional football for eight bucks an hour. You want to see all hell break loose? Tell the public what they pay you. Stand on the field and refuse to leave. They’ll let you stay. They’ll cheer you on. You’ll become very popular and the billionaire owner who has doled out millions to dumb jocks the latter part of his life will think, “Hey, I’m on to something here. They love Dave. I’ll bring Ron in too. He’ll be captain for ten bucks an hour. Hell, I’ll buy the whole damn kitchen for 200,000 a year. They won’t look so scrawny with pads, a helmet, and the magic mirror of television. Yippee, I’m richer.”
However, as he’ll soon find out, money don’t come to money in the new league. He gets two hundred a game and has to play special teams the first half.
Whaddya say? Are you a man? Are you with me? Are you ready for some football?
Ron Throop
Dave’s return letter:
Dear Ron,
No.
Yeah, I hear ya. Just a suggestion. If you weren’t such a mental slave, I’d have you over for chips and dip during the game. But I am tired. Very tired. I can’t do it myself. And I don’t want to end up hiding out in a barn attempting to do it. Anyway, it’s not fair to the reader. I still have a few weeks left to cover the NFL. Sports writing can be very, very demanding.
Marino played the first half against the Redskins. Huard came in looking just like Marino, except he could run and gets paid six million dollars less than Marino. Neither could pull out a win. The Dolphins lost 21-10.
Buffalo trounced Indianapolis without Doug Flutie. They kept him out of the game. They asked him to take their team to the playoffs, and then benched him. If that won’t move the Bill’s fans to protest, I don’t know what will. Last month Flutie was God. Now he is nobody. Just like God. Next year new starting quarterback Rob Johnson will buy the biggest house set on the highest hill in the Greater Buffalo area. On any given Monday morning he’ll walk out onto his estate bluffs overlooking the smoky filth of Buffalo, bend down, put his hands on his knees, and laugh, laugh, laugh!
Bills won 31-6.
Well, Seattle and Kansas City both lost. That means Miami plays the wild card against Seattle next week. Yahoo! Here we go to the Super Bowl!
The bit about the cooks is entirely true. Think on how much money they make compared to the professional quarterback. Think on it, and then do something. Just action does not need to be too dangerous. It’s a simple matter of walking outside with a hammer and your television set. Some TV’s are very big now, I understand. As big as Ted Washington, and they might even fight back. But if just one street of Americans walked out of their living rooms on Sunday morning with the intention of beating their televisions to death with a hammer, I bet some miraculous change would occur. Ted Washington would have a cut in pay. Not a huge one, maybe six bucks an hour. But that’s a start. Some other streets might catch on. Maybe they became envious watching you and the other families play touch football on the lawn. Somebody asked your team if he could play too. “Sure, but you have to kill your television.” That’s eight bucks an hour. Ted starts to feel the crunch. His daily candy bar intake must be halved. Now if the whole housing development wastes their televisions, Ted might have to switch to a cheaper deodorant, or wear none at all. That’s not good for the city of Buffalo. What if an entire nation gave up television on Sundays?
Well, for starters, Ted will have to down a cup of starving tapeworms because nobody hires obese, smelly sloths in a television-less world.
Fall used to be the start of new colors and hayrides. The previous year’s knitted sweater got pulled over moments after the first chill sunset behind steel gray clouds. Winter was coming. Time to keep warm and play games. Football was invented. The men played. The women cheered. The children played “catch me” in the wet grass. After hot cider and fry-cakes the families walked home with their hands touching.
Then farming stopped being fun. Fall happened the same way, but without men and women. Football became a sport that was fun to play, and watch. A mechanic in Minneapolis made the same salary as the linebacker. The latter worked on Sunday, so he was worse from the wear. Then television, and a couple generations of daddies acting like spoiled children. Voila! Modern Dad congratulating himself for keeping busy all week long, for feeding his wife and kids, for waxing his used car shining in the September sun, for summoning these fall mornings after a week of degrading work, and waiting all day for the chance to watch millionaires play a game.
Marino was on target in Seattle. What a close game! I was prepared to let the Dolphins go. I didn’t expect a win for them in Washington State. Yet I must remember that dome play is anybody’s victory in a temperature controlled rainless, windless, snowless arena. Lewis and Clark broke through a wilderness. Trace Armstrong broke through the Seattle offensive line and sacked the quarterback three times.
Buffalo had sealed the win against Tennessee with just twenty seconds left in the game. That was a bummer. I wanted Buffalo to lose because of their coaches’ decision to take the toughest quarterback in football out of the game. Also, the Tennessee fans are new to pro football, and remind me of farmers wearing sweaters and riding in wagons, even if in truth, most don’t even know what a wagon is, and they drive drunk from the stadium in SUV’s.
However, with just twenty seconds left, Tennessee took the kickoff and ran it back for a touchdown. The stadium roared. The fans threw up. Rob Johnson will have to forgo his mansion on a hill, this year.
And Tennessee is now my second favorite team. We can have our own games. Eight dollars an hour is more than enough. Do you want to feed your kids, or would you rather lease a sport utility? I mean, do you want to feed your kids, and love them? Or would you rather lease a sport utility? Matt and Dave are only as poor as they allow themselves to be. If they threw away their Starter jackets, and asked their wives to throw away the thought of how to afford a Starter jacket—if men were things that could stand up straight, and live a day with just a fraction of self pride, our football game in the park would last a whole afternoon. Autumn would bring thoughts of a cooler, brighter sun, the end of summer, the beginning of our season indoors—but outdoors once a week playing a game that we love even more because we were able to take the millionaires out of it.
Dave can run. Matt throws the ball up and I catch it. Kevin has a bad back, so he’s our coach. Tomorrow it’s back to work. “That new kid... Ted, what’s his name? The dishwasher. Yea, that’s it—Ted Washington. Man, he’s huge! He’ll make a great center. Just hike the ball and stand there. He ain’t makin’ crap for pay. We’ll have to sneak him fish and chips as often as possible. Keep him fat and impassable.”
That is football in a perfect world.
The Dolphins lost the second most embarrassing football game in recorded history to the Jacksonville Jaguars, 62—7. I am sure there were some Dolphin fans who came home after the game, drunk of course, (if not drunk, then temporarily insane), sneaked into the bathroom and cried. There were some husbands who fought their wives, and vice-versa. Children got to see their daddies for what they are—not cowboys, not giants, not titans. Something else entirely. Something less than adolescent, that happens after adolescence. Something quite new to the human race. Something the poor child cannot define, but must accept and live with until he hits the age of manhood, which never comes. I felt it when I was fifteen. There are traces of that feeling left in me today.
The victorious fan went home feeling like a man who truly loves life. The next morning in sunny Jacksonville he drove to the office in the spirit of the jaguar. In his heart he leapt and bound with joy. He was alive, a success, a family man. He could notch on his belt another victory in life. A heroic feeling because his team had won. They were invincible! He was invin—No, he choked on his McMuffin and drove the Explorer into a palm tree.
The Miami Dolphins left the stadium with their heads held high. A horrible loss, but a paycheck on Monday. Sam Madison thinks to buy another restaurant and a car. Marino will take a long, thoughtful swim in the lake he owns. Dave and Matt, the Bills fans back home, cashed their measly little paychecks at the bar, and talked about next year’s chances. Dave got drunk and dragged the new guy’s name through the mud. Matt got drunk and dreamed of a day many years ago in the snow when he was Joe Ferguson and Dave was OJ Simpson.
In Buffalo Ted Washington’s wife had to call the fire department to come over and lift her husband out of bed. I turned off the TV, sat down on the cold kitchen floor, and tried to imagine an admirable manhood.