You Herd Me!: I'll Say It If Nobody Else Will

by Cowherd, Colin

And these numbers are strictly salaries. It doesn’t take into account endorsements, which are often larger than the actual salaries for players, especially in sports such as tennis, golf, and the NBA.

  Tiger Woods was not just some jock. He wasn’t some median-salary PGA pro hoping to break into the top ten at the Tucson Open. He was the jock, perhaps the world’s most recognizable human behind the pope and President Obama.

  My point is this: you can’t take the concept of sexual addiction as it may apply to 90 percent of the world and apply it to Tiger Woods. Call him what you will—unfaithful, deceitful, uncaring—but please don’t say that his decision to have multiple sex partners works the same way it would with the rest of us.

  Remember back to when the story broke and Tiger went into rehab. He not only exited the public stage—he disappeared. He went into such deep seclusion nobody could even get a photo of him. In this age of iPhones and sports blogs and paparazzi and TMZ, when a lot of people would have paid a lot of money for a quick shot of Woods, it was more than a week later when a fuzzy shot of a guy who looked like Tiger—wearing a hoodie and standing on the porch of a condo-looking place we assume was the rehab center—was published on Radar online.

  More than a week. Who can hide for more than a week? Not even the biggest actor can hide for more than a week.

  Tiger Woods can hide for more than a week.

  That’s power. That’s exclusivity. That’s juice.

  The sports world is different, and Woods was different within that world. He was a one-man subcategory of a small subcategory. Athletes understand this. During the 2010 Winter Olympics, Time magazine’s Sean Gregory interviewed an athlete on the morning of Tiger’s famous sex-addict press conference. This athlete, told that Woods hugged a few people after stepping down from the podium, joked about Tiger’s so-called addiction and said of the people he hugged, “They’re like, ‘Yeah, you’re awesome. You go have that sex.’ ”

  That athlete? Lindsey Vonn, who ended up becoming Tiger’s first public relationship in the postaddict phase of his life. It’s interesting that Vonn was married at the time of Tiger’s fall, too. Even she laughed at him. Her words reflected the general feeling among athletes and people who understand the sports world.

  It was a staged apology for a staged problem.

  But I’m sure I speak for everyone when I say I’m just hoping and praying Tiger has been cured of his addiction. I think there’s some evidence that his rehabilitation was successful. The biggest indication came in March of 2012. That’s when Tiger won the Bay Hill tournament, his first win since the sex scandal of 2009.

  Sex addict.

  Please.

  Someone get me a glass of water.

  Torn in the USA

  I’ve traveled to forty-seven or forty-eight states, settling in only five, and I’m here to tell you there’s a stark difference between visiting a place and sinking some roots, no matter how deep. A home, a lawn, a neighbor—that’s how you get to know the heart of a place.

  From a safe distance, maybe while vacationing from the North during another long winter, Tampa probably feels like a reasonably priced Valhalla. It’s got everything you’d want for a quick escape: cheap golf, warm weather, quiet beaches. It’s an affordable paradise.

  From a distance.

  The twenty months I spent living in Tampa felt like twenty years. To me, the draining heat and humidity from May through October made it feel like Libya with an NFL franchise. Or maybe Kenya with a Ruby Tuesday’s. It was crowded with retirees who moved there, drove slowly, complained too much, registered to vote in order to vote No on virtually everything.

  School bonds? No.

  Infrastructure improvements? No.

  A new park? Hell, no.

  I had a running joke with friends who wanted to visit: fly into Atlanta and follow the Waffle Houses south. After living in Las Vegas, Tampa had all the energy of a dying car battery.

  And yet, when I returned there to cover Super Bowl XXXVII, it was a week of less-blistering sun, a lively Eagles concert with friends, and the best key lime pie this side of any other place that serves key lime pie.

  Same city, two vastly different experiences.

  For someone like me, who has called several places home, it was also instructive: you have to unpack your bags to truly understand a region or place. Some women you date, some you marry. But only one experience unveils a deeper truth, whatever truth that may be.

  I’ve lived in all four corners of the country, from the Pacific Northwest to the Desert Southwest to Florida to Connecticut. The experience has given me a perspective on geography and demographics that I wouldn’t have otherwise. Embedding yourself in a community, understanding what makes the residents tick and ticks them off, can be powerful.

  In a roundabout way, my experiences observing people and places in all corners of the country have led me to a conclusion: sports is the Great Equalizer, maybe the fairest aspect of American life.

  I don’t mean to go all Toby Keith on you. You know, “Wave the flag, jump in the Ford, grab that gun, ready, aim—pew, pew, pew. God Bless ’Merica.” But I will say the idea of sports in this country almost brings a salty discharge to the corner of my left eye.

  When it comes to sports, this is a great country.

  Politics can be a harsh and humbling reminder of our limited patch of dirt. A conservative in California or a liberal in Texas may feel his vote is worthless. The electoral system gives us a set of standings that never change; certain states are like the Astros: always hovering somewhere near last place. A lack of population often translates to a lack of funding, which can leave one-stoplight towns looking up with envy and some bitterness at the more connected and powerful.

  Sports is different. Sports is our true democracy, giving everyone a sense that they can win.

  High school sports, especially football and baseball, are mostly dominated by smaller towns or suburbs. Hoover, Alabama; River Ridge, Louisiana; Katy, Texas—they each have the focus, commitment, and amount of football talent that a major metro program in a place like New York City or Boston can’t rival. Of 2012’s top ten high school football powerhouses, as ranked by USA Today, eight were in towns so small their zip codes might as well have four numbers.

  People who live for high school football in those towns don’t envy the big cities. In fact, many may pity them. They don’t coddle and worship star athletes after they’ve made it big; they create them.

  We see the same phenomenon in college sports. They’re dominated primarily by relatively small cities, such as Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Lexington, Kentucky. Tuscaloosa, Norman, College Station. They can create sustainable and profitable programs that urban universities can never duplicate. The smaller places, where it means more, have a passion that translates into funding. They travel more fans and boosters to road games than city schools have enrolled in classes.

  And the media has created a world that is more condensed and less disparate. Message boards, blogs, and YouTube highlights have created connections that were unavailable decades ago. The Internet has created an endless stream of year-round recruiting information. The games might end in January for a Buckeye or Longhorn fan, but the flow of information never ends. Who needs pro sports? This is the life.

  We’ve come to assume that professional sports is one big trophy case for the richer and more glamorous cities, but even that assumption needs to be reconsidered. Even in the pay-for-play world, the frugal, grounded, and even downright small are well represented. The Green Bay Packers have thirteen NFL championships; the New York Jets, one. The Washington Redskins sleep on piles of money and yet the Indianapolis Colts win actual playoff games. The Philadelphia 76ers have spent decades as a perpetually broken-down clunker while the Oklahoma City Thunder are perennial title contenders who could sell considerably more tickets if only they were available.

  And what makes that high school football trophy that resides in River Ridge every bit as prestigious as all those Stanley Cup
s in Detroit is the mentality of the people in those respective cities. Do you really think anybody in Odessa, Texas, loses sleep every time the Celtics raise a banner? Do you think folks in Athens, Georgia, feel less significant just because Tom Coughlin has added a second Super Bowl win to his coaching legacy? Of course not.

  All politics is local. All sports is, too, because deeply ingrained in these smaller towns is a sense that they are winning something that is every bit as important. They may wake up angry with the election of a new POTUS or feel slighted over the congressional veto of a farm subsidy, but sports gives them a sense of fulfillment and pride.

  Big cities have nothing on us. We don’t like their teams and don’t need their pampered stars. We’ve got all we want right here.

  Sure, fans in the Midwest feel the coasts get a disproportionately larger share of the media attention, and they’re probably right. The coasts are where the masses live, and giant media conglomerates need viewers. But ask yourself this question: Would you rather be the St. Louis Cardinals, an envied baseball machine with an incredible fan base, or the New York Mets, a franchise so lacking in redeemable history that it hung wild-card banners at old Shea Stadium? Would you rather be the Packers or the remarkably well-funded and glitzy Dallas Cowboys, who have had as much playoff success over the past fifteen years as the National Enquirer has had on Pulitzer Prize day?

  Popular can feel awfully hollow when it’s sitting side-by-side with successful.

  There’s no doubt my professional travels, bouncing from one corner of the country to the next, have limited the depth of the roots I’ve sunk in any one town. But it’s also granted me the opportunity to see things and meet people I otherwise wouldn’t. It’s allowed me to experience firsthand the depth of small-town loyalty that’s rarely found in major cities with transient populations and athletes seeking the next monstrous free-agent deal.

  Those people in smaller and more intimate places have opened my eyes to a wonderful landscape that is far too often underreported and undervalued. From white-water rafting down the Rogue River with Oregon State football fans to tailgating with Florida Gator football fans fresh off a win over rival Tennessee, I’ve discovered that these people don’t sound or act like people who are missing out.

  In a country that keeps score too often, that ranks everything we do, that pits you against me and compares everyone to everyone else, we all win with sports.

  What do we want out of life? For most people, the answer starts with three simple words: a fair shot. Our search for fairness has become a mini-obsession. So, with everything from jobs to college admission supposedly politicized, where do we find this elusive concept of fairness?

  Easy: you find it in sports, that’s where—in every corner of this great country.

  Conservative Backlash

  I’ve always had a tough time figuring out the difference between a model and a supermodel. Is it about the cheekbones or the checkbook? The fashion or the fortune?

  And where does it go from there? Once we reach critical mass on supermodels, once it becomes standard to be super, will there be a supermodel so transcendent she becomes the first super-duper-model?

  Janice Dickinson claims to be the first supermodel. Since most of her success came in the 1970s and ’80s, most of the world knows her primarily as just another crazy and failed reality-show has-been. Her descent has taken a predictable path: she recently filed for bankruptcy, and it’s shocking—shocking, I say—to learn that much of her debt was to plastic surgeons and folks known as “cosmetic-procedure professionals.”

  Remember, this woman started out gorgeous. From birth she was painted by a brush wielded by nature’s most skilled artist. Yet her desperation to look young has left her broke, pathetic, and overly Botoxed.

  Dickinson’s not alone, of course. Most people want to remain as attractive as possible for as long as possible. Nobody wants to surrender to age, but where do you draw the line? When do those tight jeans on the fit 46-year-old mom devolve into the realm of she’s trying way too hard? When does the Affliction T-shirt on the slightly overweight middle-aged guy take the fateful turn from hey, trendy to obviously recently divorced?

  The line between aging gracefully and you’re too old to be wearing that is razor-thin. Which side of the line you occupy can be determined by something as random as a momentary lapse of judgment at a retailer.

  By the same token, there’s an argument to be made for making every effort to keep up with the times. As pathetic as people might look in their never-ending quest to retain their youth, they still get points for trying, right? It’s the folks who ignore or reject change—whether technological or otherwise—who are the ones being left behind.

  And that’s why two major American institutions—Major League Baseball and the Republican Party—could use an Ed Hardy T-shirt, a little collagen in the lips, a nip here and a tuck there.

  Both are well funded and entrenched, and neither is eager to admit either weakness or defeat. They share a troubling trend of doubling down on ideas that have proven to be unpopular rather than adapting to broaden their appeal. Both are undeniably ex-heavyweights who have been knocked down a peg or two by younger, more connected, and more progressive rivals.

  For baseball, the rival is the NFL; for the GOP, it’s the Democratic Party. The NFL and the Democrats seem to subscribe to an inclusive theory while MLB and the GOP are hidebound and determined to remain loyal to their core followers—The Base, in politispeak. As a result, they often appear outdated and rigid.

  Liberals and football zealots shouldn’t get too excited by the recent trend, though: neither MLB or the GOP is going away anytime soon.

  In 2012, the Republicans put forward a presidential candidate who looked like the publisher of Yachting Weekly, who made a late, major campaign gaffe, and whose own son described him by saying, “Nobody has ever wanted to be president less than my dad.” Despite all that, Mitt Romney captured 47 percent of the popular vote. His relative success was a sign that there are plenty of sizable groups, businesses, and states that lean strongly right. From Wall Streeters, to large swaths of the Midwest, to most of the South, to married women, to men over 60, to rural America, the GOP’s core message—regardless of candidate—still resonates. Romney’s ability to raise nearly $1 billion for his campaign is evidence enough.

  Similarly, MLB stands on its own merits. More than 75 million tickets were sold during the 2012 season, and there are several envious hot spots—San Francisco, St. Louis, Boston—where baseball passions run high. Like the GOP, money is not a problem for baseball; lucrative new television contracts with ESPN, Fox, and Turner are worth more than $1 billion. Local teams like the Dodgers ($260 million annually) have monster television deals in their home markets.

  That $260 million is just one revenue source for one team.

  Damn. Holla at your Hanley Ramirez.

  The GOP and MLB: similar qualities, similar problems.

  In a broad sense, they just can’t manage to keep up with the times. The NFL has a good grasp on the shortened attention spans and competing interests of young viewers. It created the Red Zone Channel to condense the game to its most important elements and give fans the illusion of nonstop scoring—perfect for fantasy leaguers and gamblers alike. The NFL has also added broadcast features like the electronic first-down line, one of those innovations—like cell phones—we can’t imagine doing without. Just about every year the NFL devises a new policy, rule, or media strategy—for instance, moving free agency up a few weeks to compete with March Madness—designed to keep the game fresh and in the public eye year-round.

  Yet baseball … well, baseball tends to move at a slower pace. Football is going faster—more more more!—while baseball continues to mosey its way down the road a piece, content to get wherever it’s going whenever it gets there.

  Baseball can’t really figure out what it wants to do with instant replay, so it stays the course and allows its managers to waste time arguing on the field when
it would take half the time to look at a replay and get the damned thing right. And even when it does use replay, it takes too long and doesn’t always produce a satisfying result. Remember the Oakland Athletics’ home run that wasn’t in May of 2013? It was obvious to everyone within ten seconds of seeing a replay, but the umpires left the field and took far too long to get the call wrong.

  It’s a rapidly changing culture, and the NFL gets it. Baseball is still waxing philosophical about its hallowed records and calling it entertainment when people dressed as sausages and dead presidents run around the field. It’s institutional stagnation.

  Not surprisingly given the reluctance to embrace technology and new ideas, baseball’s demographics skew to the elderly side. Its audience, much like the GOP’s, is getting really old. A deep dig into the ratings for the 2012 NLDS reveals that young men would rather pay to watch an MMA event than get free playoff baseball. That should be an eye-opener throughout Bud Selig’s Park Avenue office.

  This same inability to connect has hampered the conservative party in recent presidential elections. After Romney’s drubbing, the Fox News narrative—led by Sean Hannity—changed overnight. Polling illustrated just how thoroughly Latino voters rejected the GOP platform, so Hannity suddenly claimed he had “evolved”—the very next night, he could see a pathway to citizenship for all current Americans. Wow. Talk about a quick-change artist. And longtime GOP strategist and operative Karl Rove, who so profoundly misjudged the election for months, was off the air faster than Howard Stern’s replacements.

  Until just recently, it’s probable that Hannity and Rove considered “social media” taking a columnist to lunch.

  Stagnation leads to arrogance, which leads to insularity, which leads to fear, which leads to a lack of progress. More money equals bigger walls and bigger houses and less interaction. The GOP and MLB are both suffering from an arrogance that manifests itself through an inability to reach out to those who fall just outside the comfort zone. For baseball, it’s the African-American community; for the GOP, it’s any minority you can name.