Tag Archives: Pittsburg Steelers

Redemption

One of the more bizarre stories in sports the past few weeks has been the saga of Antonio Brown, a very gifted and self-absorbed wide receiver who plays football in the NFL. He had played for the Pittsburg Steelers for a number of years though at the end of his time there he made it clear that he wanted to be traded, making it impossible for the coaches to want him around. Rumor is that he wanted to be traded to the New England Patriots, the standard for excellent football programs in the NFL — whether you like the team or not. But Pittsburg would not trade him to another team in their division because he has immense talent and they didn’t want to have to figure out how to stop him twice a year. So  he managed to orchestrate a trade to the Oakland Raiders where his behavior became truly bizarre. A recent story on CBS Sports gives us a sense of what Oakland had to deal with and why, eventually, they decided to get rid of him — and trade him to (wait for it) New England. This story centers around Jerry Rice who helped Brown work a deal with the Raiders where he was reported to have signed a contract worth more than $30 million. But it also hints at the various things Brown did to make it impossible for the team to keep him on the roster.

Rice isn’t alone in thinking that Brown becoming a Patriot was the plan from the beginning. On Sunday morning, ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported that New England offered Pittsburgh a first round pick for Brown before the Steelers traded him to Oakland for third and fifth round picks. Additionally, ESPN’s Chris Mortensen reported on Sunday that Brown hired social media consultants to help expedite his release from Oakland. As everyone knows, it worked, as Brown was released on Saturday after posting a video that included a private conversation between himself and Raiders head coach Jon Gruden on Friday night.

Earlier in the week, Brown was nearly suspended by Oakland after reportedly starting an altercation with GM Mike Mayock. Brown kicked off last week by sharing Mayock’s letter informing him of recent team fines on social media. All of this came after a preseason that saw Brown miss significant time with frostbitten feet while also fighting with the NFL for the right to use his now illegal helmet.

As I said, it was clear from the beginning that Brown didn’t want to play for the Raiders even though he seemed to say the right things at the right time — even offering a seemingly heartfelt apology to the team and the coaches in an effort to win a place back on the team — before he started trawling social media seeking ways to be traded to another team, preferably the Patriots. He signed with the Patriots within hours after being released by the Raiders. Very interesting!

As suggested in the quotation above, the theory that is floating about in the airwaves among the braintrust that knows all about very little is that Brown orchestrated the entire long drawn-out episode in order to end up with the New England Patriots. If this is so we must give the man credit of some sort, while hoping that perhaps this is the end of his bizarre behavior. But I do wonder if the reasons for his wanting to play for New England have to do with his unconscious desire for structure and discipline in an otherwise directionless life.

Folks like Christopher Lasch have told us a number of times that the current generation suffers from a lack of authority in their lives and that deep down we all crave structure and authority in order to find some sort of psychic balance. I find those arguments compelling and see Brown’s antics in the light of that analysis. On the one hand we have an immensely talented athlete whose life lacks direction and purpose, and on the other hand we have a coach in New England who is known to be a strict disciplinarian and who had reclaimed a number of talented athletes who seemed to have no direction and were given to chronic outbursts and bizarre behavior. Randy Moss was one of these who eventually ended up in the NFL Hall of Fame and was one of the most talented players ever to play the game of football. Could Antonio Brown be craving this sort of redemption? Could he want to be in a place where the line is clearly drawn and he will find some sort of peace of mind in an otherwise out-of-control existence? We shall see.

But if I am right, there may be a lesson  here for us all as we go further down the road to undisciplined out-of-control behavior designed to simply “express ourselves” while we draw attention to ourselves and cry out for someone to finally say “STOP!” Like Antonio Brown, perhaps?

P.S. And this just in — after the above was posted. Brown has been accused of rape and sexual assault by a former female trainer. Stay tuned!!

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On Being Successful

In a recent professional football game involving the Pittsburg Steelers, one of Pittsburg’s defensive backs suffered a spinal injury because of a head-on tackle in which he exhibited poor technique. He lay moaning on the ground for minutes until he was carted away and sent to the hospital. As of this writing he has had back surgery and is still being observed by the medical experts to see if there is any permanent damage. If there is, it certainly wouldn’t be the first such case. And it will almost certainly not be the last.

This set the networks abuzz with talk about how brutal a game is football — at all levels — and had many a talking head on television wondering what more could be done to prevent further injuries. The NFL is already concerned about concussions, which have had serious consequences for many retired football players; equipment has been improved and there is a great deal more caution after a possible head-on collision than there once was.

In any event, one of the Steelers was interviewed on ESPN and defended his sport despite its violence — trying to calm the waters and assure people that the game is not “brutal” and it would go on. I will not mention his name (because I can’t remember it!) but it matters not. His somewhat disjointed comments defended the sport which he loves because it has enhanced his “family legacy,” i.e., it has made him an immensely wealthy man. There was more to his comments than this, but this was the gist of what he said. And it raises a number of questions.

To begin with, it is a non-sequitur because the violence of the game cannot be dismissed because it makes a number of men very wealthy. In addition, of course, the comments were all about the player himself with little mention of his teammate who lay in a hospital bed trying to recover from a very painful injury. But, more to the point, we heard once again the All-American mantra that identifies success with wealth (his “family legacy”). To be a successful person in this country one must be  tremendously wealthy. Those who dedicate themselves to the well-being of others and make sacrifices every day to make sure that others are healthy and happy, or perhaps simply better informed, are not regarded as successful — unless they can brag about their bank accounts and show you their expensive cars and their overpriced, palatial homes. This is absurd.

In his lectures on sincerity and authenticity, Lionel Trilling points out that the West has struggled for many years with the concept of authenticity, the notion that human beings are truly human when they have achieved not wealth but authenticity: when they are who they truly are. Trilling  focuses on Jean Paul Sartre who spent many pages in his Being and Nothingness talking about “Bad Faith,” the tendency of people — all people — to play roles, to pretend to be someone they are not.  To an extent, Sartre would insist, society demands that we do so. But this does not alter the fact that we wear masks.

Trilling points out that true authenticity has to do with being, not about having. He quotes Oscar Wilde who insisted that “The true perfection of man lies not in what man has but in what man is.” We are truly human when we achieve autonomy, when we are self-directed, not when we become wealthy. In fact, money has nothing whatever to do with it. He notes that this popular misconception, this false identification of wealth with success, stems from the confusion of having with being: it is a type of inauthenticity. We are not what we have; we are what we are within ourselves and in relation to others.

It is not likely that our notion of success, insisting that success is identified with what we have, will change. But it is quite likely that the storm over the violence in America’s most popular sport will quiet down and there will be more injuries in the future. Is it just possible that this is a good thing because it allows Americans to get vicarious pleasure from a violent sport that releases some of the pent-up frustration resulting from lives spent pursuing wealth which they identify with success — though they sense dimly that there is something terribly wrong somewhere?

Selfies

If there are still doubters out there who insist that this is not the most narcissistic age ever, they should consider the “selfie.” As we all know, and which the always reliable Wikipedia affirms, a “selfie”

” is a self-portrait photograph, typically taken [seemingly endlessly] with a digital camera or camera phone held in the hand or supported by a selfie stick. Selfies are often [seemingly endlessly] shared on social networking services such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. They are usually flattering and made to appear casual. Most selfies are taken with a camera held at arm’s length or pointed at a mirror, rather than by using a self-timer.”

Indeed, according to the statistics I just made up, 93.7% of the information on social media is about the person himself or herself. Issues are largely ignored and other people only enter into the discussion if they happen to have some important relationship to the person posting the information. It’s all about “ME.”

Or consider the “self-esteem”movement about which I have blogged previously (seemingly endlessly) which has taken over our schools and which parents have swallowed hook, line, and sinker — despite the fact that all the evidence (which I didn’t make up) suggests that the self-esteem movement actually LOWERS a child’s self-confidence, their sense of who they really are in relation to others around them. But it raises their idea of how accomplished and bright they are and in recent studies of students around the world (which again I did not make up), despite the fact that test scores show that our students trail much of the rest of the world in subjects like language and mathematics, the students themselves are convinced they are the best and brightest. They have the highest sense of self-importance in the world. This is narcissism that borders on self-delusion. And, as we know too well, it has led to the sense of entitlement that pervades this culture in which a growing number of people expect to be handed things because they have a nice smile or are pleasant to be around. Or, simply because they can still breathe in and out. In addition, as Christopher Lasch has pointed out, narcissism can readily lead to violence as those who expect to be handed everything on a platter find their desires thwarted.

In the light of this, it was refreshing recently to read about James Harrison, a professional football player, who returned two very large trophies his sons received for merely participating in an activity. It was not only refreshing because it wasn’t another story about a professional athlete beating his wife or sweetheart, but about a professional football player who is practicing good parenting skills. As Harrison himself said about the awards:

“I came home to find out that my boys received two trophies for nothing, participation trophies!” wrote the Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker on Sunday in an Instagram post to his 180,000 followers. “While I am very proud of my boys for everything they do and will encourage them till the day I die, these trophies will be given back until they earn a real trophy. I’m sorry I’m not sorry for believing that everything in life should be earned, and I’m not about to raise two boys to be men by making them believe that they are entitled to something just because they tried their best … cause sometimes your best is not enough, and that should drive you to want to do better … not cry and whine until somebody gives you something to shut you up and keep you happy.”

Is it possible that this professional athlete knows more about child rearing than the so-called “experts” who dare to give parents and educators misleading advice? Imagine, thinking that praise should be earned and not simply passed out until it means nothing! Harrison just uses his common sense and gut feelings to do the thing he knows is right. I can’t help but believe that we would be much better off if parents and teachers followed Harrison’s lead than they are in raising and teaching their kids “by the book.”