The Cutler Saga
Bullet dodged, John! The Cutler trade to Chicago is depressing news for me as a Denver fan (remember, I may have grown up in New Mexico, but I was born in Denver), but it can only be good news for Bears fans, who have been waiting for a first-class quarterback longer than I have been alive. Now they have one. Meanwhile, the Jets management can ponder their perpetual second-rate status after they cut the best quarterback they had in the last 30 years to hire a has-been as a one-year replacement.
Today:
…depressing news for me as a Denver fan…
Jan. 1:
…it was all too reminiscent of how my Titans had foolishly mistreated McNair.
No man can serve two masters, Mr. Larison. Based on your reputation for integrity I assume that there is a reasonable explanation for this disturbing inconsistency.
Gee, thanks, Daniel – the exact thing I needed to accompany the relief of having awoken from another high-priced QB nightmare was a reminder of the decision that got my Jets into this mess in the first place. Maybe Rex Grossman is available?
I am primarily a Titans/Oilers fan, and the Titans always have my loyalty over all other teams, but growing up in Albuquerque there was a choice to be made: Denver or Dallas? Denver was, is, my birthplace, and was not Dallas (thank God!), so it won out as my second team, and my entire family on my dad’s side are Broncos fans. I became an Oilers fan because I lived for a few formative years in east Texas, and stayed with them after I left and even after they left Houston, but I would be untrue to my birthplace and my family if I didn’t acknowledge my affection for the Broncos.
Plus, they’re not and never have been division rivals, so I don’t think it’s as bad as you make it out to be.
“Maybe Rex Grossman is available?”
I’m sure Lovie Smith would be willing to make a deal, John.
“the exact thing I needed to accompany the relief of having awoken from another high-priced QB nightmare was a reminder of the decision that got my Jets into this mess in the first place.”
I do what I can.
Plus, they’re not and never have been division rivals, so I don’t think it’s as bad as you make it out to be.
A shifty defense of dual loyalties… shocking stuff considering the source.
Just kidding. If you’d said you liked Denver and also liked Oakland then I would’ve had some genuine concerns.
“If you’d said you liked Denver and also liked Oakland then I would’ve had some genuine concerns.”
If I said that, I would expect you to put me out of my misery.
Daniel — I share your anti-Favrian views, but was Pennington really the Jets’ best QB of the last thirty years? I mean, at the time he was cut? I’ve seen octogenerians with better arms. I fully expect him to revert to has-been status himself next year with the Dolphins.
My description may have been a bit over the top, but I’m trying to think of a QB the Jets have had in the last 30 years who was better. O’Donnell? Not really. I have nothing against O’Donnell, but he was always back-up quality (and he did good work for the Oilers/Titans in that capacity, I would add). Maybe a more knowledgeable Jets fan can correct me and point me to the glories of the Testaverde years, but I think Pennington, despite injuries, deserves the description I gave him.
The better question is this: was Pennington better than Favre at the time he was cut and Favre was hired? I think the answer has to be yes.
I’m going to say that Ken O’Brien and Vinny Testaverde were both better than Chad. I am not going to substantiate that assertion.
Cutler is really good at throwing footballs, but his tantrum raises red flags. What will he do if someone on the Bears signs a bigger deal than him, or someone prints a trade rumor? This was an Owensesque pout.
I think professional sports offer an really interesting avenue of discussion for people interested in localism and culture. I see that Mr. Larison explains (defends?) his preference for the Broncos in terms of where he is from. But what is a true localist to do? What about the revered Steeler Nation, sent into a diaspora by the collapse of Big Steel 30 years ago? Is it time for former steel workers now living in Phoenix to give up the Steelers and start rooting for the Cardinals? What about their kids?
This all shakes out over at the Corner, where fans are currently explaining their preference for one baseball team over another:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MGU5M2QzNTM4MWQ3Y2MzYjY4ODY5MzNiZTMzN2FhNDk=
Note that many of the people do NOT live near their favorite team. What’s a localist to make of that? If I am supposed to eat local meats and seasonal vegetables, why root for a team that’s 1,000 miles away?
More broadly, what does this say about professional sports in general? Talk about Corporate America. As is widely knows, hardly any professional players are FROM the team’s locale, nor do they have any allegiance to it. Nor do team owners feel any allegiance.
So shouldn’t a localist slake his thirst for competitive sports by cheering on the local community college team? The high school teams? Sports are sports, right?
Sure, you might argue that the Steelers are simply better, and therefore more fun to watch, than the local Pop Warner offerings. And that’s true. But doesn’t this apply to everything? Strawberries taste better than turnips. Even in December. Even in climates where strawberries don’t grow. But a lot of us think that shipping strawberries in December amounts to a globalist triumph over local places. And we wring our hands.
But if “because it’s better” or “because I prefer it” justifies spending entertainment dollars on far-flung enterprises run by gargantuan rent-seeking corporations… why isn’t it also OK to say “I prefer the Olive Garden’s pasta primavera to whatever Ye Olde Mom and Pop’s Diner is offering”?
If it’s OK to tranfer money from my bank account to George Steinbrenner’s, why not from my account the account of whoever owns Ikea/Applebees/Lowe’s/WalMart?
This is a serious question.
The best answer is that a really serious localist would at most be a supporter of local athletic clubs, nearby high school and college teams or minor league clubs in that order. He would not pay attention to professional, corporate sports that much, and he would certainly not do much to subsidize them (i.e., he might watch, but that would be the limit of his contribution to their coffers).
He would probably say that mass spectacle is itself undesirable, and people should instead have local clubs in which members of their community participate in the games and other community events, preferably tied to religious and civic observances. Festivity, rather than routinized spectacle, would be the order of the day. Of course, considering how much hell people give traditionalists because of our criticism of globalism, I can just imagine what a non-starter all of this would be. As I was writing the phrase “religious and civic observances,” it occurred to me that this phrase would mean nothing to a frighteningly large number of people. But you asked a serious question and deserve to get a real answer.
For that matter, I think this same serious localist would not be a transplant to the other side of the country and would not move six or seven times in his life, but would stay put, which would eliminate a lot of the contradictions you mention. As my own story makes clear, I have moved around a fair amount in my life, and it is the mobility rather than the attachments one forms along the way that is the larger problem.
It shouldn’t and can’t just be a matter of individual preference.
In a related discussion, the Front Porchers discuss local loyalties in the context of the NCAA Tournament:
http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/?p=2174
I don’t care a whole lot for the NFL, but I do pay attention, and I am now a Jay Cutler supporter. He got jerked around, and he responded like someone pissed off at being jerked around. Which is how the feudal (in the bad ways!) sports system gets changed.
Plus I’m okay with the Bears, and most Chicago teams, having lived there three different times.
More broadly, what does this say about professional sports in general? Talk about Corporate America. As is widely knows, hardly any professional players are FROM the team’s locale, nor do they have any allegiance to it. Nor do team owners feel any allegiance.
I’ll defer to anyone who has the numbers handy, but my sense is that the phenomenon of outright mercenary behavior by team owners and players is a relatively recent phenomenon. Not that, back in the good old days, everyone placed loyalty and virtue ahead of money, fame and power (Babe Ruth was a Baltimore kid and played first for the Red Sox, etc.), but I think there used to be enough stability in ownership and rosters to justify a certain amount of local pride in the team.
The 70s Steelers, for example, fielded Super Bowl teams built almost entirely through the draft, rather than through trades or poaching other teams’ star players. That still wasn’t “localism” in its most rigorous form, since most of the players weren’t actually from Western Pennsylvania. But I’d say a Pittsburgh native wasn’t being irrational to consider the franchise a genuinely local institution. The players were Steelers for virtually their whole careers and the Rooney family has been in Pittsburgh for over 100 years and does not threaten to move the team to extort money from the city.
So the strong loyalties modern fans have to their teams may be a relic of an era when owners and players had at least some credibility as representatives of their cities. I think that sports fandom now has a life of its own, and will survive free agency, mercenary owners, etc., because it’s such a powerful way to feel close to other people in your area (or to feel close to the area where you grew up).
And, at the risk of opening a can of worms, I prefer professional sports to college sports not just because I think the quality of play is better but also because I think the NCAA and many Division I schools are just as tainted by corporatism and mercenary behavior as any pro league or team. At least pro teams pay their athletes with money and not with scholarships of dubious educational value.
Daniel:
It strikes me as odd that you should bring up Favre in this context, because it seems to me that Cutler was acting in a very Favre-like fashion here. And, tellingly, he and Favre have the same agent. The primary difference here is that Cutler hasn’t actually won anything yet, whereas Favre had when he pulled his shenanigans.
As to the similarities between the Cutler and Favre dramas, I’m not the first guy to notice the similarity.
In any case, I don’t think the Bears problems have really been at QB. They’ve always been elsewhere, which is part of why they’ve gone through so many quarterbacks. The Bears of the 2000′s are like the Bengals of the 1990′s in terms of ruining QBs.