Drew Magary’s Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo runs every Thursday at Defector during the NFL season. Got something you wanna contribute? Email the Roo. And buy Drew’s book, The Night The Lights Went Out, through here.
There didn’t used to be so many billionaires. I know because I used to keep track of them. My old man had a subscription to Forbes back when I was a kid, back when Forbes was a reputable print magazine instead of the empty branding vessel it is now. Every year, Forbes would publish a list of the 400 richest people in America. The Forbes 400. The Zagat guide of rich assholes. I read that fucker from cover to cover.
At the time, circa 1990, the Forbes 400 would run out of billionaires right around No. 60. Sam Walton, founder of Walmart, topped the list on an annual basis. The rest of the list was an assortment of Buffets, Redstones, Pritzkers, and blue bloods from the Carnegie/Rockefeller genre. None of them were terribly interesting people, save for the “having a thousand million dollars” part. This was back when “millionaire” was easy shorthand for wealth. If you had a million dollars, you could have anything you wanted. These billionaires just happened to have more anything. They were a level beyond rich. Supernatural, almost.
I wanted to know how they got there. Not because I had been politically radicalized, but because I wanted to be a billionaire. I wanted to know the secret to accumulating such vast amounts of money. So after I read the origin story blurbs for all of these people—including names I recognized like Donald Trump, Ralph Lauren, and David Geffen—my tweenage mind thought, AHA! It can be done. You didn’t have to be Einstein to become a billionaire. Anyone could do it. I could do it. I just had to figure out a way to make wedding invitation production costs cheaper, or discover a bunch of great bands, or start up a computer company.
I never figured it out. It’s 34 years later, and my net worth remains a paltry not $1 billion. But I wasn’t the only child back then with absurd billion-dollar ambitions. And once Bill Gates started to routinely best Walton atop the Forbes 400, the door flew open for would-be tech barons to ascend onto the list, often without them having to do much work at all. You know these people by name now. You know that Mark Zuckerberg became a billionaire by inventing an app for people still horny for old classmates. You know that Mark Cuban was able to afford the Dallas Mavericks because he sold broadcast.com, now a dead link, to Yahoo for nearly $6 billion. And you know that Larry Page and Sergey Brin became billionaires hundreds of times over(!) after inventing a no-frills search engine. You know these faces now, which makes it a whole lot easier to picture YOUR face atop their doughy bodies. You don’t even have to start out in the mailroom to get there.
In fact, you know a LOT of billionaires now, and not just the ones driving your favorite NFL team into the ground. Even though billionaires are still rare, they feel more accessible, if such a word can be used, than they’ve ever been. As of last year, there were nearly 800 billionaires in this country alone, enough to fill out the Forbes 400 twice over. And the names on the present list include names you’d recognize regardless of their largesse: Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Michael Jordan, Jay-Z, Kim Kardashian, Taylor Swift, Magic Johnson, Tiger Woods, and LeBron James. These are interesting people (superficially, at least) doing interesting things.
Four of those names started out their careers as professional athletes, which is objectively cool. Other professional athletes have since taken notice. Kevin Durant has earned nearly $450 million in salary over his adult life just from playing basketball alone. But Durant has also profited handsomely from endorsement deals, partnerships with companies like Weedmaps (“I think it’s far past time to address the stigmas around cannabis that still exist in the sports world as well as globally. This partnership is going to help us continue to normalize those conversations”), and from passive investing in multiple other companies. Same goes for Peyton Manning and Omaha Productions, or Tom Brady and his shitty TB12 merch. Modern athletes are being constantly told they need to plan for their post-playing careers, and the richest among them have taken that nagging to heart. It’s no longer enough to be a champion. You have to be an industry unto yourself.
KD and TB12 would appear to be on their way there. Do these men need all of that extra loot? Of course not. But at this level of wealth, the use of the money becomes far less important than the financial stat line. It’s all a competition, and these are all unreasonably competitive people. All fixated, exclusively, on ultimate prizes.
That prize is now $1 billion. That’s not just a byproduct of global inequality, it’s also byproduct of our pop culture. I don’t have to work hard to prove it; you’ve already heard the lines, many times over. “A million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool? A billion dollars.” “Shaq is rich. The guy who signs Shaq's check? He's wealthy.” People remember those lines. They also remember Who Wants To Marry A Multimillionaire?, which featured a prize groom who was worth millions on paper but was also cash poor. And they sprint to the convenience store anytime the Powerball jackpot balloons to GDP levels. A million dollars is still a whole lot of money, but it’s not what it used to be, and it ain’t shit for a popular imagination that refuses to dream smaller. You and I will never become billionaires, but Americans already have a proven distaste for reality. Thus, the billionaire dream now rules all others. That entertainers can get into the club only makes the allure stronger.
Knowing that, it’s not a huge surprise that athletes you love, and also Durant, want to use their athletic feats in service of empire building. When you see a name brand athlete now, you’ll also see a shoe line, a production company, a vanity tequila brand, a stake in a pro team, and a zillion other ventures that they hope will make them Vitamin Water money. None of them want to make like Pete Rose and man an autograph table until they die. They want bigger prizes to chase, and they want the power to chase them.
I’d tell you that it’s heartwarming to see the billionaire class with a bit more racial and occupational diversity on it, but I’m not a dipshit 13-year-old anymore. I know what having a billion dollars means, and much of it is unpleasant. I also know that you don’t become a billionaire just by doing one thing, but by having a portfolio of business concerns. Elon Musk, whom you may have heard of, is currently the richest man in world history, with over $300 billion to his name. He made his money by working in electric cars, aeronautics, computing, government contracting, and media. One day, likely soon, he will become our first trillionaire, setting a new impossible standard for the rest of us to strive for. Musk is also a remarkably dull man who isn’t seemingly good at much of anything. Obscene wealth has also rendered many of his peers dull, former athletes like Magic chief among them. This is what making a billion dollars costs you. You must spread yourself so thin in its pursuit that you disappear entirely. You become the money, and it becomes you.
This is discouraging on multiple levels. But for aesthetic reasons, it REALLY sucks. I don’t want to remember Magic as some grinning asshole who tweets out details of every corporate luncheon he attends. I don’t want to remember Derek Jeter as the clueless fuckhead who drove the Miami Marlins further into obscurity and then made a lousy Jeep ad to celebrate. And I don’t want to remember KD for being the Drone King of Phoenix. I want to remember people for what made them great, not what made them money. There was a time when such a thing was possible, back when the Forbes 400 had a bunch of randos on it. But those days are long gone, and I’m slowly forgetting that they ever existed.
The Games
All games in the Jamboroo are evaluated for sheer watchability on a scale of 1 to 5 Throwgasms.
Five Throwgasms
Packers at Lions: This is the game of the year, and it’s tonight. For the sake of playoff seeding, I should be rooting for the Packers to upset a hobbled Lions team. I won’t be doing that. I hope the Lions hang 70 on those losers, and I hope that Dan Campbell calls for Penei Sewell to run a go route.
Four Throwgasms
Chargers at Chiefs: You will not know the Chargers had a winning season until Wild Card Weekend arrives and you’re like, Wait a second, the fuck are the Chargers doing here? That’s why they pay Jimmy Harbaugh the big bucks, my friend. Just like this week, they will lose that playoff game 19-17.
Three Throwgasms
Seahawks at Cardinals: Haters like me were understandably fixated on Aaron Rodgers sucking butt at the time, but the real story from last week’s Jets collapse was this pick-six from DT Leonard Williams, who set the record for heaviest player ever to score off an interception. Look at this fat guy run!
Ninety-two fucking yards. I’m exhausted just watching the guy. I haven’t sprinted a distance like that in 30 years. I could be late for a flight and I still wouldn’t run that hard.
Falcons at Vikings: This is the Kirk Cousins Bowl, if such a thing appeals to you. It doesn’t. I’m not even sure I want to watch this thing. If I’m lucky, the Vikings will be the team responsible for getting this man benched.
Bills at Rams
Browns at Steelers
Panthers at Eagles
Two Throwgasms
Jets at Dolphins: Spare a moment to reflect on the career of one Calais Campbell, now on his fifth team in 17 seasons. This man has 109.5 career sacks, six Pro Bowl nods, and three All-Pro nods (first team or second). He’s also a 6-foot-8 DT. No one that tall plays DT. If you show up to open tryouts and you’re that tall, the coach is sticking you at LT. Or he’ll ask you if you ever played basketball before trying to make you a tight end. And yet here’s this oak tree of a man, 38 years old, leading his current team in both sacks and tackles for loss. No one is gonna confuse this Miami defense with the 2000 Ravens anytime soon, but if I were a color guy (thank your stars I’m not) I’d spend every Campbell game going, CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS FUCKING GUY IS STILL PLAYING LIKE THIS HOLY ASSCRACK! I’d say to put Campbell in the Hall of Fame but he’ll just shoot through the gap and induct himself.
Bengals at Cowboys
Bears at 49ers
One Throwgasm
Jaguars at Titans: Every weeknight my wife and I watch an episode of Only Murders after I’ve popped a gummy, and every episode of that show features the main characters eating at a diner. Guess what that makes stoned Drew hungry for every time he sees it? I really need to buy a griddle.
Raiders at Bucs
Saints at Giants
Pregame Song That Makes Me Wanna Run Through A Goddamn Brick Wall
“Brothers in Arms,” by Gridiron! From Adam:
I can’t believe no one has suggested Gridiron yet. They are the promise of the Judgment Night soundtrack fulfilled, with tons of football references thrown in. The band is apparently split between Lions and Eagles fans, and at one show they either had the Eagles game on the big screen behind them while they played, or they were playing Eagles highlights the whole time. Either way, it ruled.
OK I would definitely go to a rock concert that also showed the game on a big screen behind it. That’s a win-win situation right there.
Fire This Asshole!
Is there anything more exciting than a coach losing his job? All year long, we’ll keep track of which coaches will almost certainly get fired at year’s end or sooner. And now, your potential 2024 chopping block:
Robert Saleh—FIRED!
Dennis Allen—FIRED!
Matt Eberflus—FIRED!
Doug Pederson****
Todd Bowles
Brian Daboll*
Mike McCarthy
Antonio Pierce
Zac Taylor
Jerod Mayo
Kyle Shanahan
Mike McDaniel
Brian Callahan
(*potential midseason firing)
Hiring season is fast approaching, which means that the access merchant collective is about to flood the zone with the names of their favorite sources’ favorite clients. Like here:
And here!
Oh yes, Arthur Smith is RED HOT among NFL GMs right now. If anyone can fix the Jets, it’s that man.
Great Moments In Poop History
Reader Andrew sends in this story I call GOING BROWN?:
I am an elevator mechanic. I’m on call after hours about once a week to handle emergencies. One night while I’m trimming the dwarf grass in my aquarium, I get an entrapment call. It’s only seven or eight blocks from my place, so I give a twenty minute ETA to dispatch. The building is an old one: built in the 1940s with a tiny elevator. And I mean tiny, with a two foot by two foot floor, like a phone booth. Three people are trapped inside. It would have been gross and hot in there. You’d likely be nose to nose with one another.
So I get them out. Two guys and a girl in their twenties. They all seemed fine and somewhat unbothered with their little ordeal (usually people are IRATE, as if we both wanted and caused them to be stuck in the elevator). Afterwards, while I was headed to the rooftop machine room to check out the problem, one of the guys who was trapped inside tapped me on the shoulder and asked if he could have access to the elevator pit. When I asked why, he grew dark red and sheepishly admitted to taking a poo in a small bag and then dropping it down the shaft (!!!!). He wanted to spare the poor guy who would have to come and clean up his poo bag. Pretty nice of him. I took his number and promised I’d pass it along to the tech for that building.
On my drive home, two things puzzled me:
1) I was there inside of thirty minutes from when they would have first been stuck. Could he not have clenched a little longer? He would have gotten my eta from my company’s dispatch.
2) The mechanics of pooping into a tiny bag while inches away from your two friends are…troubling.
Also I realized he’d shook my hand immediately after I’d freed him and his very close friends. Ick.
Okay but he still fessed up and offered to clean up his own mess. I’d wager 99.9999999 percent of Americans wouldn’t.
And Now Let’s Go Down To The Sideline And Check In With Charissa Thompson
“Drew, I just got my car back from my mechanic, Gus Jensen, and it drove beautifully! I asked Gus what makes him so dedicated to brake pad replacement. He said he credits it to his grandmother, Frankie, who raised him when he was a boy. ‘Frankie always wanted to know how things worked,’ he told me. Gus also said that he keeps the last muffin that Frankie ever baked, blueberry, in a plastic bag that remains in his pantry to this day.
"Gus says seeing that muffin still in his house is a way of keeping Frankie alive. It reminds him to stay humble, and it reminds him that what he does for a living helps food on the table. Back to you, Drew.”
Thank you, Charissa.
Gametime Cheap Beer Of The Week
Peanut Butter Milk Stout! FINALLY. From Joshua:
I found this in a store the other day and for obvious reasons, I think it sounds terrible. I sent the photo to my friend with caption "hard pass." His response was an adamant, "You have to try it!" My question is, where is the appropriate place to draw the line between, "That's probably bad but I have to try it" and, "That is an abomination and I refuse to participate"? Am I being a beer prude by not trying it? My friend is insane for thinking I should try it, right?
This is all age dependent. Are you guys both 19? Then you should try the beer. If you’re closer to my age, you already know that hell awaits you. You also know that you no longer have the youthful vigor to withstand it. And I say that as someone who’ll eat peanut butter in anything. If Reese’s made a ketchup, I’d probably buy it.
Gameday Movie Of The Week For Giants Fans
Terence Malick’s Days of Heaven, which does NOT feature Scott Adkins but is one of the defining films of the 1970s and one of the greatest films ever made. If you can handle narrator Linda Manz’s weird accent, you’ll be treated to 94 minutes of flawless natural lighting, peak Richard Gere, and a score by the immortal Ennio Morricone. But again, there is NO Scott Adkins here, so please remember that before queuing it up. Four stars.
Gratuitous Simpsons Quote
“Now bring us some extra chairs, like a good blubber-in-law.”
Enjoy the games, everyone.
