GLENDALE, Arizona. Concerned about the risk of career-ending injuries, former pro quarterback Archie Manning today announced that his sons Peyton and Eli would retire from football and stand at stud for sports-crazy parents who want to produce future signal callers from his proven bloodline.
"I get the blonde."
"I don't want my boys to get sacked like Joe Theismann and have to be put down to the role of television color commentator," Manning said. "They can make just as much money servicing broodmares--I mean housewives--all over the country and never throw another interception."
"I'm sorry Joe--we're going to have to put you to sleep."
The market for athletic stud services is young, but equine syndicators estimate that it could become a billion-dollar business in just a few years. "People are willing to pay good money to get sperm from Nobel Prize winners," said Blakemore Jones of Kentucky's Post Time Thoroughbreds. "Which would you rather have--a kid who's an NFL quarterback or one who's a gloomy Norwegian novelist?"
Sigrid Undset, Gloomy Norwegian Novelist, 1928 Nobel Prize Winner in Literature
Following the New York Giants' victory over the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLII, the Mannings are the first brothers to win back-to-back professional football championships, and their market price is probably at its peak. Otto Graham led the Cleveland Browns to the championship of the All-America Football Conference in 1948, the year after his mother served as the team's signal caller.
Otto Graham: "Aw, Mom--do I have to run the naked bootleg?"
The Manning brothers say they won't mind leaving football behind for the bordello. "You ever seen Dwight Freeney?" asked Eli Manning, referring to his brother's pass-rushing teammate. "One missed block and that guy tears me apart like a half-price bucket of chicken wings."
NEW YORK. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell emerged from a tense, four-hour meeting with children's television activists last night to announce that the league would place limits on the number and duration of Peyton Manning commercials in future broadcasts.
Goodell: "They made some good points, now I wish they'd just dry up and blow away."
"We are gratified that the Commissioner understands the risk to our nation's youth of a constant barrage of mindless advertisements" featuring the Super Bowl XLI MVP, said Alicia Hartsell of Mothers Against Peyton Manning Commercials. "The average American child will watch 972 hours of Peyton Manning ads by the time he or she is four, for an average of 1,215 minutes per month and a Quarterback Viewer Rating of 101.3."
Not another!
Manning is currently featured in national advertisements for Mastercard, Sprint, Sony, Gatorade, Rocco's Texaco and Smitty's Bait and Tackle of Muncie, Indiana. The push to limit commercials aimed at children was started by Sesame Workshop, a non-profit producer of several educational children's programs including Sesame Street.
Cookie Monster: "Me have strong side curl-to-flat responsibilities in 5-2 Monster Defense!"
Sesame Workshop produces educational content for a variety of media, including on-line math quiz questions such as the following:
"I'm full--I had some celery last year."
Tom, Gisele and Bridget need to cross a lake in a canoe to go to a picnic. The canoe will only hold Tom, the picnic basket and one supermodel at a time. Q: What should Tom leave behind? A: The picnic basket--the supermodels can survive on a celery stalk between them.
EAST RUTHERFORD, New Jersey. Jeff Feagles, veteran place kick holder for the New York Giants, stormed out of the team's dressing room today after accusing reporters of ignoring his contributions to the franchise's incredible 9-10 record over the past two seasons.
Feagles: "How long must I labor in obscurity?"
"You guys have written a book about everybody on this team from Eli Manning to Christine Procops," the Giants' chief financial officer. "What do I have to do to get a little ink around here--become a CPA?"
Crunch Time: A Season Running the Numbers for the New York Giants, $24.95.
Feagles' frustration boiled over after reading a story in Sunday's New York Times that listed eight books published about the Giants this fall, a statistic that other teams around the league cited as evidence of east coast bias by national media outlets headquartered in New York. "We won the Super Bowl last year and there were only three books published about us," complained Rod Zucker, Vice President of Marketing for the Indianapolis Colts. "The New York media is like a drunk who loses his car keys and only looks under the street lamp because that's where the light's best."
Steelers license plate holder
Other teams joined the chorus of complaint. "There were no books published about the Steelers after we won Super Bowl XL," notes Pittsburgh Communications Coordinator Dave Lockett. "We got a license plate holder."
New York publishers denied the accusation, saying they commission books based on anticipated demand and are not prejudiced against other regions of the country. "I asked several people I know, and they all said they'd be more likely to buy a book about the Giants than the Tampa Bay Orioles," sniffed Armand de Borchgrave, a third-generation editor at Farr, Wilkinson & Sanford, which will publish a cookbook of tailgating recipes by Giants' fans for the holiday book market.
Saul Steinberg's famous New Yorker cover: Does the rest of America really matter?
New Yorkers are notorious for their condescending attitude towards the rest of America, as memorably portrayed by Saul Steinberg, the cover artist for The New Yorker magazine whose map depicting Manhattan looming as large as the rest of the country became an instant classic. "After the Steelers won the Super Bowl in 2006 we commissioned David Halberstam to write a book about Giants' fans reactions to the game," de Borchgrave recalls as he wipes a tear from his eye. "He had only written about 760 pages when he died this year."
Halberstam: "For a Steelers fan, perhaps the most important consideration is what a New York writer will say about his beloved team if the Giants do not make the playoffs."
The NFL's licensing office said they would work with New York publishers to introduce them to markets beyond the Tri-State area in the unlikely event that the Giants' dynasty comes to an end in the near future. "We need to educate them," said Phil Burns. "People in Indiana will read something longer than a throw pillow if you give them the chance."
PHOENIX. As the NFL's competition committee emerged from a closed-door session and announced that the league would retain its current overtime format in which the correct call of a coin toss almost inevitably produces a win, player personnel vice presidents began to reconsider their special teams needs.
Dungy with top prospect: "He can feel the weather in his bones."
"We need a guy who can process a lot of information in a very short period of time," said Scott Pioli of the New England Patriots. "We're looking at Weng Chen, a 185-pound physics major from MIT who had a 4.3 second time in the quadratic equation at the NFL Draft Combine."
Bob Dylan: Contrary to what he said, you do need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
Indianapolis head coach Tony Dungy said the Colts would forego the Patriots' cerebral approach in favor of a meteorology major, probably Al Salerno of Eastern Michigan if he is available. "Otherwise we may see who's available in the free agent market after sweeps week among local TV weathermen."
Scouts at the NFL Draft Combine: "This kid tends to get nervous and call tails when the pocket collapses around him."
Last season 64% of NFL teams that won the overtime coin toss went on to win the game, 35% lost, and the remaining 1% were abducted by aliens and sold to Arena Football League teams.
"Resistance is futile--we are taking you to the Quad City Steamrollers."
Contrary to popular belief, a random series of coin tosses using a statistically-valid sample will not produce an equal number of "heads" and "tails", with the precise variation depending on the type of coin. "George Washington wears that wig, so you've got to keep that in mind when the ref breaks out a quarter," says Baltimore Ravens coin toss specialist Michael Gerrard. "Sacagawea's got that baby on her back, which throws guys off and then you have to do an on-side kick."
The sleeper of the draft may be Ricky Theobald, of Tula, Mississippi, who did not play college football but who has worked at a convenience store since he was fourteen.
Ricky Theobald: He can count the whiskers on Lincoln's chin.
"The kid has an incredible feel for the game," says New York Jets' head coach Eric Mangini. "He can tell you whether the Roosevelt on your dime is in his first or his fourth term as President."
MIAMI, Florida. As hordes of hired fans whooped out the last reprise of "Purple Rain", tears ran down the cheeks of Charles Bascomb, an Atlanta transvestite who had maxed out his credit cards to buy a ticket to Super Bowl XLI.
"This is such a defining moment for people like me," Bascomb said as he stifled a sob in the pounding Florida rain that wreaked havoc with his Betty Crocker-style hairdo. "And I'm not even a football fan."
"Let's go crazy--and dress up like Poppin' Fresh!"
Sportswriters with ambitions of moving into hard news had spent the better part of the week writing about the historic meeting of two teams led by African-American head coaches for the first time in a Super Bowl, but they were caught off guard by the half-time show, which featured R&B performer Prince sporting an Aunt Jemima-style doo-rag.
Inspiration for the artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince.
"This is history, man," said James Mahoney, a native of Indianapolis who was dressed in a blue-and-white sailor suit as Sailor Jack, the boy who has appeared on boxes of Cracker Jack, the popular popcorn, peanut and molasses confection, for over a century. "Now those of us who like to dress up as logos of consumer food products can come out of the closet, or the lazy susan where you keep the snacks and chips, or wherever."
Cracker Jack: Surprised Chicago by throwing under deep zone coverages.
Prince, who has changed his name twice in his career and projects an ambiguous sexuality, hinted that he might consider a transformation into another food products icon when his new album is released this fall.
"Plain or peanut--it don't make no difference," he shouted to fans as he or she made his or her way up the runway at Dolphin Stadium. "I'm gonna melt in your mouth, not in your hands."
INDIANAPOLIS. College Bowl, the '60's quiz show that pitted Phi Beta Kappas from competing colleges against each other, is set to return this fall as the NCAA fights to put the "student" back in "student-athlete" after recent embarrassments such as Vince Young's single-digit score on the Wonderlic exam.
"We talked to Vince about it," said NCAA President Myles Brand, referring to the University of Texas quarterback who scored only six out of a possible fifty points on the aptitude test administered by the NFL. "In his defense, six is the most you can score on a single play in football, so we're not going to come down too hard on him."
Instead, taking a cue from the producers of "The New Hollywood Squares", the NCAA will sponsor "The New College Bowl", a souped-up version of the show that National Honor Society Presidents watched on Saturday afternoons as dreams of full-boat academic scholarships glided through their already-crowded brains.
The fuel that's been added to the intellectual fire this time around? A high-stakes Texas Hold 'Em format in which student contestants can wager their schools' endowments on questions like "Name King Lear's three daughters in reverse alphabetical order."
"We were brainstorming one night and I said--Hey, if Harvard is so smart, let them go all in on the flop, instead of just sitting up there in Massachusetts sneering at the rest of the country," Brand said. Harvard University's endowment was valued at $25.9 billion as of the end of 2005.
Even at the height of its popularity, College Bowl never attracted more than a miniscule audience. Its most lasting impression on the American consciousness may have been left by the movie "Diner", in which Kevin Bacon, playing Timothy Fenwick, Jr., mocks contestants as he watches the show.
In the same movie Steve Guttenberg, playing Eddie Simmons, gives his fiancee a test on the history of the Baltimore Colts as a condition to finalizing their marriage, but Brand said there were no plans to add pro football as a category. "We've got to be careful we don't cause our young people to lose their amateur standing," he said.
The most famous College Bowl matchup was undoubtedly the triple-overtime match between the University of Chicago and Brandeis University that was won on a last-second "Hail Mary" by Eugene Firke, a pre-med major from Chicago, who correctly named all elements of the periodic table in pig Latin, begininng with "ydrogenhay".
FOXBORO, Mass. Bill Belichick, the defensive mastermind who has led the New England Patriots to three Super Bowl championships, is often casually referred to by sportscasters as a "genius" for his game plans. The contemplative coach bats such praise aside as if it were a pesky tyke hounding him for his autograph, saying "A genius is somebody who comes up with a cure for polio, or maybe Jon Bon Jovi," his favorite rock singer.
But no more. The MacArthur Foundation Fellows Program today announced that Belichick will receive one of this year's $500,000 "genius" grants, making official his status as a giant among the small fraternity of highly-competitive men who pace the sidelines at NFL games.
"It was only fitting, " said Cynthia Lichtenstein, executive director of the program. "Who can forget the fly pattern to Troy Brown he called on the last play of that overtime game against the Dolphins in 2003, or the way he's turned Peyton Manning into a personal love poodle with his defensive sets?"
The MacArthur grants are awarded to a wide range of scientists, artists and social reformers, and come with no strings attached. Last year's winners included a sculptor, a public-health researcher, a documentary filmmaker and the entire cast of "The New Hollywood Squares."
At least one person who was passed over for a grant was not ready to concede that Belichick's contributions to society outweighed hers. Miranda Rush-Goldie, a performance artist who smears Elmer's Glue on her nude body before boarding crowded New York City buses and subways, said she was more deserving. "He can probably make tons of money endorsing clothes, which I obviously can't," she explained.
"Not true," said Scott Winstead, a spokesman for the Patriots. "You've seen how Belichick dresses for games--homeless people don't buy new clothes."
ORLANDO, Florida. General managers from around the NFL sat through a two-hour video presentation here yesterday as the league's supervisor of officials explained pro football's new limits on excessive endzone celebrations after touchdowns.
"The two words you have to remember are 'tasteful and proportionate'," Mike Pereira said to a roomful of executives who were relieved to be done with an earlier session on "down by contact" calls.
"By tasteful, I mean that which conforms to recognized standards of aesthetic expression," he explained as retiring commissioner Paul Tagliabue stood watching from the back of the meeting room. "No butt-wiggling," he said when a representative of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers asked him to be more specific.
The issue of proportionality will be a judgment call, Pereira indicated. "If Indianapolis is up by three touchdowns with two minutes left, I don't want to see anybody on the Colts doing a St. Vitus Dance if James Mungro scores on a one-yard plunge," he said. "On the other hand, anytime the Arizona Cardinals score you expect them to go a little nuts."
Some present at the meeting said they would seek professional assistance in guiding players through the new rules, which forbid the use of props such as the Sharpie pen Terrell Owens used to autograph a ball after he caught a touchdown pass. "We hired a mime coach--Jean-Claude something-or-other. He's going to show the guys how to work without props," said Cleveland head coach Romeo Crennel.
The New York Giants said they have put Tina Farnsworth of the American Ballet Theatre on retainer to teach players how to express themselves in a tasteful manner. "Tiki Barber is progressing nicely," she said. "I have taught him how to perform leplie, lerond de jambe and lereleve. Now if you will excuse me, I must eat monchef boyardee."
The NFL has been criticized as the "No Fun League" for its crackdown on endzone celebrations, but Tagliabue said the new rules were nothing more than a way to keep advertisers happy. "If we play our cards right, someday a pro football telecast will be as boring as Masterpiece Theatre," he said. "In the case of the Houston Texans, we're already there."
STOCKHOLM, Sweden. Peyton Manning today accepted the first Nobel Prize in Football, given to him by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for his contributions to the distinctly American game that Scandinavians have grown to accept, if not completely understand.
"Mr. Manning was the inventor of the fake spike, an innovation which, like the 'flea-flicker' and the 'fumble-rooski', forever changed the way the game is played," Annika Furstenberg told the crowd assembled at the Academy's headquarters here.
American football has long been derided by the Swedes as a game for numbskulls, even though Bronco Nagurski, one of the sport's early two-way greats, was of Scandinavian descent. The establishment of a Nobel prize honoring the sport thus represents a watershed of sorts, and Manning complimented the Nobel Foundation for its willingness to rank football with chemistry, physics and other really hard subjects he had trouble with in high school.
"All I can say," Manning quipped with a grin on his face as he paused for effect, "is DY-NO-MITE!" Alfred Nobel was the inventor of dynamite, and the crowd erupted in cheers at the quarterback's nod to the award's heritage.
No sooner had Manning stepped down from the stage than controversy erupted, as Dan Marino issued a press release stating that he had invented the fake spike seven years before Manning in a 1994 game between the Miami Dolphins and the New York Jets.
"With all due respect to Ms. Furstenberg, she doesn't know which end of a Gatorade bucket is up," Marino said in the statement. "This is the same kind of mistake the Nobel people made in 1962 when they gave a prize to Watson and Crick for DNA. Everybody knows that Rosalind Franklin was the sparkplug of that team."
Manning brushed off Marino's charges as sour grapes. "I can buy a lot of Isotoner gloves with ten million Swedish Kronors."
FOXBORO, Mass. Ever since Pittsburgh Steelers' wide receiver Lynn Swann worked out with a ballet instructor to improve his footwork in the 70's, football coaches have tried dance-based training methods to gain a competitive edge.
In a sign that ideas are starting to flow in both directions between the pigskin and terpsichorean worlds, several modern dance companies have recently hired NFL down linemen to help them create and perfect edgy pieces that reach out to new audiences and explore non-traditional balletic themes.
For example, the Luminaria Dance Collective in Cambridge, Mass. has hired Richard Seymour, the Patriots' All-Pro defensive end, to work with its principal ballerina and other dancers on a new piece tentatively entitled "Smash the State: PoliticArt". The work, choreographed by the group's artistic director Trish Islington, seeks to "portray by movement and gesture the nexus between post-industrial capitalism and imperialistic adventurism exemplified by the war in Iraq," in the words of the company's brochure.
"We looked at a lot of game film," said Islington, "and we found in Richard Seymour the ur-pass rusher, the embodiment of massive movement, that we needed as a model for our dancers."
Seymour says he is teaching the group the techniques he uses to stop the run and flatten quarterbacks. "I showed 'em one thing I do, I give the center a helmet slap with my right hand, then bring my left arm over his head real quick so by the time his ears stop ringing I'm already past him. They liked that one."
Islington is a firm believer in creating dances from raw experience, and has even gone one-on-one with Seymour in an effort to understand the violence that is at the core of pro football and, she believes, American society.
"Richard stood me up with a forearm, then put a spin move on me," she said in a telephone conversation from her room at Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she is recovering from blunt trauma to the head. "I saw stars, which to me was like the American flag--all gaudy and proud and obnoxious."
In the heartland, Colts' pass rusher Dwight Freeney is on retainer with the Indianapolis Civic Ballet as a consultant, causing some of the male dancers in the company to fear for their jobs. "He is so strong," said Ian Lemling, who has a degree in dance from Skidmore College and performed at Jacob's Pillow in the Berkshires last summer. "With the NFL's strict rules on blockers' use of their hands, he's going to blow by me every time."
Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer. He is the author of "The Year of the Gerbil: How the Yankees Won (and the Red Sox Lost) the Greatest Pennant Race Ever," a history of the 1978 AL East pennant race, and a number of plays, including "Number One Hockey Mom," "Please, Pope," and "What Mickey Belle Isle Told You," a trilogy about hockey (JAC Publishing). His work is available on Amazon Shorts (at 49 cents a dowload), and he writes on sports for Flak Magazine.
