God Save the FAN How Preening Sportscasters, Athletes Who Speak in the Third Person, and the Occasional Convicted Quarterback Have Taken the Fun Out of Sports (and How We Can Get It Back) Will Leitch With Illustrations by Jim Cooke For the three people who turned me on to sports: Bryan Leitch, Mary Dooley, and Willie McGee CONTENTS Introduction 1 Part I: Players Please, God, No, Not Another Essay About Steroids 11 Why Gilbert Arenas Matters More Than LeBron James 19 You’re More Interesting Than an Athlete. Really! 25 Ben Roethlisberger Drinks Like a Champion 31 You Know How I Know You’re Not Gay? You’re an Athlete 37 The Ballad of Lucious Pusey 47 My Unhealthy Man Crush on Rick Ankiel 49 The Sad Saga of the Retired Athlete 55 A Few Moments with John Rocker 63 Glossary 75 Part II: Owners An Asshole in a Suit Is Worth Two Wearing Pads 87 Coors Light Thinks You’re a Monster 93 It’s American to Root Against the U.S.A. 97 Why the NFL Gets Away with Everything 105 Peter Angelos Kills Kittens and Is Trying to Sleep with Your Mother 109 Take Out the Second Mortgage: We’re Off to Yankee Stadium! 113 Appendix: The Five Worst Owners in Sports 119 Carl Monday Is Watching You Masturbate 123 Glossary 127 Part III: Media Just Because Someone Always Has Penises in His Face Doesn’t Mean You Should Want His Job 135 CONTENTS iv You’re with Me, Leather 145 Ten Examples of How ESPN Is Ruining Sports 149 The ESPN Clockwork Orange Experiment 163 Beware Those Who Come Bearing the Tag “Experts” 183 Dispatch from A. J. Daulerio: The Super Bowl Is Decadent and Depraved 191 You Can’t Fight Terrorism with a Spread Offensive Set, and You Probably Shouldn’t Even Try 197 Peter King Wants You to See Pictures of His Drunken Daughter 203 Ten Most Loathsome ESPN Personalities and Their Worst Moments 207 Five People Who Offended the Almighty ESPN and Paid the Price 209 Glossary 211 Part IV: Fans Willie McGee: My Sister’s First Black Man 227 Why I Cheer for the Buzzsaw That Is the Arizona Cardinals 233 Buy a Jersey of Your Favorite Robotic Stat Producer 239 What Athletes Are Talking About When They’re Talking About God 247 Fantanking Is Bad for the Heart 251 Rules for Fans: How Not to Be a Jerk at a Baseball Game 255 Why a Crappy Flatiron Yuppie Bar Is Now the Closest Thing I Have to a Home 259 Barbaro: The Horse That Cured Cancer 269 Glossary 273 Conclusion: There Is Hope for You Yet 287 Acknowledgments 293 About the Author Credits Cover Copyright About the Publisher INTRODUCTION In which your intrepid narrator attempts to use Michael Vick as a metaphor for a new age of sports journalism while spending only fifty words on that whole dogfighting business. Includes the phrase “Feed the donkey.” In April 2005, The Smoking Gun—the investigative jour- nalism Web site devoted to uncovering public documents that get lost in our nation’s labyrinthine legal system—posted a com- plaint from a woman named Sonya Elliot. A twenty-six-year- old health care worker with difficulties keeping her own health care in order, Elliot had sued a man for giving her herpes sim- plex 2. (That’s the herpes that, according to our friends at Wiki- pedia, is characterized by lesions “on the shaft of the penis, in the genital region, on the inner thigh, buttocks, or anus.” So you know.) She confronted the man at his Georgia home, tell- ing him, “I’ve got something to tell you. I’ve got it.” The man, as any man in his position might have done, lay before her and begged for forgiveness. Elliot claimed “[the man] had not known how to tell her about his condition, and that it was not something that he liked to talk about.” (Understand- able.) The man, worried about his standing in the public eye, asked her not to reveal his condition but made no offer to make 2 GOD SAVE THE FAN amends, financially or otherwise. She researched the matter and learned that, to protect himself, he had undergone herpes “test- ing and treatment” under a fake name. His choice of moniker: “Ron Mexico.” This is one of those pseudonyms that is funny for an abundance of reasons, almost all of which are impossible to quantify. (Though it does conjure up images of sombreros, wispy mustaches, and, perhaps, a burro.) Had this man taken care of the woman to whom he had given herpes from the be- ginning, she would have never filed a lawsuit—and the name “Ron Mexico” would have never reached the public conscious- ness. And that, friends, would be a tragedy. As just about everybody now knows, “Ron Mexico” is At- lanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick. In 2008, Vick is known as the perpetually embattled former phenom who flips his home fans the (nonfoam) middle finger, carries marijuana onto air- planes, and enjoys watching dogs kill each other. We could talk for hours about Vick’s dogfighting convic- tion, and what it meant in a cultural sense, but I’m going to claim the Nancy Grace Sports Rule on this one: The minute a sports story becomes fodder for cable talk shows—see La- crosse, Duke and Bonds, Barry—it transforms into something that’s not the slightest bit of fun for real sports fans to talk about. We’re gonna focus on the pre-dogfighting Vick, the one who once seemed like the most exciting football player we’d ever seen, even though he was electrocuting puppies at the time. Actually, now he’s pretty much just known for killing the dogs himself. Which is the type of “do it yourself” attitude we admire in our athletes. But in 2005, Vick was the face of the NFL, the most marketable athlete in the U.S.A.’s most market- able sport. He was young, charismatic, and blessed with ex- traordinary talent. He was a primary endorser of Nike and Gatorade. A commercial at the time featured Michael Vick: The Ride, in which a fan, at an amusement park, straps into a seat and is rocketed across a football field as if he is Vick. He darts to