| As we’ve learned in the sports media
business, there is no real offseason in professional football. Especially at a football
magazine such as ours. The draft may finally be over and training camps don’t begin
for another two months, but that doesn’t mean we’re sitting around with our feet
up on our desks or calling for a two o’clock tee time. The month of May means
it’s time to work on Pro Football Weekly’s two big annual publications —
the season preview magazine and the fantasy preview.
And in doing so, I had a moment of deep thought last week on what it’s like to
work in the NFL. I know what some of you are thinking: Sportswriters don’t have the
ability for deep thought. But that’s where you’re wrong. In fact, I would dare
to say this moment of deep thought bordered on something more than that, like reflection
or introspection, or one of those other words ending in "ion."
We were busy updating teams’ rosters from last year’s preview magazine, and
as any fan might expect, there was a fair amount of turnover. So there I was, moving the
mouse to highlight a player’s name, number, height, weight, position, experience in
the league and college. Once I was sure a player from last year’s pre-training camp
roster was no longer on board, the mouse moved quickly across my desk and a slap of the
delete button followed.
Just like that, we were toying with the lives of these players. Actually, it was the
organizations that took back their jerseys that were playing God, not us. But I
couldn’t help but feel a little strange as I wiped the roster of their existence. You
may think I’m overanalyzing the situation here, but to come to the conclusion that
hitting a button on my computer meant that Joe Shmo no longer had a space to hang his
cleats with the Bengals, Broncos or Cowboys, it’s a little profound.
Highlighting that name and hitting "delete" took mere seconds. Mere seconds
to symbolize hearing the troubling news that you’re not worth the veteran minimum
when a faster rookie can do it for less or that your dream is over quicker than you had
imagined.
It almost felt as though we were playing with people’s lives. Yanking one rookie
free agent off a roster and replacing him with a journeyman of seven years. Pulling one
aging veteran who has been through more wars than Douglas MacArthur for a young talent
still wet behind the ears. Updating a roster makes you think about those players who seek
stability but are never guaranteed it, and it felt odd.
I’ve heard stories of nurses wiping a patient board clean of a name after someone
passes away in a hospital, and to a lesser extent, it felt eerily similar. The players had
not died, but there now was a space available for someone else to prolong his NFL life.
Departed players may or may not be picked up elsewhere, but the fact remains that their
lives have been dramatically altered at some point over the last year. Changed forever.
With America’s economy in a bit of a lull, we hear more and more of companies
slashing jobs by the thousands. Yet when we learn of NFL players getting released on a
daily basis, most of us think nothing of what it really means for them. We at PFW do,
because it changes the framework of the team, but it hardly shakes up your day because
it’s considered part of the business. We also rarely feel sorry for NFLers because
they are more famous and wealthy than the majority of us who watch them perform. But as I
yanked player after player from various rosters and replaced them with new potential
victims, I pondered the waves of emotion that must be felt when it comes to a general
manager hitting the delete button in real life. We’re doing it to better inform the
reader. They’re doing it to better prepare the team for success, or at least they
hope so.
I must admit I felt as if I were playing with the lives of these people. They want
security in the insecure world of professional football, and I was ripping it away from
them by way of a keyboard. It was deep, and my head was swirling with concern over whether
or not some of these deleted players would land on their feet either in the NFL or the
real world.
But then someone in the office mentioned lunch plans, and my moment of reflection
surrounding the true impact of the delete button quickly took a backseat to the sunshine
and Taco Bell. |
