3 Dorks in the NFL
This newsletter has repeatedly emphasized that sports are theatre. They’re dramas like anything else you’ll find on TV. And all good TV has interesting characters at their center that the audience sympathizes with and wants to see succeed.
The reputation of the NFL is that the players are all meathead trogladytes who don’t know how to spell “trogladyte,” “meat,” or “head,” but the league also has its fair share of giant dorks.
To be specific, a dork is a person with specific entertainment interests: sci-fi, fantasy, video games, whatever weird animated thing Japan is cooking up.
Some specific examples come to mind:
Jamaal Williams
Jamaal Williams is a journeyman running back who was not an especially notable figure until he recorded one of “state your name and what college you went to” clips for NBC and introduced himself, with a degree of self-seriousness that is also deeply self-aware, as “leader of the hidden village of the dead.” I can’t leave it at that. You have to watch the clip here. It’s incredible. Who wouldn’t run through a wall for this guy?
This clip, and the headband he’s wearing in the clip, is a Naruto reference. Naruto is a Japanese animated television series from the mid-to-late 2000s about a guy who goes to ninja school and does ninja related things or something. I don’t know. I never watched show. But Jamaal Williams sure has. He wears the headband in virtually every media appearance, including this one where he corrects a report that Pokemon is not pronounced “Poke-e-man.”
Williams is a self-described “nerd” for Japanese animated media. The Japanese have a word for this type of person: “Otaku.” It’s not a compliment.
In a long interview with The Athletic that covered everything from his football career to his interest in video games, he explained his Naruto interest:
I’ve been watching “Naruto” since I was little. And Naruto, right now is on to his son named Boruto. So, we went from Naruto all the way up to when he’s a grown man, he’s married, he’s got kids — this is years by. We’re just now starting his son’s story. It’s crazy. I just love it. It’s a great way of keeping me loose, happy. I like being a nerd for anime. It gives me a good motivation to keep pushing, keep fighting for what I believe in, and keep upgrading. You can never stop upgrading. Shoot, Goku been upgrading since I was a kid, since I was in the womb.
For me, it baffles me. People got so much creativity in their minds that they can make, whatever, a thousand episodes for one show. I like things like that. And I like being a ninja. It’s fun.
It’s hard to argue with him when he puts it like that. He also hard to argue with because he’s six feet tall, 230 pounds, and runs into grown men for a living.
Chris Kluwe
The Minnesota Vikings signed Kluwe as their punter in 2005. He would hold the roster spot until May 2013 when, to use Kluwe’s own words, he “was fired by two cowards and a bigot” over his support of the then novel concept of same sex marriage.
During his career in the NFL, he punted for an incredible net 23,210 yards, called Peyton Manning a douchebag, and rocked a rockstar’s hairdo. All this led SB Nation to dub him “the coolest punter.”
Counterpoint: Kluwe is an avid World of Warcraft guy. He plays as a troll named Loate. Here is a clip of him telling Conan O’Brian about raiding dungeons. He also has a character named after him in XCOM: Enemy Within because he beat one of the game’s designer in a best-of-three series at the game.
Kluwe is also the bassist in a progressive metal band. If you don’t know what progressive metal is, it combines the complexity of progressive rock with the inaccessibility of heavy metal, leading audiences across the world to ask, “who is this for, exactly?” and very intense people with long hair and engineering degrees to scream: “ME.”
The band is called Tripping Icarus, which is a Greek mythology reference. Greek mythology references do not help you beat allegation of dorkdom.
But that’s not enough incriminating evidence for you, here’s the dagger: He wrote a science fiction book. It’s called Otaku.
The dorkdom prosecution rests.
Andrew Luck
But not before talking about the biggest dork of them all.
Andrew Luck is a Stanford graduate and a former number one overall pick in the NFL Draft. He succeeded Peyton Manning as quarterback for the Indianapolis Colts.
Or, as Chris Kluwe would put it, he succeeded a douchebag as quarterback for the Indianapolis Colts.
Luck retired in 2019, under 30 and very much in his prime, after suffering several severe, but not career ending, injuries. You don’t need a Stanford degree to understand why. There are only so many millions of dollars you need to collect before you start asking if the lacerated kidneys are worth it.
Like all quarterbacks, Luck would call out audibles before snapping the ball. Some of these code words tell the other players he wants them to run a different play than what was called in the huddle. In other instances, they’re nonsense. Total bullshit. Just something to psyche out the defense. The douchebag would often call out “Omaha.” Andrew Luck would call out Lord of the Ring references. I could’ve sworn I heard him shout “Tolstoy” once, but can’t find the clip to confirm.
Luck was known in the locker room for being a voracious reader. Anthony Castonzo, an offensive tackle for the Colts, explained during a radio appearance: “so he was an architect major at Stanford, and [one day] he was reading a book about the history of concrete.”
The radio host asked Castonzo if Andrew Luck was a “huge dork.”
Castonzo answered good-naturedly. “I can't talk about my quarterback like that. He's a different guy, and he's got a lot of different interests. But I can't call my quarterback a dork.”
Which I find funny. I have a hard time seeing how being a dork is a bad thing. It’s a set of personal media preferences and an unintentional set of social affectations. Perhaps you do not vibe with a dork, but a person’s position on the moral hierarchy—if such a thing exists—is not determined by whether or not they prefer to play World of Warcraft, follow sports, or pretend to read Shakespeare, or by how intensely they do any of the above.
No, your position on the moral hierarchy is based on whether or not you subscribe to this newsletter.