Wilbon: NFL, Can You Hear Me Now?

[bubba9497]

NFL, Can You Hear Me Now?

By Michael Wilbon

Wednesday, December 17, 2003; Page D01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6344-2003Dec16.html

In the absence of great games Sunday, at least the NFL gave us theater of the absurd, and as a result, everybody seems to be in trouble -- and those who aren't ought to be.

You wouldn't think Joe Horn and his cell phone could be knocked to the number two spot in Sunday Stupidity, but that's indeed the case, thanks to Matt Millen.

Players say the vilest things to one another on the field, on the sidelines, in locker rooms. They say unprintable stuff to teammates and opponents hundreds of times every week and nobody thinks much about it. They say egregiously offensive stuff, like the Giants' Mike Barrow equating the humiliation of losing badly to the Saints with being raped.

But Matt Millen isn't a player anymore, he's president of the Detroit Lions. The president of a company, not to mention one of the highest-profile companies in Michigan, cannot within earshot of others twice call a player a "faggot," which Millen did Sunday to the Chiefs' Johnnie Morton.

Millen has to know better; he knew enough to quickly apologize Monday. He has been retired a dozen years now. I've known him for 15 years to be smart, circumspect and aware of public perception, dating from when he was a great player on great teams. But he's not a player anymore, he's a club executive representing not only the Lions but the NFL. He's the guy in charge of day-to-day football matters of a club that has been terrible since he arrived on the scene. Millen was already on thin ice because the Lions are 9-37 on his watch and on Sunday will almost certainly set a league record for consecutive road losses. That alone makes it defensible to fire him.

On top of that, it was Millen and the Lions who were called out by the NFL and fined $200,000 for failing to comply with the league's diversity guidelines when they hired Coach Steve Mariucci.

And it was Millen who last year publicly called a player, "a devout coward," which I think is a great phrase but cannot be uttered publicly without some backlash.

You add this up, and it becomes almost logical to fire him. Today in Detroit, folks are calling for Millen's head, and don't be surprised if he's back in a TV booth sooner rather than later.

Once there, he, too, can weigh in on Joe Horn and cell phones and Sharpies and celebrations of all kinds that either you hate or you love based on, I think, age.

Horn was fined last night -- $30,000 to be exact, double the $15,000 he suggested would be a fitting amount for planting a cell phone in the goal post padding so that he could whip it out after scoring and make a spectacle of himself. His teammate, Michael Lewis, was slapped with a $5,000 fine for aiding and abetting.

Perhaps Horn's fine was twice his suggestion because he also happens to have amassed seven unsportsmanlike penalties since 2000. The 15-yard penalty didn't matter because the Giants didn't come close to beating the Saints, and 15-yard penalties never seem to matter to Horn anyway. (My favorite line of the week is that if the NFL wants to fine somebody, it should fine all the New York Giants because they really phoned it in!)

My first, second, third and fourth thoughts were that Horn was incredibly egomaniacal, that he had no regard for team, that all he was doing was looking for a Nextel or Nokia deal. The Saints call Horn (probably at his insistence) "Hollywood." This is the same guy, let's not forget, who while standing by himself one week earlier dropped a touchdown pass that probably cost the Saints a home victory against Tampa Bay and a wild-card spot in the playoffs.

Even so, I'm not going as ridiculously far as a geezer like Kornheiser who listens to the Everly Brothers and Bobby Darin, hates anything not grounded in 1960s sensibilities, and predictably wants Horn suspended for a game.

(I'm more offended, actually, by T.J. Duckett, with his Falcons down 31-0, doing some stupid celebratory dance in the end zone. At least Horn's team was winning; Duckett's team was getting whipped. I would make Duckett "inactive" for the last two weeks if I coached or ran that team.)

Horn says the league needs more entertainment. I'd argue the action on the field is entertainment enough and that what Horn did was simply bush league. But as I write these words, I'm with my two colleagues, both right at 30, who think Kornheiser and I are so far removed from "new school" pop culture that we're sickening, and that what Horn did was somewhere between not a big deal and very, very clever. Personally, I think what Horn did was like ripping off Terrell Owens's twisted but incredibly clever Sharpie-from-the-sock autograph routine.

This does raise a much larger issue, which is the struggle between the NFL and its players for marketing recognition. It's something Warren Sapp gave voice to weeks ago when he said the NFL still wanted to lord over the players like slave masters. Sapp wasn't talking about race; he was talking about control and, of course, dollars.

Unlike Horn, Sapp articulates his point well. And the point is that the NFL's marketing emphasis is on the brand, not the players, which is just the opposite of the NBA, whose players are celebrated and as a direct result make tens of millions of dollars. The NBA's popularity rises and falls cyclically with the presence or absence of superstars.

There's no doubt the NFL keeps salaries under control, in large part, by marketing the team instead of the individuals. It's a brilliantly successful strategy -- for the NFL. This is absolutely how the NFL can get away with staging replacement games, literally taking guys off the streets and putting them in NFL uniforms -- and drawing big crowds in many cities. The players, Sapp argues, just fill out the uniforms. They have to keep their helmets on at all times, wear their uniforms a certain way, have to curtail their celebrations, all by league rule.

So now, we're seeing more than a few NFL renegades coming up with routines that take a lot more thought than Ickey Woods's shuffle or Butch Johnson's "California Quake."

They're openly defying the NFL edict that players should be seen but not heard. The situation was carried to the absurd with the $10,000 fine given to the Bengals' Chad Johnson. His misdeed? Celebrating a touchdown by pulling from a snow bank a sign that read: "Dear NFL: Please Don't Fine Me Again."

Chances are we're going to see more of this -- the deeds and the fines. Two Sundays from now, we could see a player snatch a drumstick from his uniform and start eating it as he runs into the end zone. Surely, his agent will be on the telephone with Popeyes and KFC, trumpeting "product placement" and trying to strike a deal by halftime.

[The Slammer]

Om, Wilbon jacked your "Can you hear me now?" joke!