Friday, July 30, 2010

There's Something About Bob

There is a man, I will call him Bob, he is a star football player in the NFL. Super Bowl winning quarterback. Every American guy’s dream right? Grabs the headlines every week. Plays at a high level in the extremely competitive world of professional football. Takes hit after hit weekly from 300 lb. defensive ends and bounces right back up to throw a 50 yard touchdown pass on the very next play. A real star and the envy of every high school and college football player in the nation and every couch-potato, internet sports-site trolling wannabe who never realized his dreams of athletic stardom. He epitomizes what they had hoped to be.

Lately Bob has hit some rough patches. Turns out that he apparently thinks that his status of Super Bowl winning quarterback brings with it certain entitlements not available to the average person on the street, you and me for example.

He likes to party, he likes to spend money, he likes the attention from the young ladies who like professional athletes. Of course he does, he’s a young guy, 28 years old, at the height of his athletic ability, at the height of his stardom, everybody wants to be with him and get a chance to share in his good fortune.

He likes to party, he likes to spend money, he likes the attention from the young ladies and, as it turns out (allegedly I would specify) he likes to sexually assault the young ladies. Being a football star comes with its entitlements does it not?

Well the newspapers can only report on the alleged ‘facts’ of the assaults and they're running out of new material and facts are still under investigation, nothing has yet been proven and it's time that the story expanded a little.  Gotta fill up the empty space on the page, gotta keep the advertisers coming and spending their money.  So eventually the sportswriters they turn to something else, a new angle on the story. So they turn to his college and high school and boyhood friends. “Tell me what Bob was like ten, fifteen, twenty years ago” they say. “Well… Bob was a really athletically gifted person and exceptionally driven to succeed.”. We find out that Bob was always in the weight room, first one in and the last one leave. Bob tirelessly and relentlessly worked on his football skills. A real committed guy, even at such a young age. It was all about making the NFL for Bob and he deserves his success. Nobody has worked harder than Bob to get where he is today.

Driven, single-minded, strong-willed, focused. That’s Bob.

We find out a little about Bob’s family. Parents divorced and Dad remarried - nothing new there.  Half the kids in the country have divorced parents. Nice home in a regular community. Money wasn’t abundant but it wasn’t scarce either. Basically Bob grew up with all the creature comforts a small-town boy could want or need.  We find out that Bob’s mother was killed in a car accident when he was just eight years old. She was on her way to see him.

There's something about Bob that nobody can quite put their finger on.  He was such a great kid, so much talent, such a nice guy, generous.  What the hell is going on with Bob these days?  We just don't get it, why this is all happening.

I wonder if it's possible that maybe Bob doesn't bounce back quite so easily from every hit he's ever taken.

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