The New Yorker on 'The Unbeautiful Game'

Fenian - you nailed it. There is a dirth of raffish players in today's game. If I were the king I would send my servants out to find me a raffish QB to lead my team. I'll take the Snake any day over say Kurt Warner.

When you think about it many of the great Superbowl teams had a raffish quality. Paul Hornung, Max Mcgee, Joe Namath , Larry Csonka , Jim Kkick, Jake Scott, Billy Kilmer, Kenny Stabler, John Riggins, Jim Mcmahon,

 

The NFL killed its last free spirit when it standardized on sideline headsets. Oh, how I miss those Telex models with the coach's name taped on.

 

I don't think this piece worked as well as it might, for a number of reasons. That said,

Mr. Gopnik is a fine writer. He's also fifty years old, so the idea that Joe Namath meant something special to him in 1968, when Gopnik was 12, is completely plausible. And it certainly dovetails with his use of the word "adolescence."

I'm not trying to nitpick FotF here, for whom I have great respect, but it's kind of surprising to suggest that at our age we can't write back about our teenage sports heroes. Even if only tangentially in a piece about something else.

And for Boom - it's Gopnik's job to write well enough to make you think he was there. (And it's not like Shea ever had a policy prohibiting children, so why couldn't he have been there?)

To render things well enough that they seem real is our job description, Boom. That you somehow find this reason to think the emperor has no clothes, or that you've been bamboozled, is sort of heartbreaking.

 

Well I took MR FOTF at fact value. He has proved to be a reliable source in the past. He seemed to know Mr Gobnick and I had no reason to doubt his conjecture.

If Mr Gopnick is indeed 50 than clearly he could have remembered all he did about the Jets from age 12.

 

Yes, but the best (worst?) of the Hornung-McGee exploits didn't make print until well after their careers were over.

 

gosh, i guess the nfl is in deep trouble. what a bunch of romanticized bull.

 

There are still plenty of raffish guys, they just don't all happen to be white.

 

Yeah, I'm curious about why Namath was "colorful" but Chad Johnson is a menace.

 

Boy why am I not surprised that came up.

Are you sure you did not mean Rasta guys .

Funny but I would not discribe the Black players of the 60's and 70's NFL as "raffish". I think of many of them as classy , elegant and dignified. Guys such as Willie Davis, Rayfield Wright , Alan Page, Joe Greene, Gayle Sayers, Otis Taylor,

 

Where was it written that Chad Johnson was a menace?

One difference between Namath and say TO was that Namath seemed to be more about the team and TO more about himself.

 

Dear Smasher: Hornung's appeal to women was well-documented, if in a sanitized-for-TV version, during his career. He also served a one-year suspension for gambling, which would've been kind of hard to cover up.

 

Jack Tatum and George Atkinson were a little raffish, don't ya think?