But as I was sketching out the sort of geek-aesthete I wanted to be, I could not also be seen canoodling with the enemy.Īnd frankly, the sports culture of the late ’90s and early 2000s was wildly different than the version we have today. There is no one more image-conscious than a 16-year old kid - to the point that they might believe that an afternoon trip to the ballpark might shatter their entirely counterfeit persona. In my corner, the ritual of watching 12 hours of football on Sunday was eminently uncool - so I buried the habit in the same way other kids might stow away a bottle of Tennessee Honey. My love affair with the local Padres, and the dearly departed Chargers, was something I practically kept hidden from the rest of my friends. I grew up in San Diego and spent most of my high school years tending to my burgeoning, and now professional, obsessions with indie rock, video games and the sort of gonzo, Palahniuk-ish cinema I could find on Limewire. I’ve never felt more connected to them in my life. Yes, after decades of terse jock slogans and performative masculinity, the four major American sports are beginning to resemble America itself staffed by a bunch of dudes who tend to their various nerdy proclivities as soon as they clock out from work. Here he is skulking around the map in PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. It didn’t seem to work.) And let’s not forget Lando Norris, who lives the extremely charmed life of an F1 driver for McLaren, but streams on Twitch all the time. A couple years ago, the Philadelphia Phillies were so addicted to Fortnite that ex-slugger Carlos Santana took it upon himself to smash up a clubhouse TV to refocus the squad on the basepaths. They pair nicely with his Twitter banner, which is draped with Super Saiyan fanart. (He apparently has a massive Zelda collection back home.) De’Aaron Fox, the emerging point guard for the Sacramento Kings, routinely shows off his Dragon Ball Z-inspired Nikes. The Legend of Zelda treasure chest chime plays in the Cleveland Cavaliers arena whenever Jarrett Allen, the team’s all-star center, swishes a free throw. Young athletes across the globe are geeking out with wondrous, unfettered abandon. Williams is really just the tip of the iceberg. They referred to Nintendo’s global, multi-billion dollar media franchise - the single most profitable brand in pop culture - with a classic boomer malapropism: “Poke-Man.” One of them committed a cardinal dialectical sin as they formulated a follow-up question. It immediately became the most memorable post-game interview of the season, and it thoroughly perplexed the gaggle of journalists. “I just want to play football and go home and play Pokemon,” said Williams, dressed in a puffy windbreaker patched with characters from the long-running anime serial, Naruto. (Trust me, as someone who picked him up off the scrap heap before the season, I would know.) So, when reporters caught up with Williams before the team’s Wild Card-implicating showdown against the hated Green Bay Packers looking to mine a few threatening, gladiatorial sound bites, I expected the usual football pablum about the “heart” of “this group” as they “play together” and take it “one game at a time.” Instead, Williams subverted all of those notions and told us the god-honest truth about what he was really focused on outside the lines. The running back scored a mind-boggling 17 touchdowns throughout the 2022 campaign, which made him an apex performer in fantasy leagues all around the country. Jamaal Williams is perhaps the most important reason the Detroit Lions just had franchise’s best season in recent years.
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