Death and the NFL Draft and Social Justice and…
Listen:
My mother texts me from my dead father’s phone on the third day of the National Football league draft. She promises she only texts me from his phone as if that will placate the sheer terror that overwhelms me every time his name pops up on my lock screen.
He’s been dead less than two months.
Too soon, mother. Too soon.
Sentences you’d never thought you’d write.
My father was a huge fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers (a franchise within the NFL). The mantle above his fireplace littered and lined with memorabilia ranging from photographs to unopened beers from the ’70s with player’s likenesses sketched into the cans.
Listen:
The National Football League, like all professional sports leagues in the United States, makes billions of dollars annually through television deals, selling overpriced beer and hotdogs to fans, and demanding home cities pay for new arenas that the team owners can’t afford because of the billions and billions of dollars they are attempting to hoard so they can claim a good return on investment.
A bastion of capitalism.
The National Football league, like all professional sports leagues in the United States, has created a socialist system of drafting college – and sometimes high school – athletes to professional teams by removing their autonomy to chose where they play and, instead, forcing them into contracts with organizations that own their rights.
The free market and whatnot, right?
Listen:
My old therapist texts me to let me know that she’s doing zoom calls during the national pandemic. She hasn’t spoken to me in months. It feels like a cash grab.
Who am I to blame the hands?
After telling me how she can make money, she asks me how I’ve been, and it feels like that’s the question she should’ve led with – probably.
After all, the free market and capitalism, right?
I tell her I’ve been reading about tumblers and locks. Every key has a distinct cut, which has to match up with the tumblers inside the guts of the lock to get anything to lock (or unlock, depending on your perspective). Most people don’t know that you can have a lock “rekeyed,” which means to change the tumblers (or guts) of the lock to match an old or new key.
Let yourself cry, she says.
Listen:
There are thirty-two teams and seven rounds of picks in the NFL draft. There are so many picks and teams and players that the last player selected in the draft is lucky enough to receive the nickname “Mr. Irrelevant.” It even appears on Wikipedia under career accomplishments.
Wonderful to be irrelevant, right?
After every pick, I reach through the tumblers and think about what I’d text to my father. The commentary doesn’t feel as engaging when you’re sending the thoughts into nothingness. More than anything, I keep wanting to tell him that I think these people should be free.
But we’re not.
Mathew Serback is an oven-cooked bacon wizard. At any wave of his wand, electric ovens across the country may open their heavy doors and whisper, 'Yes, daddy?' But Mathew doesn't like to be called daddy. He is believed to be the cause of all grease fires since 1987.