Jeremy Bloom Can't Lose

He has the kind of fame usually reserved for beautiful heiresses caught in flagrante delicto or for young men in second-rate boy bands who marry pop goddesses and feel greatly conflicted about it. Still, he refers to himself as a brand, as in "Being a brand benefits me and my sponsors." He has two agents, who see him as a brand as well, although two different brands, as if they too are conflicted or at cross-purposes. He also has a publicist.

Identifying his brand is difficult, as Jeremy Bloom, 23, is many things to many people. To CosmoGirl he is eye candy, and he's been called the It boy of 2005 and, according to a British journalist, a dish. He is five-nine and 175 pounds, with the physique of a male model and the bland, nonthreatening good looks that appeal to both teenage girls and older women. His mother says he is a sex symbol. "Older women ooh and aah over his abs," she says. "I tell them they should be ashamed of themselves. They're old enough to be his grandmother." His attractiveness to women, however, doesn't prevent him from continually asking his mother questions about his girlfriend. "He doesn't understand her," she says. He has been called a metrosexual who fusses over his looks, studiously musses his hair and maybe even shaves his chest. That annoys him. "Aw, come on," he says. "That's ridiculous."

But his good looks are an important part of his brand. They have brought him endorsements for Under Armour and shirtless photo shoots for the Abercrombie & Fitch catalog. (Bloom's absare legendary, seemingly divorced from their possessor and with a fame of their own, requiring their own talent agent.) He has also been the subject of photo shoots for Vanity Fair and GQ, during which he posed with a topless female model in a hot tub. "It was a blast," he says. "She was a stand-in for my girlfriend. People pay me an obscene amount of money to pose with beautiful women. I take advantage of open doors."

Considered friendly and ambitious, Bloom has taken advantage of his studied amiability, which has garnered him red-carpet gigs for MTV, hosting duties on the network's Beach House and possibly his current girlfriend, an MTV star from The Real World: San Diego. He has appeared on Best Damn Sports Show Period, with Tom Arnold, who jumped up and down on a trampoline with him, and on McEnroe, where the first question put to him was "Is it hard to get laid?" He was also a competitor on the 2003 SuperStars, which he won. In the 100-yard sprint--which he ran bare-chested, since our dish seems constitutionally unable to keep his shirt on--he beat NFL running backs Ahman Green and Charlie Garner. IMG, a sports agency that doesn't even represent him, invited him to participate on SuperStars not merely because he is handsome and personable but because he once played football at the University of Colorado and, more important, is considered a world-class skier and America's brightest hope for gold at the 2006 Olympics in Turin. In the sports world, he's regarded as one of the most marketable skiers on the planet.

Which is why, according to his mother, being called a male model "bothers him."

"People think they know you, and they don't," says Bloom. "I don't want to be known as a male model or a pop idol. I consider myself a serious athlete." Nonetheless, for $8.99 on his website, he sells posters of himself wearing a backward baseball cap, camouflage pants and nothing else. He is turned slightly to his left to better accent his chiseled abs and obliques. "I do a lot of ab work for my sports," he says.

Bloom has a lot in common with Hubbell, the character Robert Redford plays in The Way We Were. Blessed with golden good looks, Hubbell is a talented athlete and writer whose accomplishments seem so effortless that some disparage them and, more important, him. In one of his short stories, Hubbell writes of himself, "Things came easily to him, but at least he knew it."

"Are you saying things came easy to me?" Bloom snaps. "I got things by a lot of hard work." Yet many people work hard and aren't blessed with his success. "I don't take it for granted," he says. "And I don't indulge myself in the exterior world of how cool I am in a celebrity culture. I'm a competitive person. I used to want to conquer the world and be in every magazine." That's a strange comment for an athlete: Athletes want to win every game; celebrities want to be in every magazine.

"My mother taught me I could be anything," Bloom says. "I never realized I couldn't be everything. I think I can." Bloom does not see the subtle difference between being anything and being everything, because he has the arrogance of youth. He sees life as an endless succession of fulfilled desires; for Bloom, life will always be more, never less. He can't imagine life could be a series of dreams destined to go unfulfilled. Which is why, in February, after the Olympic Games are over, he plans to attend the NFL scouting combine, a prelude to the draft, where he is sure he will be picked even though he hasn't played football in two years and is considered too small. "I've heard small all my life," he says. "I was always the smallest. It fuels my fire. It motivates me to work harder to stay on top."

Jeremy Bloom, his older brother, Jordan, and his sister, Molly, grew up in Loveland, Colorado, north of Denver. Their father, Larry, was a clinical psychologist, and their mother, Char, was a housewife and skiing and snowboarding instructor. They were a kind of Leave It to Beaver family transported to the Rockies. They spent all their free time outdoors, skiing, snowboarding, water-skiing, hiking, mountain biking or tossing a football. "We'd throw a football around outside until it was dark," says Bloom, "then we'd throw it in the house." (Char says it's a miracle they never broke a window.) "If it was snowing, we skied. We were the first ones on the lift. It was neurotic. No après-ski. My siblings were better than me, so I had to struggle to keep up. I loved to go fast."

It was an idyllic life centered around the outdoors, much like the life of surfer dudes in southern California, with a shirtless Jeremy skiing in shorts alongside girls in bikinis on sunny days after a snowfall. There are the requisite cute stories about wild animals: coyotes playing with dogs, foxes in the garden, deer in the backyard, mountain lions in the woods, hawks trying to capture a puppy, a brown bear in the driveway. As a boy, Bloom faced off against the bear. "Ma!" he screamed. "Ma! He's hungry!" Char called back, "Then stick out your arm, dear."

The Blooms never seemed to be at rest, and their youngest son was the most restless. "If he had nothing to do, he was lost," says Larry. "He made me throw him a thousand passes a day. Jeremy was born competitive." Char says, "Jeremy was always quiet and well mannered in school, but he was a little animal on the playground. He had to win. He was just gifted with determination.When he was four, he was studying to get his black belt in karate. One day he started to cry because he didn't want to stop playing with his friends to go to karate class. I told him, 'Then don't go.' He said, 'I have to.' It took him eight years to get his black belt. It was the same with football. He was always the smallest. I used to scream, 'Get that big bully off my son!'"

Bloom first began to excel in skiing at the age of three, and by the time he reached 15 he was a world-class junior skier. But this didn't keep him from managing to cram as many activities as possible into his young life. He skied in competitions, competed in karate, football and track, and still managed to make the honor roll in high school for four years. Bloom would leave a ski event in, say, Finland or Norway, return to Loveland and then catch four touchdown passes in his high school team's state playoff game. His secret, his father says, "was that nothing bothered him. He was serene. He had a quiet brain. He was at peace before he competed." Char says, "He told me when he competed that his world went quiet and he just did it. Who Jeremy is comes out on the ski slopes. He becomes a performer."

When Bloom was 15 his idyllic life of personal accomplishment was briefly shattered when his parents divorced, but he adjusted quickly. "He handled it amazingly well," says Char. "Jeremy sees the positive in everything." Char says her son even sees the positive in her present boyfriend, Tom, who refers to him as "the demon stepson."

"The divorce was best for all of us," says Bloom. "We're all very close." Still, when I call Larry Bloom to interview him about his son, he says, "I didn't know Jeremy was going to be in Playboy."

By the time Bloom graduated from high school he was confronted with a choice that (continued on page 124)Jeremy Bloom(continued from page 104) was particularly painful for him. He had to decide whether to concentrate on his skiing career or his football career. The thought that, for the first time, he couldn't do everything bothered him, but his choice was made easier because his skiing seemed to be stuck in a rut. He had always dreamed of skiing in the Olympics. When he was three he drew a picture of himself at the 2002 Olympic Games. "I did the math," he says. "I knew I'd be 19 then." But with the games approaching he was relegated to America's C team with little chance of ever making the World Cup squad. The head of the U.S. ski team didn't even know his name. "I just didn't understand it, why it wasn't happening," he says. "Some said it was because of football. So I quit skiing and accepted a football scholarship as a wide receiver and punt returner at the University of Colorado. It had always been my dream to play for the Buffaloes."

This was the beginning of a pattern of behavior for Bloom. In the next few years, whenever his prospects in one of his favorite sports dimmed, he would turn his attention to the other. This way he always avoided outright failure.

In summer 2001, before he enrolled at Colorado, Bloom received a call from the U.S. ski team, then training in Chile; if he did well, he would have a chance to make the World Cup team and compete in the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. Bloom flew to Chile. "I got out of my football mentality and focused on skiing," he says.

That trip was the turning point of his life. "I was never more motivated," he says. "I skied really well and made the World Cup team." Of course, this required him to ski in all the World Cup events leading up to the Olympics, which made it impossible for him to play football for the Buffaloes. When he returned to Colorado he was "scared to death" at the prospect of having to tell Gary Barnett, then Colorado's coach, that he was going to ski that winter. But Bloom was shocked at how understanding Barnett was. He told Bloom he had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and should take it. His scholarship would be waiting for him the following year. "He treated me like a son," says Bloom. "If he had told me I couldn't do both, I would have chosen football."

During winter 2001 and early in 2002 Bloom skied brilliantly. He won the World Cup Championship and along the way began to acquire lucrative ski-equipment endorsement contracts, which helped finance his training to the tune of $50,000 (but would become a major source of problems with the NCAA). When the Olympics rolled around, Bloom was considered the prohibitive favorite to win a gold medal in his specialty, freestyle moguls skiing.

Freestyle moguls owes its popularity to the kind of gonzo X Games skiing of young daredevils with surfer-dude hair and baggy clothes who get their kicks doing somersaults as they ski off mountains. There is a countercultural element to moguls and an aura of rebelliousness around its practitioners. In freestyle moguls, skiers fly over a series of kidney-jarring bumps at more than 35 miles an hour, down a 250-yard course punctuated by two ramps. As skiers launch off those ramps, they perform tricks, such as backward or forward flips. Although Bloom often falls after attempting these stunts--he once landed on his back, bruising his liver, kidneys and vertebrae; his father remembers seeing it and thinking, Paralysis or death--he finds the sport exhilarating. "There's a huge element of danger to moguls," Bloom says. "You're suspended in the air for three seconds, doing these crazy maneuvers. It's insane, but I love the feeling of invincibility and freedom."

In 1992 the IOC made freestyle moguls skiing an Olympic sport in a blatant effort to appeal to MTV fans, who found most Olympic events boring and stodgy. The rebellious freestyle skiers, it was hoped, would share a kindred spirit with these viewers. Bloom, however, is not really much of a rebel. He is more conventionally driven, cautious and success-oriented in a way X Gamers are not. X Gamers don't care much about falling or landing properly on their skis or snowboard. They compete for the thrill of the trick, the danger and outrageousness of what they do, not for the medals or endorsements that may follow.

Bloom is "the best natural talent in our sport," according to fellow moguls skier Travis Cabral. Bloom's coach, Scott Rawles, says, "He's confident, competitive and blessed." But the main reason he is the best moguls skier in the world is his showmanship. Like figure skating, moguls is a judged sport. Moguls skiers are evaluated on their turns over bumps (50 percent), their tricks (25 percent) and their speed down the slope (25 percent). Bloom, in Rawles's words, "adds flair to his tricks to give the judges what they want to see." But while Bloom admits he performs "a huge trick at the bottom to impress the judges," he gets annoyed at being called a showman, as if the label were unmanly. "I consider myself an athlete," he says. He claims that the judging for moguls is less arbitrary than that for figure skating. "The judges usually get it right," he says.

In Rawles's view, Bloom's versatility makes him unique. "I've never seen someone so proficient in radically different sports--football and skiing. Usually skiers have no interest in football." That may be, but skiers have more in common with wide receivers and punt returners then Rawles thinks. They need the same type of physique, strengthen the same muscle groups and must take the same attitude toward what they do.

Like moguls skiers, punt returners and wide receivers need lean, flexible, muscular bodies dominated by a solid core of abs and obliques that allows them to swivel left and right to elude tacklers just as skiers swivel over ski bumps. Both need strong legs, speed, quickness from a standing start and balance, the ability to land steadily on their feet whether coming down from a trick or from catching a pass. Bloom has amazing foot speed--he has clocked a 4.3 in the 40 yards and a 9.4 in the 100 yards--and an unbelievable burst from a standing start. His coaches say he can move as fast sideways and backward as he can forward. He also has excellent hand-eye coordination for pass catching and exceptional depth perception, which allows him to evaluate approaching bumps or would-be tacklers. His NFL agent, Gary Wichard, says Bloom has "a subconscious reaction to color," as if he sees more frames per second than the ordinary person----a perception so quick that just a glimpse of a tackler's uniform can translate immediately into an elusive sidestep.

Bloom says the major differences between his two sports have to do with preparation and competition: "Football training is redundant to motivate slow learners." Bloom is self-motivated and a fast learner. He says each sport satisfies a different need. "Skiing is about freedom, and football is about discipline and order. You can't win a football game by yourself no matter how well you play, and that's frustrating. In skiing, if I lose, it's because of me. I just do it better the next week. Skiing is about personal satisfaction-- and personal frustration."

Bloom finished ninth in the 2002 Olympics. Fellow skier Jonny Moseley said, "He blew it. That was his gold to win." Disappointed, Bloom decided to return to football and accepted the scholarship waiting for him at Colorado. But before he could play for the Buffaloes, the NCAA insisted he drop all his ski endorsements, claiming they were contrary to its rules about professionalism. Bloom argued with the NCAA to no avail, so he decided to let his endorsements drop. "I missed the thrill of the quarterback calling my play in a huddle," he says, "going over the middle, knowing I'd get hit with that adrenaline rush when the ball was coming toward me, leaping, trying to stay relaxed and catch it with soft hands, then hitting the ground and tightening up before getting hit by a tackier."

Bloom arrived at Colorado amid much fanfare touting him as a skier, a heartthrob and a big playmaker on the gridiron. "I had a lot of publicity," he says, "but I tried to fit in, not to take attention away from the seniors." Buffaloes quarterback Joel Klatt says, "This big-play guy comes in, and he's like five-two." But he was a handsome five-two: Girls climbed up his dormitory wall to peek in his window, and his teammates ribbed him about all his female attention.

But not for long. The first time Bloom touched a football in a game, he revealed an explosive talent. He caught a punt on his 25-yard line, then threaded his way through the tacklers, scooting left and right like a water bug eluding hungry frogs. When he got into the open field, he simply outran his defenders to the goal line. "Nothing will ever top the thrill of that," he says. His father remembers that moment. "Here comes my son on the punt return," he says. "I closed my eyes and saw a little boy in the backyard. It was the most thrilling moment of my life."

Another time, as a wide receiver, Bloom ran full speed down the field, outrunning the defensive backs chasing him, glanced up over his shoulder, caught a pass without breaking stride and took it to the end zone for a 96-yard touchdown reception, the longest pass for a touchdown in CU history.

Bloom was an anomaly. He displayed the kind of game-breaking speed associated with black NFL receivers such as the Washington Redskins' Santana Moss and the Carolina Panthers' Steve Smith, not white boys with names like Jeremy Bloom. If he ever made the NFL, that would be his brand: the Small White Hope, a little white-boy skier from the mountains of Colorado who could outrun black defenders from tiny towns in the Deep South. "He's a ferocious competitor," says Barnett. "At the time, Colorado had two receivers who would go on to the NFL. But opposing teams always double-teamed Jeremy because they were afraid he would beat them."

The Buffaloes finished with a 9-5 record that year, and in their Big 12 title game, which they lost to Oklahoma, Bloom returned another punt 80 yards for a touchdown. He took his exams and then flew to Finland to compete in a World Cup skiing event, where he finished fourth. He then flew back to Colorado to play in the Alamo Bowl.

After his first season Bloom was named to the Freshman All-America team and was considered one of the five best punt returners in college football. Big things were expected in his sophomore season, but that year was something of a disappointment for him. The Buffaloes finished with a 5-7 record, and Bloom did not fulfill the promise he showed as a freshman, although he was voted to the All-Big 12 team. He returned 24 punts that year for a total of 289 yards; the year before, just two of his returns accounted for 155 yards. Still, after two years at Colorado he had five touchdowns on plays of 75 yards or longer.

Nonetheless he turned his attention back to World Cup skiing and inexplicably signed endorsement contracts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars--a flagrant violation of NCAA rules. This was Bloom's second violation, which left the organization little choice but to ban him from intercollegiate sports forever. Why he did it, he won't say, other than that he needed money for his ski training. It's possible that he wanted a reason not to play football after his disappointing sophomore year and sought to shift that responsibility onto the NCAA. But maybe he thought he could have it all: World Cup skiing, the endorsements and girls that go with it, college football glory and, most important, the vindication that Jeremy Bloom could do whatever he put his mind to. Besides, a fight with the NCAA appealed to his combative nature. So he went to court to try to force the organization to let him have his endorsements and play football at the same time. "The NCAA was trying to take my dream," he says. "I was going to fight it to the bitter end."

As Bloom points out, Drew Henson had been paid a $2 million bonus to play minor league baseball for the New York Yankees after graduating from high school and was then allowed to play quarterback for the University of Michigan. He also argues that Tim Dwight was allowed to compete on the Iowa track team after accepting endorsements as a professional football player. The NCAA argues that its rules are simple: Athletes can be paid or win prize money in one sport and still compete on the college level in a different sport, but they can't sign endorsement contracts, period. Bloom and his lawyer tried to convince the NCAA that for all intents and purposes his ski endorsements were prize money and should be considered part of his salary, but the organization rejected that argument.

The battle dragged on through 2004, with Bloom losing appeal after appeal. At one point Bloom wanted to prove that much of his appearance and endorsement money came not from his fame as an athlete but because of his talent in front of a TV camera. He wanted to call as a witness a casting director who had given him a role on Nickelodeon. "But the casting director couldn't testify," asserts Bloom, "because Nickelodeon is owned by Viacom, which owns CBS, which has sports contracts with the NCAA. It was insane."

When his last appeal had been exhausted in 2004 and the courts ruled against him, Bloom took his case to Congress. "I'm going to be a thorn in the side of the NCAA all my life," he says. He told his story to a subcommittee investigating NCAA sports, in whom he found what he had always wanted, a supportive audience.

"It was an incredible experience," Bloom says. "I was going to testify before the House. I wore a suit, but I didn't wear a tie, because it's not like my generation to dress up. But I should have worn a tie. Representative Spencer Bachus led me underground to the hearing. I got fired up. It was a weird feeling, as though I were going through a tunnel onto the field, only my teammates were now congressmen. I sat alone at a table, no lawyer, and gave my testimony. I thought, I can finally speak. Of course, nothing came of it. But for me, it was my Super Bowl."

After the hearing, Bachus said the NCAA's goal was "to keep athletes uninformed, poor and powerless." Bachus also claimed the NCAA had accused him of taking up Bloom's fight because, as a representative from Alabama, Bachus hoped to get even with the NCAA for sanctions it had placedon the Auburn basketball and Alabama football programs.

Now, Bloom says, "The NCAA can take my career, but it can't take my passion. Fighting it gave me mental clarity." Bloom returned to skiing full-time and in 2005 had one of the greatest World Cup years any moguls skier has ever had. It brought him the type of exposure that would lead to MTV and endorsements beyond skiing. These would brand him as a sex symbol and reinforce the idea that Jeremy Bloom could be everything.

Bloom says that prior to the 2005 World Cup season he had been skiing tentatively, satisfied simply to reach the podium at each event in second or third place. Finally, he says, "I was sick of being third. I wasn't putting myself at risk to be first. I watched Tiger Woods and saw how he worked on his weaknesses during a tournament, even if he didn't make the cut because of it. So last year, in my first World Cup event, I tried some new things and didn't play it safe. I finished 35th, second, 16th, fifth, and then it clicked. I won my first competition, and I thought, I don't know if I can lose all year."

He was almost right. He won six consecutive World Cup events, a moguls record, Finished second in his last event and won the World Cup title. Moseley, who had criticized him for his 2002 Olympics failure, said, "He used to be great; now he's dominant. He makes magic happen."

Bloom is now poised to redeem himself in Turin for his 2002 Olympics meltdown. But the pressure doesn't bother him. He says it doesn't matter whether he even makes this year's Olympic team or wins a gold medal, because "I can walk away from skiing with a smile on my face about my accomplishments." Besides, the NFL is waiting, and television too. Bloom likes to keep his options open.

Football, for Bloom, is "unfinished business." At the NFL combine in February he will have a chance to "blow them away" with his talent. He isn't the only one who thinks he can. NFL scout Ron Hill says that despite his small size, "Bloom plays at a fast pace. He's a guy you have to look at."

"Sure, I'm small," says Bloom, "but look at Steve Smith. He's five-nine, and he's leading the NFL in receiving this year."

Gary Wichard, Bloom's agent, also agrees with his client, calling criticism of Bloom's size a kind of reverse racism. "No one talks about Santana Moss's or Steve Smith's size," he says. "No white wide receiver has been drafted in the first round since 1978, but Jeremy is going to dispel the myths about white wide receivers. Some scouts complain they haven't seen him play in three years; my response is that his body hasn't been abused in three years. I expect him to be drafted in one of the first three rounds on the first day."

Highly regarded NFL draft expert Mel Kiper Jr. says, "I expect Bloom to go as high as the third or fourth round. He has tremendous instincts and vision, plus quickness and leg strength that he got from skiing to break tackles. He can catch the ball, he's a dynamic return man, and he's electrifying in the open field."

And if Bloom doesn't make the NFL, he always has his MTV exposure to fall back on. His goal is someday to host his own live television talk show, a "Bob Costas show for the MTV generation," he says. "But I want it to appeal to everyone."

The only problem for Bloom is that his MTV brand image will conflict with his NFL brand image. Wichard wants to brand Bloom as a tough white boy in a tough black man's game. But Bloom's entertainment agents at CAA are worried that any success he may have in a mainstream sport such as football may dilute his countercultural brand image among his skiing and MTV fans, who may think their hero has sold out. If Bloom makes the NFL, CAA hopes it can still maintain his rebellious, anti-mainstream image.

"Do I fantasize about winning a gold in the Olympics, winning a Super Bowl and having my own show on TV?" he asks. "Sure, I do." And if one of those dreams falls through, he'll just switchgears and concentrate on the possibilities he has left. Even he admits, however, that at some point in his life he may have none of them.

"I think about what life will be like without the spotlight," he says. "Someday it will end.I don't mind that." He just doesn't want it to end sooner than he expects.

His good looks are an important part of his brand. They have brought him endorsements and shirtless photo shoots.