Just Win, Baby!

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yTdund the middle of t_ • NFL season—about the time ' Philadelphia Eagles quarterback

Michael Vick was interceptionless and U seemingly more elusive than ever—I had a "O^&ndid, boozy conversation with a famous "L writer about Vick's astonishing transforma­tion. "He worked his nuts off," the writer told me. And this writer would know these sorts of things because, unlike other sportswriters, he interacts with the players on a personal level. So when he said Vick had "worked his nuts off," it wasn't hyperbole or a one-off meathead platitude; it was a genuine accolade. The writer further explained that Vick had used the 2009 NFL season—his first in the league after serving 18 months in federal prison for his involvement in a dogfighting ring— to reprogram his psyche and become the football player he never was: patient, humble, a film rat. "He's really changed," the writer said in a way that suggested reality trumped cliche in Vick's case.

Most people did not wish Vick success. Success in Vick's second stint as a professional football player would mean unconscionable sports fans would forget about the dogs he'd ordered hanged and drowned.

Success would mean a large por-tion of unconscionable sports fans would forget Vick had a capacity for evil tfiosf societies would define as threatening. But to me—an avid Eagles fan—the writer's reve­lations justified the unconscionable sports fan in­side me. Vick is playing as a changed, ridiculously productive quarterback on the team I love, and he is now my favorite player—one to whom I would express undying devotion even if he were to gut a border collie in the end zone. This guy will win us two Super Bowls, I thought. Fuck the dogs!

Welcome to the greatest moral dilemma in mod­ern sports. Fans find themselves cheering for rap­ists, wife beaters, philanderers, steroids freaks, drunk drivers, thieves and, in the case of one Australian rugby player, a man who let a dog give him a blow job. And truth be told, the majority of fans compart­mentalize their self-righteous outrage over a player's off-field behavior whenever that player achieves on-field success. Kobe Bryant's 2004 sexual assault case was dismissed, but he did not win an NBA champion­ship for the next five seasons. He lost endorsements. He lost fans. He gained enemies—many of whom knew him only as the tall guy who'd trotted out his

doe-eyed wife for a press conference so he could apologize to the world for nail­ing (consensually!) a 19-year-old hotel attendant. Sales of his number 8 Lakers jersey, which had always been robust, stalled. But time and championships— and in Bryant's case a new jersey num­ber (24)—heal fan commerce. Bryant's jersey has been the NBA's best-seller since 2008, around the time the Lak­ers returned to the NBA finals. Even

the chants of "Raaay-pist!" from the surliest road fans have more or less stopped. He's just that good.

The adulation of Bryant will end only if he leaves the Lakers and takes his talents to South Beach—a la LeBron James. Seriously. If there's one thing that will change a fan's allegiance to a player, it's betrayal. Cleveland sports fans, for all their lovable loserdom, turned into a pack of petulant lunatics after James announced on ESPN that he was leaving his hometown Cavaliers for the Miami Meat, thus extinguishing

all hope for a long-overdue champion­ship. The Cavaliers' owner, Dan Gil­bert, went public with his disgust for his former franchise player in radio in­terviews and a ridiculous letter to Cavs fans—written in the font Comic Sans, no less—in which he called James a coward and a deserter. "This shocking act of disloyalty from our homegrown 'chosen one' sends the exact oppo­site lesson of what we would want our

children to learn and 'who' we would want them to grow up to become," Gil­bert ranted. "But the good news is that this heartless and callous action

can only serve as the antidote to the so-called 'curse' on Cleveland, Ohio. The self-declared former 'King' will be taking the 'curse' with him down south. And until he does 'right' by Cleveland and Ohio, James (and the town where he plays) will unfortunately own this dreaded spell and bad karma."

LeBron jerseys were burned, his outdoor Nike ads were defaced and rumors that his 41-year-old mother had had sex with his former team­mate Delonte West intensified. Whether West and Gloria James slept togeth­er is irrelevant, because soon after LeBron's dreadful Decision aired on ESPN, every single Cleveland resident believed that West had fucked her—a small, bitter victory for a city stiffed by a 25-year-old guy who had the gall to play basketball with his best friends in a balmy new locale.

Of course when you add actual debauchery to the betrayal of a city— watch out! Just ask Brett Lorenzo Favre, who spent 16 productive years in the good graces of Green Bay Pack­ers fans despite being a pill-popping narcissist. Even during his first unre-tirement—when he was traded to the New York Jets in 2008—Favre was still destined to have a street named after him in Wisconsin. But when he unre-tired a second time and joined the hated Minnesota Vikings—a team he led to dual victories over the Packers and to the NFC championship game—

Favre's most devout fans began to turn on him. The hatred bubbled over early last year, aided in part by a former Jets sideline reporter named Jenn Sterger. In early August, Deadspin, the sports website where I serve as editor in chief, reported that while quarterbacking the Jets, Favre had sent Sterger voice mails, MySpace messages and, allegedly, pic­tures of his semi-flaccid penis in hopes of seducing her. Two months later we

violated the sacred code of journalistic ethics by paying a third party for a por­tion of the voice mails, MySpace mes­sages and, yes, those infamous pictures of what may be Brett Favre's junk—all still available at deadspin.com. The good-ol'-boy hotel propositions he left on Sterger's voice mail (which he report­edly admitted to in a meeting with NFL security) and the photos of what Sterger claimed was his penis (which he report­edly did not admit to NFL security) did

serious damage to Favre's gunslinging family-man persona.

Due to the salacious possibility of a new Tiger Woods whorefest, the likes of both ESPN and Access Hollywood gave Dong-gate top billing. For a couple of weeks in October the story was un­avoidable. The fact that these accusa­tions surfaced when Favre was playing the worst football of his career didn't help matters. But everyone (including me—hey, I'm still a serious sports fan when I'm not making a living embar­rassing athletes) hoped the Vikings' Monday Night Football game against the Jets, which took place at the peak of the Sterger-Favre imbroglio, would be the scene of Favre's redemption—i.e., a virtuoso five-touchdown performance that would turn the Vikings' sea­son around. Yet it was not to be. The Vikings lost 29-20, and Favre threw a key interception at the end of the game to seal the victory for the Jets.

And so the open season on Favre's character continued. Here are a few alle­gations sent to Deadspin from Packers fans and former Favre devotees who glee­fully shared some of his past transgres­sions to prove his clumsy sexting wasn't

an isolated incident: Favre and a former Packers tight end would regularly screw women in the Green Bay Regency Suites hotel bathroom; Favre drunkenly butch­ered a 2 Live Crew song while judging a bikini contest; a teenage Favre used to get drunk and streak naked through his small hometown in Mississippi; Favre paid someone to go to hospitals to get him pain medication.

Why did Deadspin double as a quasi-confessional for scorned Packers fans? It was the best way for many of them to rid themselves of that gnawing feeling of abandonment and spittle in their eye. Giving those stories to our site and fur­thering Favre's public embarrassment was the best revenge. So while I was say­ing "Fuck the dogs!" they were saying "Fuck Favre!" Now, had Favre still played for the Packers when the Sterger sexts became public, many of these stories would never have hit our in-box—that is, unless he was throwing interception after interception. Then, once again:

"Fuck Favre!"

Likewise, when a team with high expectations vastly u nderachieves, some frustrated fans will create a soap-opera-like scenario usually in­volving one player sleeping with an­other player's wife or girlfriend as an explanation for all the losing. Next,

they will send the story to online message boards and e-mail it to friends—who cares whether it's plausible or not? (Be­lieve me, eventually all this unsubstanti­ated gossip makes its way to me.) On the flip side, when a team is winning, most fans willfully ignore the fact that a ma­jority of its players are assholes, adulter­ers and/or assailants. The anecdotal evi­dence stretches far beyond Philadelphia and Michael Vick. Look at Pittsburgh and Ben Roethlisberger. After another allegation surfaced last winter that Big Ben had sexually assaulted a coed in a college nightclub bathroom, few Yinzers

stood up for him—including the team's owner, Art Rooney II, who acknowl­edged in a letter to a concerned fan that his quarterback was pretty much a prick. To quote from Rooney's apology, "The vast majority of our players are good people who work hard to be the best that they can be." A truism only if you con­sider the benchmark for being a "good person" someone who does not pick up drunk, wobbly sorority chicks.

However, once Big Ben led a fourth-quarter comeback against the hated Bal­timore Ravens with a comically broken nose and foot—in just his eighth game back after a monthlong suspension for his off-season misdeed—it was easy for the Steelers faithful to forgive the quarter­back his sins. Across the field Ravens line­backer Ray Lewis certainly could relate. In January 2000 he may have watched two men get stabbed to death outside an Atlanta nightclub. But a year later all was forgotten in Baltimore because he deliv­ered a Super Bowl championship to the city. So though it was cute ofTiger Woods to open a Twitter account recently in an awkward attempt to say "Hello again, world!" the best way to make the public forget about his humping a Perkins wait­ress in a parking lot would be by prevail­ing on the golf course. And if LeBron happens to win several NBA titles for the Heat (or another team) in the next few years, most fans will once again coronate him as his sport's king.

In fact, the legend of O.J. Simpson might be completely different today if he had been charged with murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and waiter Ron Goldman while he was still a star running back for the Buffalo Bills. Post-trial he could have come back to the NFL—after a four-game suspension from the league for violating its player personal-conduct policy, of course—and continued to amass yards at a record-breaking pace. No self-respecting Bills fan would set fire to Simpson's jersey or stage a protest against his playing for the team if he led them to a Super Bowl win. "We deserved this victory," they would rationalize. "We've suffered long enough." Besides, Simpson was acquit­ted. The Lombardi trophy says so.

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