Carles, formerly of Hipster Runoff, and now Grantland writes on how we (“the mediocre class”) relate to mediocre NFL quarterbacks. Brilliant, hilarious, insightful and hits a little close to home.
Before I started writing things on the Internet, I had a traditional office job. Every day, I would show up at work, pretend to do tasks that required gazing into the computer screen. Whenever there were important meetings, I would construct a conflict that I was trying to resolve. As long as I was willing to demonstrate that I had ‘shown progress’ and formulated a narrative that justified myself as a resource, I could brand myself as a valuable asset to the company.
I understood that what I was doing ultimately didn’t matter, had no reflection on ‘who I actually was as a person,’ but by making a quiet, eternal truce with professional mediocrity, I could live comfortably while my employer matched my contribution to my 401(k). Ultimately, not a bad deal, particularly in the context of the current recession, but it is interesting to think about how spending eight hours per day in an office environment can impact our social interpretation of sports.
It seems as if we evaluate athletes based on our only personal experience with high-stakes, life-or-death competition: our existences within the workplace.
As ‘great’ as we all might think we are, we probably have more in common with a mediocre NFL quarterback than with any other athlete. We usually watch them struggle and laugh, but the humor in watching a quarterback struggle seems like a dark, subconscious coping mechanism to process our own identity in the workplace. Most career paths don’t even provide a context to achieve ‘professional greatness.’ The obsessiveness by which we question the efforts and capabilities of mediocre quarterbacks often replaces the critical introspection that could actually improve our own lives.
- More H20
- Less caffeine
- Less sugar
- More zen
That’s about all I can think of right now. To a fun 2012!
