The Owners Meeting

It was a casual Friday morning at the Orlando Ritz Carlton. Seated at a small table by the hotel lobby bar were Bears coach Matt Nagy - an eager, 39 year old first year coach - and Sean McVay, the 31 year old wunderkind who took the league by storm in 2017. They were talking shop, which is almost exclusively what coaches do when they converge. The two men had formed a natural kinship. They were both young, energetic, offensive-minded, like-minded people. At a certain point, the conversation had shifted from the intricacies of a no huddle attack/which third down redzone route combinations work best against man coverage, to the broader challenges of being a first year head coach.

"There's a lot more to it than you expect - or that you'll even be prepared to handle," said McVay, blending freshly poured cream into his morning cup of coffee.

Nagy was eager to soak up as much wisdom as possible from his younger counterpart. After all, despite the age difference, his rise to coaching prominence had been a comparatively meteoric one - this time last year, he wasn't even calling plays. Nonetheless, he was a confident young talent.

"I'm ready," he responded, assertively. "You have to start somewhere. I can handle it, Sean."

A quick glance at his military style watch revealed that it was time to meet the owners. The league's patriarchs always wanted to have a quick word with the new coaches, usually one at a time, for about twenty minutes. This was a yearly tradition, seen almost as a rite of passage for the football's new leaders.

"Well, I better get going. I'll touch base with you later, bro."

McVay, almost with a sense of desperation, grabbed the arm of the departing Nagy.


"If there's anything you need, let me know. I mean that, Matt."

Nagy wasn't sure what to make of this peculiar shift of tone from his friend.

"Uh, yeah, OK Sean. I'll talk to you this afternoon."


As the young coach confidently sauntered towards the elevator, he spotted Marvin Lewis and Ron Rivera - a couple of old war horses - conversing near the front desk. They each made eyes with Nagy, as he made eyes with them. The two veterans chuckled, and muttered at one another as the rookie passed by. "Whatever" is what Nagy thought to himself. He knew this would be part of the deal, as a newcomer who was relatively anonymous twelve months earlier. Just take it now, and then kick their asses in the fall, is what he thought to himself as he entered the lift.


The owners room was located on the second floor, which hardly gave Nagy enough time to dwell on the taunting that he had just received. The doors swung open, and he was face to face with Matt Patricia, another first timer.


"Hey Matt! How'd it go?"

Patricia, avoiding eye contract, was terse in his response.

"I'm fine. I gotta run. See you around."


What an insult, he thought. He had expected disrespect from the old fogies, but not a fellow new comer. Was it the arrogance of the Patriot Way? Was it the fact that Nagy and Patricia would face each other twice in year in the NFC North? Perhaps both? "Whatever" was once again the self-utterance. It doesn't matter.


He approached the double doors of the owner's ballroom, feeling a sudden rush of anxiety. It was time to meet the brass. These men were extremely powerful. In this league, being well connected often gives you more career capital than winning - and the time to make a good impression was here and now. It was here that he drew on the tough, mountain-climber approach he had acquired as a scrappy assistant. It's the fourth quarter and he was down by five. Go win the game, he told himself, as he boldly entered the room.



Darkness.


The vast ball room was pitch black. Not a sign of life anywhere. Did he have the right place? He quickly glanced back out at the room number. Room 283, just as stated on the itinerary. So strange. He shouted into the darkness. "Hello?? Anybody in here??"



Suddenly, a succession of tiki torches, held by figures draped in Franciscan monk robes, lit up, forming a vast semi-circle. At the center, three old men sat on royal thrones, wearing absolutely nothing but pagan ritual masks. Nagy was stunned and horrified by the bizarre spectacle. He darted for the exit, but the doors were now locked from the outside.


"Where do you think you're going," shouted the elderly man in the middle, in a voice that was vaguely familiar.


"Uh...I think I have the wrong place. Can you let me out of here, please?"


"No, you're in the right place, Matthew," said the man - who sounded very much like Jerry Jones. "Why don't you come on over here."



Now, sometimes you encounter something so horrible and so confusing, that you have no choice but to gain an even closer look. We've all stopped as we've passed car accidents, hoping to get a morbid glance at human carnage. Nagy could not help but feel that same gravitational pull toward the trio of naked old men in the center of a torch lit semicircle. He proceeded towards the mayhem. He looked at it, but still couldn't quite process what he was seeing. He managed to let a few words escape his bewildered face.


"What.....what is this?"


A smirk emerged from the old man's face.



"Did you not read your contract, Matthew? You're supposed to perform oral sex on me while jerking off my two friends. You didn't read that?"


Nagy naturally recoiled. Just as he had approached this scene almost involuntarily, he felt himself slowly stepping backwards without any agency over his action. One of the hooded figures revealed themselves and held up a stack of white papers. It was Bears owner Virginia McCaskey. At the same time, the old man flanked to Jerry's left finally spoke.


"He didn't read the fine print." It was the unmistakable voice of Bob Kraft. "They never read the fine print. If you don't come over here and do what Jerry said, it constitutes a breach of contract and termination. The choice is yours, kid."


Indeed it was, and the choice was binary. Either perform this sinful act, or be fired in disgrace. How would he support his family? What would he do with himself? He has devoted thirty nine years of his life to football, and has developed no other skills. He's worthless outside of football. The owners knew it. His choice was to suck Jerry Jones' old dick, while jerking off Bob Kraft and another old guy who had yet to reveal his identity, or become a middle school gym teacher. So basically, there was no choice. Do it for your family. That's what he told himself as he began to satisfy the three elders.


Roughly fifteen minutes passed. No talking. Just a football coach doing what he has to do in order to procure his future. Kraft broke the silence.


"Hey Matthew, you're pleasing eight Lombardi's. Guess who has the fewest."


The mystery man flanked to the right was finally provoked into breaking his silence.


"Fuck yourself, Kraft." It was clearly the voice of Arthur Blank. "Do you have any idea how hard it is to throw a game when you've accidently built a 25 point lead? Your god damn team almost blew it by playing awful in the first half."


Nagy, by this time, was too preoccupied to speak, but he let out an audible gasp as he realized the deeply corrupt nature of professional football.


"As long as you help me put the Panthers in Mexico," Blank gripped the armchairs of his throne in mid-speech, feeling a climax approaching, "you can have as many Lombardi's as you want."


The deed was almost done, and the young, first time coach could sense it. Blank let go first. The other two robber barons followed shortly after, each with more potency than the former, befitting of their championship pedigree.


"Great job, Matthew." Jerry was satisfied with the rookie's effort. "That's the best technique we've seen since Mike Smith was here. Any questions before we let you leave?"



Nagy held back the tears.


"Why do you guys do this? You're all extremely wealthy. Why can't you just have gay orgies on your own time, instead of roping bystanders into whatever the hell this is?!"


"What the hell is wrong with you people?!?!? What does any of this have to do with winning games?!?!?!"


Another hooded man revealed himself as Jimmy Haslam. By now, pretty much everyone in the room was comfortable showing their face. Haslam smiled as he looked down at the beleaguered and face-fucked coach.


"Ah, they're naïve at that age, aren't they," he said.


Jones, only half flaccid, stood up and took off his pagan mask.


"Matthew, the point of this league is to hypnotize the little man. We give them a compelling product, we provide all sorts of mobile apps so that the average sucker is addicted to us 24/7 and 365. We aim to conquer the middle of America - and when we finally have a passive, fat, lazy proletariat that's obsessed and paralyzed by this watered-down and mindless game, we can focus our efforts on killing all of the Jews."


"Now get out of here, you little puppet."


The giant ballroom erupted with laughter, and Nagy ran as fast as he could to the exit, then making a bee line to the men's room. He entered and ran to the nearest stall, educing vomiting, desperately trying to eject as much patriarchal seed from his system as he could. He then laid on the bathroom floor and sobbed. Psychoanalysts refer to this state as the "underworld". It's the place where a person's reality no longer makes sense to them. What in the hell had just happened in there? There he lay on the cold marble floor, overwhelmed. Then, a rancid smell of rotten eggs and discarded salmon entered into his realm, helping to bring him back to some sort of baseline. He realized he wasn't in the bathroom alone. Rolling over, he glanced to his right, and spotted a pair of size fifty Dockers wrapped around two fat, white legs. He heard a laugh, followed by a flush, which was followed by a thick Bostonian accent.


"Not what you expected huh, kid?"


It was Giants GM Dave Gettleman, who emerged from the adjacent stall and now stood in front of the shell-shocked coach. Nagy shuttered with fear.


"Oh God. I don't have to suck your dick, do I?"


The fat man let out his familiar chuckle.


"Nah kid, that's way above my pay grade. I just had to stop in here to take the Browns to the Super Bowl. You OK? Here, let me help you up."

Nagy was certainly not OK, but he was appreciative of the GM's assistance.


"What in the hell is going on here???," he said. "This....this is not what I signed up for. I just want to coach football. What the fucking hell have I gotten myself into?? It's all fixed?? Throwing Super Bowls?? Killing Jews??? Jesus?!?"

Gettleman consoled.



"Look, kid, it's all downhill from here. I think you ought to just focus on X's and O's and pretend this never happened."


Nagy snapped, "HOW CAN I PRETEND THIS NEVER HAPPENED? I JUST SUCKED JERRY JONES' DICK!"



The fat man tried harder to be comforting.


"Look, it's a rite of passage with these guys. Billionaires are weird folk. I'm sure they didn't mean everything they told you. Just focus on your job, stay in your lane, and you'll be fine. You'll never have to do anything like this again."


The coach started to feel slightly better, or at least relatively calm. Gettleman bringing his focus back on football was certainly helpful. He was grateful.


"Ok....I feel a little better."


"You know, Dave, I have to admit that I thought you were an asshole. That's what everyone has told me. But I've learned that I didn't understand my world twenty minutes ago. Thank you for being here and making me feel a little more like myself again. It's like the Lord sent me an angel just at the right moment."


This caused Gettleman - a man who's character had been under siege for years - to allow a wry smile to develop on his face.


"Angels take on a weird form, I guess," he said. "I'm glad I was here to help you. I think you're bright kid with a bright future. Just keep your chin up."


"By the way, you dropped 75 cents."


Nagy was perplexed by this random detour.


"Huh?"


"You dropped 30 cents on the floor while your were puking."


Nagy looked back to the stall. At a quick glace, he noticed that it was actually $1.35 in change.


"Can I have it," Gettleman eagerly asked.


"Uhhh...sure, Dave. Look, thanks again man. I mean it. I needed a friend at this moment. I'll see you around."


"Awesome! This is almost as much as McDermott left last year!"

Gettleman threw himself onto the loose change like a bodyguard throwing himself onto a President taking fire from an assassin, and Nagy headed towards the elevator with a renewed sense of purpose. He was feeling like himself again. The horrors of his experience in room 283 were being replaced with optimism about the upcoming fooball season. He was thinking about a classic, November battle with the Packers. He was allowing his creative mind to conceptualize all of the ways he plans to utilize Tarik Cohen. He was daydreaming about Allen Robinson running past the cornerbacks of the NFC North. His imagination was only broken by the emergence of Mike Vrabel from the parting doors of the elevator.


"How'd it go in there?" asked the Titans new leader.


Nagy smiled. He reflected on what his friend told him in the hotel lobby less than half an hour earlier.


"There's a lot more to it than you expect - or that you'll be prepared to handle. Good luck!"


He stepped into the lift, doors closing behind him. The hard part was over. Time to kick some ass.

 

finest kind

 

“Gettleman threw himself onto the loose change....”

 

Someone has way too much time on their hands.

 

It only seems that way because I'm god damn brilliant. Coming up with a creative idea or story costs me very little time or effort. It just radiates out of me. I'm not normal, so you shouldn't judge me with the rigid boundaries of normal man's cookie-cutter life. I am the Third Revelation.

 

Americans fiddle while America burns.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Gotcha

 

Tepper needs to do whatever it takes to give Charlotte a decent pro sports team.