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Monday Morning Cringe: The Moment, The Money, And The Goofy White Guys

By Jay Busbee | March 26, 2007

So the NCAA Tournament has its Final Four, and our bracket looks like a burger left on a grill for seven hours. UNC, UVa, Wisconsin, and our two championship teams, Memphis and Kansas — gone, all gone.

With only three games left, it’s almost time to bid farewell to one of the NCAA’s best traditions — the Goofy White Guys Jittering On The Bench In Crunch Time shot. They clutch arms, they bounce their knees up and down, and they may as well be wearing three-piece suits under those warmups, since they’ll never get in the game anyway. (They’re also always described as “scrappy,” for some reason.)

Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann have been having a running conversation this week on ESPN Radio on “The Moment” and “The Money” — that is, would you rather have the glory or just get rich grinding it out in the pro trenches? Case study No. 1 was Gerry MacNamara, the Syracuse kid who almost singlehandedly won a national championship and another Big East title for the Orangemen a couple years back, and now toils in the D-League, praying for a chance. On the phone, he sounded as defeated and broken as any athlete we’ve ever heard. He had The Moment, but for now, it wasn’t enough.

It was reminiscent of one of the saddest things we’ve seen in professional life. A few years back, we were invited to write a book-length bio of a certain mortgage company here in Atlanta. Now, how one could fill a book with stories about a freakin’ mortgage company is beyond us; as it turned out, the project rightfully went nowhere. But we attended a Monday-morning staff pep rally/revival/indoctrination session, where the entire company — probably 300 people — all gathered in a boardroom to hear the company’s CEO evangelize on how offering your customers a 4/1 adjustable-rate mortgage is not just a duty, it’s a moral calling. (When he entered, he shouted, “Hello, everybody!” When everybody replied in kind, he actually shouted back, “Is anybody awake in here? I’ll say it again — HELLO, EVERYBODY!” Yes, really.)

One of the purposes of this meeting — besides doling out the Kool-Aid, of course – was to introduce the latest crop of bright-faced young brokers, and when they posted the names on a PowerPoint slide, one of them seemed vaguely familiar. And when they got around to him, it hit us — this guy had been a kicker for a certain solid-but-not-championship AFC team, and a couple times had gone deep into the playoffs. Can’t remember his name now, but the point is this — the guy actually had to stand up and say, “I was excited to play in the NFL, but I’m even more thrilled to have the opportunity to be here working for [the mortgage company].” Everyone applauded like seals, even though this guy had a look in his eyes like he would have thrown himself right out the window and onto the highway outside if he could’ve jimmied the glass open.

So the next time you see a former Goofy White Guy behind a desk at a bank, or walking the lot at a car dealership, or showing that some young couple that new 3BR/2 Bath that just opened up, it’s probably best not to mention their former exploits. You never know when they might ask you to kill them.

Topics: Disturbing |