The Best American Sports Writing 2019

by Charles P. Pierce

  I see my children standing in the hallway outside Section 309. They don’t know where the seats are, and they don’t know where their parents are, who know where the seats are. I pull out my husband’s cell phone and show them, but they’re angry that I left him. He’s a big boy and probably knows where to go, I say. We spot him a few minutes later. His pants are clean, so we all embrace for a moment before heading in. We’ve missed the anthem, the president, the coin toss, and the kick-off, but are otherwise on time.

  0 to 0

  * * *

  There is no way to express the hugeness of the new stadium; it is huger than Trump’s hands, and the crowd—over 77,000 people—is possibly bigger than his inauguration. Our seats are high up on the 25-yard line, but the field and players are clear; we can see every play. And if we can’t, there are multiple jumbotrons that make it possible to see each hair on UGA quarterback Jake Fromm’s scruffy beard. We’re in the UGA section and the fans around us seem reasonable enough. All of them are white, though I don’t correlate reasonableness with whiteness. In the first quarter, UGA makes some stunning plays, and the crowd erupts. The woman in front of me wears a black sweater, black pants, and black booties, has a red and black G painted on her cheek. She turns around and high-fives me every time something good happens for the Dawgs. The man next to me high-fives me too. Everyone’s congenial and rabidly excited by Georgia’s strong opening.

  13–0

  * * *

  I should explain that I am not a football fanatic, or even a fan. I’m from Atlanta and went to graduate school at UGA but never went to a game, so my loyalty is questionable. If I watch football, it’s because people in my family are watching it. I’ve come along with a sort of anthropological mind-set. What makes so many people spend their hard-earned money for this event? Why is it so important? What will change if Georgia wins? Or loses? Why is college football like some kind of religion? The man next to me graduated from UGA in 1997 (he looks older). He flew out to Pasadena the week before for the Rose Bowl (Georgia beat Oklahoma, which is why we’re here). The woman next to my husband flew down from Washington with her husband, but left him in their hotel room because he is older, she explains, and she doesn’t want him to have a stroke or a heart attack if the game gets too intense. People should not die over football games. Neither my son nor daughter went to Georgia, but my son feels some esoteric emotional connection with this team, perhaps inherited from his father. My husband and my son played football, but my daughter is the real athlete of the family, and her interest stems from a physical and intellectual understanding of what it takes to do what these players do on the field.

  What they do on the field is slam into each other a lot. The Tide plays dirty. Because of the jumbotron, we can see when one Alabama player takes down the UGA ball carrier then knocks him in the head after he’s on the ground. We can see another ’Bama player put a last-minute choke-hold on a UGA player that doesn’t get a flag. It’s beginning to make me mad, and this surge of emotion is actually helpful because now I’m standing up and screaming at the ref and cheering “sic ’em, sic ’em, sic ’em” when Georgia kicks to ’Bama after another touchdown. My husband takes a picture of me doing this to send to his friends who bet him I would be reading a book throughout the game. It suddenly seems hopeful and joyous, though there is a gnawing sense that the evil genius Nick Saban will never let Alabama lose.

  At the end of the second quarter, Georgia is up 13–0 and the crowd is elated. My son notes that, curiously, Saban has benched his first-string quarterback and put in the second string “true freshman” quarterback, a guy from Hawaii named Tua who’s never started a game. It interests me that Tua is from Hawaii, which is nowhere near Alabama. A “true freshman,” by the way, is someone who is actually a first-year college student, not someone who’s been sitting on the bench for a year. So the two quarterbacks in this game now are just around 18 years old. What would it be like to be 18 and the center of this storm of insanity and adulation? What would it be like to know that the president of the United States (whoever it is) has flown down in Air Force One to watch you? What would the rest of your life be like after this?

  Kendrick

  * * *

  My son is excited that rapper Kendrick Lamar is the halftime entertainment. It’s the first time the National Championship has had a halftime performer, and certainly the first time Donald Trump has seen Kendrick Lamar perform (it turns out Trump did not see him perform; he supposedly left before halftime). When I comment to my son that the majority of the people in the stadium are white, so Lamar’s rap might be lost on them, he notes that the majority of people who go to Georgia and Alabama are white, with the exception of the players on the field. I tell him this sounds racist, but he tells me it’s not racist if it’s true.

  Lamar appears on the jumbotron but he’s not on the field. They’ve set the halftime show outside in Centennial Park, a free, non-ticketed venue, instead of inside the stadium, which makes sense. Why should Kendrick Lamar perform for all the rich white people in the stadium (including Trump, if he were still here), who probably only listen to Tony Bennett or Taylor Swift, when he can entertain the people of Atlanta, the majority of whom are of color (at least it appears so on the jumbotron) and have been waiting outside in the cold and rain? It seems like a very egalitarian choice, except for the fact that we’re inside a warm, dry stadium, and they’re outside freezing.

  Most of the people working in the stadium are also of color, blacks, Latinos, immigrants: the servers, bathroom staff, security, no doubt a few of them from what Trump will allegedly call “shithole countries” this very week. When I go to the bathroom (surprisingly empty), the woman cleaning has a knitted rainbow scarf around her head. I thank her, but she doesn’t acknowledge me. No one seems terribly happy to be working the game. Maybe because Trump is here. Maybe because we’re playing Alabama.

  And fans of other teams hate the Crimson Tide. Sometimes that gets mixed up with the state, though having just marginally disposed of racist and alleged pedophile Roy Moore in the special Senate election, one is inclined to cut Alabamians some slack. To be fair, the whole stadium is a sea of red, and it’s not just because both teams wear the same colors. Both Georgia and Alabama are red states, and I wonder how many rosy-robed fans here voted for Trump. An Alabama judge once described former Governor George Wallace, a demagogue in the same mold as Donald Trump: “[Wallace] keeps tellin’ ’em, ‘You the children of Israel, you gonna lead this country out of the wilderness!’ Well, goddamn. We at the bottom of everything you can find to be at the bottom of, and yet we gonna save the country. We lead the country in illiteracy and syphilis, and yet we gonna lead the damn country out of the wilderness . . .” And maybe that’s why some people love the Crimson Tide the way they love Trump. Because they’re always on top. They are always winners. Nick Saban is gonna lead them out of the wilderness and into another National Championship. But not yet.

  20–10

  * * *

  Halftime passes quickly while everyone catches up on their texts. People are sending pictures and Snapchats to their friends watching the game at home, or they are posting on Instagram or Facebook. I have friends in San Antonio and Italy who keep sending me game emojis. People who have no reason to be Georgia fans are completely invested in the outcome. Once we were in Seville when Spain was in the finals of the World Cup Soccer tournament; our lodging was on a big square in the heart of the city and every single bar and restaurant set up enormous television screens on the border of the square. All the patrons were sitting outside drinking and screaming at every play; everyone was unified in their desire to beat Germany, or whoever it was. It felt good to be there, to be a part of a larger organism, something that everyone agreed on and cared passionately about. It felt very human. But maybe there’s another side to that, like possibly rabid nationalism.

  The good part, the unifying part, seems to be what’s happening here too, but not quite. The walls of the aptly named Merced
es-Benz Stadium contain a fairly rarified group, most of whom have paid full price. A man on our row walks past us on his way to the bathroom and says something to my son. After the man has gone, my son tells us what he said: “I hope you know how privileged you are to be here.” This is curious and somewhat ambiguous. Does he mean my son is privileged to be watching the University of Georgia play in the National Championships? Is he privileged to see Georgia beating Alabama, to see Kirby Smart defeat Nick Saban? Is it a privilege to be in the same building as the president of the United States? Or is everyone in this arena simply privileged because they have enough disposable income to blow on four hours of football?

  20–20

  * * *

  In the somewhat inevitable, at least to my mind, denouement of the fourth quarter, Tua rides the now rising Crimson Tide the way he might ride a surfboard in his native state. Since he’s never started before and hasn’t played much in other games, the Dawgs don’t know what to expect from him. He’s creative and unpredictable. We start to hear from the other side of the stadium, as the Alabama fans get louder and louder and the Georgia fans look more and more like deflated balloon animals. “Sweet Home Alabama” plays over the loudspeaker, a song I like, but know I’d better not sing or dance to now. The woman in front of me is no longer reaching back to give me high-fives. Someone several rows back dumps what must be a Coca-Cola onto us. I feel the sticky, syrupy mess drying in strands of my hair as the Tide gets closer to a tie. And then it is a tie game. You can almost hear the breath leaving the balloon animals as if they’d all been punctured at the same time. Alabama is going to kick a field goal in the last three seconds of the game, which seems to me to be a cowardly loser way to win. This would be a good time for the electricity to go out.

  The kicker misses the field goal. The lights stay on. We’re in overtime.

  23–26

  * * *

  It’s midnight. I pray for a quick ending, and hopefully a positive one for Georgia. It is quick. Georgia’s Roderigo Blankenship, who should get credit for his name alone but is also a great field goal kicker, makes one, and it’s 23–20. Now the ball goes to Alabama. The quarterback gets sacked, then he throws, the ball is caught, and ’Bama scores. As fast as that, all the hopes and dreams of the people on our side come to an end. Suddenly, the other side of the stadium bursts into cheers on the other side and glittery confetti explodes from the ceiling of the dome. Everyone in our section stands there dumbfounded. My husband sits down. Our daughter has her hands on her head. Our son says, “We’ve got to get out of here, NOW.” There might be tears in his eyes. The feeling seems familiar, as if it had happened before, maybe back in early November of 2016.

  Exodus

  * * *

  As if all the Georgia fans had the same thought at the same moment, like ants silently communicating, there’s a unified and dignified movement out of their seats and into the hall. No one says anything as at least 50,000 people march towards the stairways. And just like the beginning of this disaster, we are suddenly pinned in a flesh press of bodies all moving the same way. On the stairs, one man has the temerity to squeak out, “Roll, Tide,” in a tiny, uncertain voice, but he recognizes the danger of being celebratory on this side and fades into the crowd.

  I am holding my husband’s hand with one hand and grasping my son’s sweatshirt with the other because this is the kind of crowd that would trample you in an instant, the kind of crowd where you could get shanked and your body would be carried along upright until you got outside, the kind of crowd where you could lose your children forever. My daughter is farther ahead; I can tell she’s pissed and she’s not going to hold anyone’s hand; she’s just going to get out, but we keep track of her.

  The shortsightedness of the stadium planners again becomes evident as tens of thousands of sad, angry, disappointed, possibly suicidal and/or homicidal Georgia fans attempt to squeeze through two solitary exits before Alabama fans really start celebrating. Personally, I am not feeling all that bad now. It was a good game, and it was exciting; Georgia played better than Alabama. But nobody around me wants to hear it. My son starts whining about how it’s a curse on Georgia teams and recounting the admittedly depressing story of the Atlanta Falcons’ loss in last year’s Super Bowl against the New England Patriots.

  This attitude makes me think about a line from the film Talladega Nights, which, I should point out, is set in Alabama. Ricky Bobby, the main character played by Will Ferrell, is a race car driver at Talladega, and lives by the motto, “If you ain’t first, you’re last.” It doesn’t matter if Georgia won the Rose Bowl and the SEC Championship; it doesn’t matter if they had a fantastic season and played honorably and well in their home state in the National Championships. If they’re not first, they’re last. This could be Trump’s motto too. Trump loves winning, thinks of himself as a winner, no matter the facts. The president is no doubt now an Alabama fan even if he was a guest of Sonny Perdue because Perdue is now on the losing side. Later this week, Sonny’s first cousin, Senator David Perdue, will defend Trump’s profane comments on immigrants from Haiti and Africa, claiming he cannot recall the president using any such derogatory terms.

  We’ll Get ’em Next Year

  * * *

  Once outside, we head in the wrong direction and have to walk all the way around the stadium. The crowd is still eerily silent and controlled. No one screams or fights or curses. The concrete barriers around the stadium are covered with beer cans and bottles from earlier tailgaters. I think about the stadium workers and their grim, stoic faces, who will be cleaning up this mess until dawn. A tall gangly black man coming from the direction of Centennial Park walks in front of us and yells, “Fuck Alabama! Fuck Saban!” to some white fraternity guys with Georgia shirts on. They hesitantly high-five him and mildly respond, “Yeah dude, fuck ’Bama!” The frat guys walk closer together. The man keeps on walking beside the boys, mumbling to them, “Yeah, fuck that! We’ll get ’em next year!” He kicks some empty beer cans and kind of trips off the curb. The fraternity boys walk faster.

  Caity Weaver

  My Magical Quest to Destroy Tom Brady and Win a Philadelphia Eagles Mini-Fridge at Super Bowl LII

  from GQ

  * * *

  Many crisscrossing factors combine to make football difficult to watch. The rules are completely invented from scratch at the start of every contest. It stutters along with frantic, abrupt pauses that can last anywhere from an extremely long time to 600,000 hours. The players, in their matching capris and shiny plastic orbs, are virtually indistinguishable from one another, except those players with ponytails, who are merely indistinguishable from other players with ponytails. All of which is to say nothing of the hot shame you must, if you are in any way decent, feel as you watch the odds that these vigorous young men will be able to recognize the faces of their family members 20 years hence drop in real time as they patiently bash their precious brains in for your entertainment. The game is peppered with sudden silent moments where a person, having just collided at high speed with another person, lies motionless staring up toward the sky, or translucent ethylene tetrafluoroethylene ceiling, and all the thousands of people who, seconds ago, saw that man moving faster on his feet than they probably will, instinctively lean forward with dread-tensed stomachs and wonder if he will ever walk again.

  As an alternative to the bashing, the men can express political dissent, and become unemployed.

  However, against all reason and morality, we do love the Philadelphia Eagles, being, as they are, from Philadelphia. And although I had never attended a football game before Super Bowl LII—had never, that I can recall, even seen an entire game on TV—I felt a desperate, primal need for the Eagles to win. If the Eagles did not win, my life would be faintly but palpably worse, at least for a period of a few hours. At the end of Super Bowl, there are 53 men on television who look like they’ve just arrived home to find every single one of their possessions stolen, and 53 who are laughing, crying, dancing, and
praying with delirious happiness. It was very important to me that on Sunday night the latter group would be the Philadelphia Eagles, but I had no desire to see the slog leading up to that point. I could go to sleep Sunday night at 6:30 p.m., wake up Monday morning to see the score, and be just as happy—happier, probably—than if I had been made to watch the entire game unfold.

  Which is why my bosses thought it would be amusing to send me all the way to Minnesota in the middle of winter to watch the game in person.