Big Game

by Mark Leibovich

  “The whole thing at the draft is a total blur, especially for these kids,” Winston told me after the NFLPA bash. We had repaired to a tiki-themed Chinese restaurant with Atallah and Winston’s friend and former teammate Dave Anderson, a wide receiver drafted the same year as Eric by the Texans. There were umbrella drinks, a pupu platter for four (dominated by Winston), and more umbrella drinks.

  Winston compared the eve of the draft with “the last day of summer vacation,” a line of demarcation between being the BMOC and the guy who carries the veterans’ pads in training camp. Starting tomorrow, these coveted and sheltered amateurs become “owned.” “It hits you fast,” Winston said. “Few of these guys really know what’s in store.” You’re sitting back in the greenroom, wearing the nicest clothes you’ve ever worn, and then boom, your name is called. “You’re in the NFL.”

  I think of Pat Summerall, another seminal football narrator of my youth. He hosted an old NFL Films short: They Call It Pro Football, the production was called, making it all seem so grand and gritty. Here, as Winston said, was just total blur—and more umbrella drinks.

  I was awakened in my hotel on draft day by a predawn call to worship. It came courtesy of a band of marauding Jets fans on the street below chanting, naturally, “J-E-T-S, JETS, JETS, JETS!” If I was being clear-eyed, I would acknowledge that this could have been any caste of drunken fans, not just Jets zealots. But it was four a.m. and I was not being clear-eyed, and admittedly I yelled things out the window that were not Football Is Family–friendly. Things escalated predictably (“Fuck you! Asshole,” etc.). Eventually I stood down, shut the window, and returned to bed, secure in the judgment that I was the bigger man and, more important, rooted for a better football team.

  * * *

  —

  The mood was convivial in “Draft Town,” the designated area around Grant Park, Congress Plaza, and the Auditorium Theatre where this affair would be held for the second year in a row (Philly would assume the “Draft Town” mantle in 2017, followed by Dallas in 2018). I talked to several fans who had traveled hundreds of miles and from several states away to attend the football Woodstock—200,000 of them in total would partake of the bazaar over three days

  A few hours before things kicked off for real at seven p.m., Chicago time, I surveyed the clusters of fans lined up for blocks around the ornate venue. Across from Grant Park, a parade of prospects walked “a red carpet” through portable bleachers packed with onlookers gathered to inspect these specimens one last time before they hugged Roger for keeps.

  Ohio State running back Ezekiel Elliott showed up wearing a powder-blue tuxedo jacket over a dress shirt cropped a few inches above the navel to expose his helmet-hard abdomen. This was an early show-stealer on the red carpet until Elliott was eclipsed by Laremy Tunsil, a massive offensive tackle out of Ole Miss. He wore a bizarre pair of gold-studded shoes that resembled shiny pinecones engulfing his size-sixteen feet. Tunsil, who was accompanied by his mother, had been a hot topic of predraft discussion for reasons of actual football, not footwear. He was originally tapped as a potential first-overall pick by Tennessee, but the Titans wound up trading their pick to the Rams, who were desperate for a quarterback; same with the Eagles, who traded up for Cleveland’s number two selection. Tunsil still remained a trendy choice to be the first nonquarterback taken in many mock drafts—at number three, by the Chargers.

  “Who made those shoes, Laremy?” a TV “journalist” shouted at Tunsil. “How much did they cost? Did you have them made special for the draft?” Another Man in Makeup beside the red carpet tried to ask Tunsil whether he had heard anything from the Chargers and whether they might take him. An actual “football matter” is how the intrepid reporter prefaced his query, trying to rise above the fashion nonsense. (It’s always amusing to watch sportswriters get indignant when others do not honor the sanctity of their “actual football questions.”) Whatever Tunsil mumbled in response, I could not hear. He would learn his fate soon enough, as we all would.

  Here’s a partial spoiler: Tunsil’s red carpet fuss would be nowhere close to the most memorable part of his draft day.

  After the Prospect Runway ended, I walked a few blocks past a massive WELCOME TO THE FAMILY banner on the marquee of Roosevelt University to the historic draft venue. Opened in 1889, the Auditorium Theatre had once hosted the varied likes of John Philip Sousa, Booker T. Washington, and Teddy Roosevelt, the last of whom declared himself to be “as strong as a bull moose” during an appearance here in 1912. More than a century later, thousands of face-painted fanatics lined up for several blocks around the assembly hall to witness the NFL’s annual job-placement extravaganza for strong-as-a-bull-moose “student-athletes.”

  As one would expect, it takes a certain hard-core fan to travel several hours, sometimes days, to attend such an ultimately action-free spectacle. These were NFL versions of what McDonald’s called “heavy users,” the restaurant’s classification for customers who eat several meals a week at their feeding pens—sometimes more than twenty meals a month in the case of “super heavy users.”

  Superfans appear to travel a circuit. They cavort at Super Bowls and tailgate areas when their teams play each other. NFL drafts are “the Super Bowl of the off-season,” league spokesman Brian McCarthy boasted to the Chicago Tribune. It was as if the NFL had thrown a big party and invited every family except for mine. This was the year Goodell had robbed New England of its first-round pick over Deflategate, which understandably kept many of my people away, not that anyone missed us.

  * * *

  —

  I entered the venue, climbed a flight of stairs, and immediately confronted vomit. A shit-faced Bears fan in a #22 Matt Forte jersey was collapsed against the wall. It was not pretty. There is really no reason to mention this except that the sheer volume of the outburst was like nothing I’d seen—to a point where the man’s issue flowed down the marble steps of the theater. Draft groupies tried to maneuver around the accident. Parents shielded their children’s eyes. Football is family!

  Goodell commenced the draft with a rare tweet: “here we go. #NFLDraft,” the commissioner wrote, triggering the usual heave of responses from Twitter handles such as @TB12BestEva, @FoxboroughFrank34, and @CountTheRingsBaby. These, too, were not pretty. First response: “@NFLCommish how can you even walk with a giant dildo in your ass?” The commissioner did not address the question.

  But as the man said: “Here we go.”

  For as much alleged “expertise” goes into predicting it, the evening is usually good for a few surprises. There’s something about the draft, if not mesmerizing for its action per se, then for the dressed-up crapshoot it all is. The draft makes for such a perfect set piece in the Shield’s great reality show: thirty-two cliff-hangers packed into a few hours; big dreams and big money at stake, blue-chip belly buttons and gold-spiked shoes. Lions, Bears, and Browns fans can hope, root, and get excited over some new piece of strutting possibility. And when it’s over they don’t have to watch their teams lose for another few months.

  About the only sure thing at a modern NFL Draft is that Roger Goodell will get booed. Repeatedly, and with gusto. Beyond that . . . wait, WHAT?

  “Did you see this?” my colleague Ken Belson asked when I took the seat next to him in the designated press area. Here was our ticking time bomb, detonated before the Los Angeles Rams were even on the clock. Ken showed me a bizarre photo on his phone that was all over Twitter. It was a screenshot posted to Laremy Tunsil’s account showing someone, apparently Tunsil, wearing a gas mask with a bong attached to it. This was not your grandpa’s NFL Draft.

  There are certain markers that show a society in decline. Was this one of those? Where have you gone, Roger Staubach? It seemed that every single person in Draft Town and beyond was now looking at this tweet and wondering what the hell it was. The extended family of NFL insiders and nugget-meisters were fully activated. So many questions: Is that
actually Tunsil? Who posted this? Is it real? The tweet that will follow Laremy Tunsil for the rest of his days was quickly deleted. If only it was that easy. Screenshots popped up just as fast. Team Tunsil claimed his account was hacked.

  “This whole social media scene makes me sick,” Adam Schefter was saying as I walked past his ESPN perch in the middle of the room. Putting aside the obvious irony of this—the fact that Schefty himself is “a whole social media scene” unto himself—I took his point. This was a story out of control from the second it entered the hurricane of smear and guesswork that Twitter engenders (and the draft itself engenders). Well down on the list are facts, fairness, and yes, journalism, but mostly, we were all instantly in the vortex of whatever the hell this was.

  To say that the Men in Makeup at the draft were riled up over this tweet would be like saying that vultures had become riled up by the surprise arrival of a rhinoceros corpse. Schefter, of course, much prefers “actual football stories.” Player signings, personnel moves, injury reports, contract values—that’s his comfort food, not the off-field rococo like this that humanity will belch up (and God bless humanity!). Schefter owns these “actual football stories.” No one comes close, and when someone dares trespass upon his “breaking news” dominion—the Bears are looking to trade into the first round!—he fashions a certain smirk, one that says: “You posers need to step aside while the real pros like me mine for golden nuggets—with a pickax, not a fucking pan!”

  His colleagues humble themselves before Schefty. “Adam’s the first pick in the draft,” Sal Pal told me in awe. “He is the king. I just play right guard, wherever they need me.” But Schefter was flustered by the Tunsil story. He was hesitant to “go on the air” with it. He had not yet received confirmation—per sources—that Tunsil was in fact the Lineman in the Gas Mask Attached to the Bong. Other outlets were reporting that it in fact was, and Schefter was getting pressure from his bosses to do the same. He called his fellow NFL insider Chris Mortensen, who was being treated for throat cancer in Houston at the time. Mort counseled caution. Schefter was torn. This was one red-hot story, awaiting his imprimatur.

  He was still stinging from a major fail a few weeks earlier. Schefter had committed the unforgivable blunder of going to work out without his phone. It was only for twenty minutes, he said. But for the NFL insider-of-record, a phone-deprived twenty minutes can be lethal. “I never used to have my phone with me when I worked out,” Schefter lamented. But then came that fateful spin class. “I get back to my phone to find eleven or twelve text messages,” Schefter told me, slowly, as if spelling out the details of a trauma. “The number-one pick in the draft had been traded.” Tennessee had shipped it to L.A. for the right to select quarterback Jared Goff out of Cal.

  “And I had the story, too!” Schefter insisted. “But I was spinning.” Lesson learned.

  But this was no time to dwell. Schefter isn’t much of a dweller anyway, but especially in the fire hose of draft night, fans are tuned in to their insider masters as they rarely are during the off-season. Goodell called out the first few picks: Goff to the Rams, quarterback Carson Wentz to the Eagles at number two, Zeke Elliott to the Cowboys at number four. But for all intents and purposes, there was one story right now: Laremy Tunsil.

  First it was the gas mask photo, the hack and the postmodern social media absurdity of it all. It was not easy for anyone to get their heads around this situation, in the same way that it’s not easy to fit a gas mask around an offensive lineman’s massive head. Then came the next phase of the story, the one with a soundtrack: the big splat of a flesh-and-blood twenty-one-year-old’s draft stock dropping off a cliff. No one was touching Tunsil; not teams that were projected to take him (the Chargers took Ohio State D-lineman Joey Bosa instead, at number three), not teams desperate for O-line help (the Ravens took Notre Dame tackle Ronnie Stanley instead, at number six).

  What team would deliver Tunsil from this nightmare? Was the former “number one pick on the board” now too radioactive to be drafted at all? Pigskin pundits were calculating that Tunsil had lost close to $10 million in rookie earnings after he dropped out of the top ten. And counting. Like so many NFL stories today, this was riveting, sad, and uncomfortable at the same time.

  Finally the Miami Dolphins halted this white-knuckle trip by picking Tunsil at thirteen. He strutted onto the draft stage as he had the red carpet earlier, except seemingly half the size. He posed with Goodell and his new aqua-blue jersey. He then subjected himself to his requisite first “interview” as a pro, from State Television. NFL Network “reporter” Deion Sanders asked about the “elephant in the room,” or greenroom, where Tunsil said he first learned about the video, along with everybody else.

  “Man, it was a mistake,” he told Sanders. “You know, it happened years ago. Like I said before, somebody hacked my Twitter account. That’s how it got on there, man. It’s just a crazy world—things happen for a reason.” Tunsil appeared relatively composed, given everything. He relied on a few stock phrases (“things happen for a reason,” “I’m blessed to be a Miami Dolphin”). Sanders ended his grilling with a “God bless you, man, I’m proud of you,” and a hug.

  After the Dolphins ended the suspense, and the tension in the room subsided for a bit, I wandered through the galleries of corporate appendages and sixty-something adolescents. In the lobby of the theater, I noted poster-size photos of select NFL greats shaking the commissioner’s hand onstage right after they were drafted. There was Pete Rozelle greeting the fresh-faced newcomers like Dan Marino and John Elway onstage in 1983. Next to them was a poster of the great . . . Troy Vincent? Hmm, wonder why he’s in here, posing with Paul Tagliabue in 1992 after being drafted seventh by the Dolphins.

  It was always clear when the next pick was coming because the hall would explode in boos as soon as Goodell walked out onstage. Abuse reduction efforts by the league were mostly futile. Walter Payton’s widow accompanied Goodell onstage at one point, which might have dulled the edge for a few minutes. But the Human Shield technique has limited utility no matter how beloved or sympathetic the icon they pair with Goodell. Fans demonstrate impressive resolve when it comes to fulfilling their responsibility to beat up the commissioner. (The best example of this occurred at an unveiling of a Peyton Manning statue outside Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis that fall. If ever there was a safe stage for Goodell, this would be it: congenial midwestern fans with no apparent ax to grind against the league, festive occasion for the Colts legend. And as an added buffer, the organizers sent Goodell out to introduce Hall of Famer Tony Dungy, the former Colts coach who—as Peter King pointed out—was probably the most venerated person there, except for Manning. Yet the hate still showered down, and hard.)

  It is a mystery to me why Goodell allows this abuse to continue, pick after pick, round after round. Since the draft now shifts from city to city, the NFL could just as easily deputize a popular, nondemented home-team figure—say, retired Bears legend Brian Urlacher in Chicago—with the task of walking onstage a bunch of times, reading off names and posing for photos. How hard could that be? The bloodlusters might be deprived of their Goodell feedings, but it would at least spare the league the embarrassing look of having its commissioner booed savagely and repeatedly before the eyes of the world every single year. And don’t think the Membership doesn’t notice this, either. “Not good,” Falcons owner Arthur Blank told me, shaking his head when I asked him about this continuing tradition.

  At one point in Chicago, I started canvassing fans on why exactly they were booing the commissioner. Some of them had parochial grievances—a few Chiefs fans, for instance, told me they were pissed that the league stripped their team of a third-round pick on a player-tampering rap that year. “If nothing else, I feel I have to boo him for the Ray Rice situation,” a Bears fan, Larry Szwiec, told me. But mostly, the booing was an almost Pavlovian default reaction to the mere sight of Roger Goodell.

  One impressive aspe
ct of the commissioner’s draft bloodbath is the stamina of his lion’s den. The ardor in Chicago sustained itself well into the lower rounds. So committed were the hecklers that they would time the pauses in Goodell’s announcement and then seize the brief silence for maximum impact. “With the seventeenth pick,” Goodell would say, slight pause, and then the horde would scream into the void—“Fuck You, Asshole,” “Goodell sucks,” “Shut up,” “Go home,” “Go Pats”—before the commissioner could get his next set of words in to complete his fateful sentence (“the Atlanta Falcons select Keanu Neal . . .”).

  As round one neared completion, I headed to the press-filing center upstairs in search of the ultimate spoil for any self-respecting sportswriter—free food. All I’d eaten that day were bags of Skittles and Cheetos from the NFL-issued gift bag at our press seats. (Who says we can’t be bought?) But I managed to get lost as I navigated hallways and stairwells in the old building.

  I turned a corner at one point, trying to right myself, only to wander into a small and dimly lit area that was inhabited by none other than the man of the hour, Laremy Tunsil. Holy damn, the Gas Mask Elvis himself!

  Tunsil was in a hushed discussion with a young woman, presumably a handler assigned to him. She seemed completely overwhelmed. His eyes were red, as if he might have been crying. A security type looked sternly upon me and pointed to a doorway. Get out, I took this to mean. The doorway led into a converted classroom where the newly minted draft picks were holding their press conferences. Tunsil was up next, about to endure a thrown-to-the-wolves spectacle that somehow the league—and his own representatives—was allowing, as if the kid had not suffered enough already.

  Apparently, Tunsil had just learned of yet another troubling development. This one involved an alleged hack of his Instagram account. Someone—again, Tunsil said he had no idea who—had now posted a series of old text messages between Tunsil and an Ole Miss assistant coach that strongly suggested an improper cash payment. That was the backdrop against which Tunsil would be obligated to come out for his first press conference as a professional football player. He looked terrified.