It is time once again for the sensation that's sweeping the nation . . . namely, "Can We All Agree?"
You know how this works; numerous issues cause rifts between conscientious sports fans, but some silly non-issues occasionally arise and I take it upon myself to identify these chimeras, canards, and red herrings in order to dispense with them and enable us to move on to sounder ground.
I think we've established that I believe E.S.P.N. Radio's new "zero tolerance" policy should make another attempt to shut down a weblog a fireable offense.
The next item on the blogosphere's agenda for E.S.P.N. Radio, though, needs to be getting preening pretty-boys off the air. (What follows is in response to something that originally occurred many months ago, so I apologize for the delay, but my rejoinder remains relevant. However, I would like to begin by offering a disclaimer: I do not mean to suggest that Mike Greenberg might be gay, which I do not believe to be the case; rather, I mean to suggest that Mike Greenberg might be a woman.)
Mike Greenberg, the testosterone-impaired co-host of "Mike & Mike in the Morning," took time out from his daily regimen of flossing, moussing, and waxing to offer a sissified retort to Stacey Pressman's admirable paean to the days when men were men and women were glad. Replying to Pressman's denunciation of the metrosexual as a man [sic.] who has "taken himself as his own love object," Greenberg wimpily whimpered:
Speak for yourself, Nancy.
Do I look like I'm obsessed with my appearance? For crying out loud, I get my picture taken with holes in my socks!
Greenberg went on to argue that "there is nothing wrong with women who like football and the smell of gasoline. But I don't know many of my friends who want to date one."
It's official: Mike Greenberg needs to take his Y chromosome to the customer service counter and return it for a full refund. Although that bit about liking the smell of gasoline was an ancillary point, the only person I've ever heard about who had a strong dislike for the smell of gasoline was Jason Compson in The Sound and the Fury and William Faulkner called him the nastiest villain in American literature's most nuanced canon.
I don't know where Mike Greenberg and his array of hair-care products call home, but I'm from the South, where we tailgate harder for the spring scrimmage than most fans do for actual games. Greenberg doesn't think any of his friends would want to date a woman who liked football?
Honestly, seriously, no kidding . . . I just ran down the list of my friends in my head and I can't think of one who's in a serious relationship whose wife or girlfriend doesn't like football. For that matter, I can't imagine any woman being willing to date a friend of mine if she wasn't at least willing to learn to like football.
Among the great achievements of my good friend Jason, being chosen as a law clerk for the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court ranks well behind his having married his wife, Kati Jo, who knows more about football than he does. (As a lawyer who has been admitted to the bar of the U.S. Supreme Court and a football fan who writes a sports weblog, I know which is the more impressive accomplishment.)
When Georgia played Virginia in the 1995 Peach Bowl, it created a division between my old friends, Pat and Laura. Both of them are University of Georgia graduates, but Pat received his baccalaureate degree from Mr. Jefferson's academical village, so he was rooting for the Wahoos. Pat won the game on the field but Laura won the smack-talking in the stands.
My friends choose their wedding dates based on the football schedule . . . which is good, because, if they didn't, I wouldn't go to their weddings. (When my friend Beth got married and her wedding party featured folks with feet in both the Georgia and Georgia Tech camps, she chose the one Saturday in the fall on which neither the Bulldogs nor the Yellow Jackets had a game.)
Mike Greenberg's wife doesn't think he's an idiot; she thinks he's Carrie Bradshaw.
For the benefit of those of you who are curious whether you're a prissy narcissist with highlights like Mike Greenberg and the estrogen-infected wusses he describes as his "metrosexual brethren," E.S.P.N. has offered the metrosexual quiz. (By the way, guys my age like to joke that we're old enough to remember when M.T.V. played music videos. Am I the only one who's starting to get the feeling that, a decade from now, guys my age will joke that we're old enough to remember when E.S.P.N. covered sports?)
Let me tell you about the quiz: I flunked it. These are the questions put to American men by the Worldwide Leader in Styling Gel; answer them if you dare:
Once . . . and I have a razor in my hand the entire time.
Can you leave the house without putting product in your hair?
I wouldn't leave the house with product in my hair. I'm not even entirely sure what the euphemism "product" is intended to describe.
Here's my hair-care regimen, in its entirety: I get out of bed. I get in the shower. I wash my hair with generic dandruff shampoo. I get out of the shower. I dry my hair with a towel. I run a comb through my hair. I go about my day without ever once giving another thought to my hair.
Do you moisturize daily?
Daily? I haven't moisturized ever! I wore a baseball cap to Bloggerpalooza '07 and, because it was sunny, the tops of my ears got sunburned so badly they peeled. I didn't moisturize them; I just sat there and put up with four days' worth of peeling ears as penance for being dumb enough to stand out in the sun for several hours wearing a baseball cap.
Not counting sneakers, how many pairs of shoes do you own?
First of all, I won't count sneakers, because I've never owned sneakers. However, I own one pair of tennis shoes, one pair of black dress shoes, and one pair of brown shoes. I wear the brown shoes about four times a year.
Have you ever tweezed, waxed or trimmed . . . ?
Don't even bother finishing the question; the answer's no.
Have you ever shaved/waxed your legs, chest or back?
No, no, and no . . . but wouldn't it have saved time if E.S.P.N. had just asked, "Are you a woman?"
How much do you spend on a haircut?
Dude, when I was living in Athens, I got my hair cut at Mr. Haircut No. 1 on Broad Street. It was a barber shop; there wasn't a stylist within 50 yards of the place. If they opened up a Mr. Haircut No. 2 within 30 miles of my house, I'd drive over bad road to get my hair cut there.
As it is, honestly, I don't know how much I pay for a haircut because my son, Thomas, and I always get our hair cut together. It's a father-son thing, like liking football. We go in, we sit down, and we say, "See this hair? Grab some scissors and make it look like it looks now, only shorter."
Your top drawer consists mostly of ...
Socks, cotton boxer shorts, and the sort of undershirts James Caan would wear while eating pasta with meat sauce in "The Godfather."
I once began writing a script for a "King of the Hill" episode in which Hank Hill went to the Mega-Lo-Mart and discovered that they no longer sold plain white 100 per cent cotton boxer shorts, forcing him to choose between a plain white cotton-poly blend and 100 per cent cotton boxer shorts with a pattern, but I never could arrive at a satisfactory resolution of our hero's dilemma.
What's the last book you picked up?
I'm re-reading Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, in which the main characters are classified as "Acutes" and "Chronics." Presumably, the metrosexuals in the book have been carted off to "Disturbed."
Going shopping is ...
. . . something done by women and/or people who haven't figured out that, if you order everything on the internet, you'll never have to leave the house again, except to go to work, church, and sporting events.
Best way to spend a Friday night?
Falling asleep on the couch while the game is on T.V.
How would you describe your sense of style?
I don't own an article of clothing that isn't either a grey suit or Georgia apparel.
E.S.P.N. accidentally omitted the question, "When you look at this picture, do you think to yourself, 'Kristin Davis is good-looking' or, 'I wonder what kind of conditioner Matthew Broderick uses'?"
Feel free to take the quiz yourself. However you fare in answering the questions, though, can we all agree . . .
. . . that E.S.P.N. Radio ought not to be broadcasting "Pansy Eye for the Sports Guy"?
Go 'Dawgs!