The Rookies

Smiling? Immodest.

Columnisting, which is defined by me as “the moronic convention of sports writers being force to shoehorn an angle and some opinion into a set word length,” is increasingly turning into a race to the most inoffensive conveyance of suburban smarm.

Rick Reilly’s so good at it that he’s almost shark-like: If he smells something even slightly deviant from the country club’s sensibilities, he snaps it up.

If this persists, we’re going to need a bigger blog.

Sore winners

These folks have won a lot. You’d think they’d be better at it.

The writing jokes write themselves!

There is a hideous new trend in sports that we need to stomp out like milkweed before it spreads.

I cannot imagine what it will be.

Scientists are calling it the Hey, look what I did, everybody! syndrome.

Wait, you mean vanity? Something that has existed since the beginning of time? This is new? And strange enough that scientists have classified it with that stupid name? This is both preposterous and poor writing.

There have been three dreadful examples of it lately, all from people who should know better.

Start with Phil Jackson. When he and his Lakers fricasseed the Magic to win another title, it was Jackson’s 10th NBA coaching championship, a new record. Jackson had become the king of coaches. Everyone knew he was going for 10 — it’s not like it was a secret — and there was the appropriate applause, huzzahs and standing on chairs.

This is decent stuff, except for the awful parallelism at the end: Applause is singular, huzzahs plural, and standing on chairs a gerundial predicate nominative. “Fricasseed” is a good word, though not quite what I would use to describe a series that was close until the non-competitive second half of Game 4 and Game 5.

But that wasn’t good enough for him. He decided to paint a mustache on his Mona Lisa by quickly grabbing a hat with a big X on it — for 10 — and plunking it on his head.

Hey, look what I did, everybody!

Did he say that? I doubt it. And the marketing is just that: It’s an excuse to get Phil Jackson fans, whoever they are, to buy a new hat or shirt. It’s about making money, not growing an ego.

How were the Magic supposed to react to his new look?

Who cares? Ever hear of “Winners talk, losers walk?” The Magic had their shot to send the “X” apparel to Zimbabwe, or at least back to the warehouse; they didn’t. Their reaction is irrelevant after the fact.

It was as if Jackson were saying, “Sorry to wear this in front of you so soon, but, c’mon, we knew where this was going, right?”

Look at the picture atop the column. That’s Phil, posing for a camera, inside the Lakers’ locker room. He’s not saying anything to the Magic there; he’s celebrating his unprecedented accomplishment in NBA coaching. I can forgive him for this mortal sin.

Tacky. Shrill. Brash. For a Zenmaster, it was very un-Zen.

Funny: Though Phil Jackson is forever linked with Zen philosophy, which isn’t the point here, at all, I’m pretty sure he’s never been averse to gamesmanship.

From his Wikipedia entry:

Along with being called the “Zen Master,” Jackson is known as the master of mind games. In the Laker film room before the 2000 playoffs, Jackson displayed images of Edward Norton’s character from the movie American History X, who has a bald head and a tattoo of a swastika, alternating with photos with Sacramento’s white, shaved-headed and tattooed point guard, Jason Williams. Jackson then displayed pictures of Adolf Hitler alternately appearing with Sacramento coach Rick Adelman. When Rick Adelman learned of this, he openly questioned Jackson’s motivational techniques saying Jackson had “crossed the line.”

If Jackson makes other coaches or teams mad about his behavior, he’s distracting them from the task at hand: Winning. It’s smart, not tacky.

Here was the all-time preacher of team hoops, with his team all around him — still sweaty from all that teamwork — and Jackson suddenly went 100 percent “me.” That hat said, Aren’t I amazing! Doesn’t this hat prove it? Don’t you wish you had one?

Entirely deflecting the credit for an accomplishment as momentous in their career as a tenth title is for Jackson would be unnatural. Though the hat definitely celebrates an individual accomplisment, it’s a thoroughly worthwhile one.

And while I certainly don’t want that hat, I can see where some people would want their own. And that’s the point, isn’t it, selling merchandise?

I hated that hat for the same reason I hate those hideous championship T-shirts and caps that teams don the instant the final buzzer sounds. Why cover up the glory of the jerseys you bled in together all season — the ones that have your city or team name emblazoned on the front — with some ugly shirts nobody can read? And why top it off with an ugly hat that just dangles a tag in your face?

Again, money is the motive. Those players don’t wear those shirts after that moment, I’ll bet. And their loyalty is due less to the city or team that they play in or for, and more to the people who ultimately pay their salaries. Those who hold the checkbooks want to see those shirts get sold. So players wear them. It’s simple.

Anyway, at least Jackson and his agents decided to donate the proceeds from X hat sales to charity.

So it was about serving his ego in some measure and helping serve others in another? I’m fine with this.

Of course, that just makes what Roger Federer did look so much worse.

Not two minutes after he had defeated Andy Roddick in a 77-game Wimble-never-done final, he went back to his bench, pulled out a tracksuit top with a 15 plastered on the side, put it on and spun around for the TV cameras.

First: “Wimble-never-done” is awful. Never write that again.

Second: Rick, have you missed the branding Federer’s done in the last few years? His Wimbledon whites are all accented with gold. His logo, much like Tiger Woods’, is a tribute to himself and only himself.

It was his way of congratulating himself on his 15th major, the one that bested Pete Sampras’ old mark.

Hey, look what I did, everybody!

Federer is the most accomplished male tennis player to have picked up a racket. He occasionally conducts himself as if he knows that fact. I’m fine with that.

Now you tell me: How was poor Roddick supposed to have taken that? It’s like Rog was bragging: I knew I was going to roast you, A-Rod. That’s why my people have been working on this all week!

Not that it matters, but Roddick’s supposed to get mad, go back to work, and get better. (That, or go home to Brooklyn Decker and realize that he’s still a winner.)

Reilly’s conclusions here seem strange: Confidence in your own abilities is bad? Celebrating a win is bad? It’s important for the the winner to care about how the “poor” loser takes the post-game festivities?

Talk about cheeky. I mean, it’s not as if some little seamstress ran out to iron the patch onto his jacket after the fact. The thing was in his bag the whole time! It’s not just the sweater that was manufactured. The gesture was too.

I hated that sweater for the same reason I hate when a player preens for the camera in the “I’m going to Disney World” commercials. Here’s his pinnacle moment, the one he’s worked toward his whole life. He should be going absolutely Lindsay Lohan nuts, but instead he’s looking into the sea of people for a director, a cameraman and a boom mike.

Once more, Mr. Montana — only this time, can you cry?

And why not be prepared? If some guys want to sell clothes and make money off of their accomplishments, and prepare appropriately, can you really blame them? That’s capitalistic, sure, but it’s certainly not stupid.

Also, let me play devil’s advocate: Say an athlete has kids who haven’t been to Disney World, and he wins the Super Bowl. He played well and earns the privilege of shouting that cliché to a camera. Don’t his kids go “absolutely Lindsay Lohan nuts” when they see that? Might that be something the player authentically wants to do?

I think that Reilly also underrates the import of players comporting themselves for the camera. Some, certainly, would want to run around the field like they did back in Pop Warner and generally enjoy their moment on the world’s stage. But a significant percentage of those players just want to bail on the stadium and go celebrate as young, rich, attractive men sometimes do in private, with large amounts of good food, alcohol that is swilled, not sprayed, and similarly young and attractive women.

The public eye demands that they stick around and do their thing for general consumption; in that way, the entire spectacle is forced. It’s worth it to look at things from that angle, too, Rick.

Federer’s sweater was a rare show of classlessness from a normally classy guy. One dipped in gold, no less. A gold sweater with a gold 15 pulled out of a gold man-bag. What, they couldn’t gold-plate the man himself?

Scroll up, Rick. He’s been doing this.

The day before Federer’s flub, Serena Williams drubbed sis Venus in a straight-set finale. Then, not 30 minutes later, she showed up at the press conference in a T-shirt that read, “Are you looking at my titles?” Okay, it’s funny. And a little dirty. But it’s immodest.

No, that’s very dirty, very funny, and a great flip of the objectification of Serena Williams to a grudging appreciation for her talents and accomplishments. I liked it when I saw it and can accept a little bit of ego if it comes with that sort of positive humor; modesty is, for better or worse, not the most important thing to this generation.

And all three — Jackson, Federer, Williams — are better than that. They almost always rise above the schlock. When they don’t, it’s unbecoming.

Unbecoming of what? Of whom? Public figures? Athletes? Their own characters?

If Reilly wants a time when no human took pride in and tried to maximize the value of their accomplishments, he is welcome to use his “ridonkulous” money and build a time machine to take himself back to the year Never.

I don’t remember seeing pictures of FDR rolling up to his fourth election-night victory speech wearing a “Four-ever!” tuxedo jacket. Neil Armstrong didn’t splash down with a “MoonMan” tat on his biceps. And I sure as hell don’t remember John Wooden slapping on an X hat after his 10th NCAA title.

Reilly compares athletes to, in order, a president who won his fourth term because the American people trusted him to guide them through World War II, an astronaut who became the first person to ever set foot on another celestial body, and perhaps the single greatest example of humility in athletics.

Of those, the first two came long before the time of self-promoting capitalism and in far different fields, and the third barely entered that era. And Reilly knows full well that Wooden’s idea that coaches are teachers both informs his low profile and sticks out as a minority view in the increasingly selfish sporting sphere.

He’s using the most outlandish examples possible to shame a few mundane moments of celebration. This is like using Reilly to condemn the whole of columnisting.

Athletes, coaches … these are your moments; don’t sell their purity. You will get your due, in due time.

Just let it come from us.

And, what’s more, he asserts that a nebulous “us”—possibly the sporting world at large, more likely the powers that be with reach and heft, like a column on ESPN’s website and in its magazine—is the entity that is allowed to lionize athletes.

Really? You have your own trademark and you’re lecturing other people about purity?

How immodest can you get?