Starting Five
1. “These bitches is getting truculent.” Highly recommended reading. Phil Bronstein’s account of the raid on Osama bin Laden through the eyes of the Shooter himself. We learn that the aforementioned sentence were the last words exchanged between the point man on the raid and the Shooter prior to his killing the leader of Al Qaida. The “bitches” in question were bin Laden’s wives. We also learn that Metallica did not appreciate the U.S. military using their music during interrogations because it did not want to be associated with promoting violence. As the Shooter pointed out, “Dude, you guys have an album titled ‘Kill ’em All.‘”
2. And that’s how he earned the nickname Woody. Did former Ohio State coach Woody Hayes really have a turtle clamp down on his B1G to demonstrated toughness to Earle Bruce’s coaching staff, or is this tale literally an Urban (Meyer) legend? More than once while relating this anecdote, Meyer reiterates that it is a “true story.” Apocryphal or not, the unnamed assistant coach’s retort — “Coach, I’d do this. Just promise to not poke me in the eye” — is classic.
Woody: “Fear the turtle? Never!”
3. Is it just a coincidence that on the same wintry February day in New York City that the Westminster Kennel Club names its Best in Show Sports Illustrated trots out is annual swimsuit issue models? Top-notch breeding is top-notch breeding, after all, no matter the species.
Nina Agdal does not grace this year’s cover, but the feeling here is that some day the Danish valkyrie shall.
4. Four Alabama football players are arrested on charges of second-degree robbery and fraudulent use of a credit card. The big winner in this mess? Stormie Henderson, a former Miss Alabama contestant (are there any women in Alabama who do not compete in beauty pageants?) who just happened to have the great forturne of being arrested in Tuscaloosa on the same night for leaving the scene of an accident. Her photo appeared on the same jail database page and she can expect a phone call to appear in next year’s Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue soon.
5. Will Leitch decides to annihilate Darren Rovell’s professional reputation –without actually calling him a bad guy because, you know, Will Leitch is too nice a guy to say something mean about someone. That this column ran not long after Rovell pointed out –via a tweet from Leitch — that apparently Leitch is both a slow and feckless runner (Will explains the source of the misunderstanding in this story) is certainly just a coincidence.
Our thoughts: Rovell is kind of a tool (kind of?) and everyone knows this. Nice guy, maybe, but kind of a tool. My illuminating Rovell moment took place before last year’s Super Bowl. During a media session Rovell, then with CNBC, went around to different players on the New York Giants and New England Patriots and asked them elementary stock questions, questions such as, “Do you know what a P-to-E is?”
The laugh was supposed to be on the gridders. Nudge, nudge, they may be big, strong, wealthy athletes, but we all know more about the stock market than they do. The rub here, of course, is that Rovell understood/understands less about finance than any of the other CNBC anchors. And so it was “Squawk Box” co-host Joe Kernen who turned the tables on Darren by asking him, on-air and definitely unscripted, more sophisticated equities questions. Kernen may have come right out and said to Rovell (I seem to recall him doing this), “How does it feel?”
Tool Time
There was no amity in Kernen’s comments and you could tell that Kernen, and the rest of the CNBC on-air people, thought of Rovell as, at best, immature. At worst, dumb and insipid. I rather enjoyed the entire exchange.
All of which does not excuse Leitch for his anti-Rovell polemic yesterday. First, because as we can see from reading the two pieces, Leitch’s passion was motivated by vengeance. And, in truth, Rovell was only pointing out to his followers something that Leitch, who is at least as well-known as Rovell is, had foisted upon himself.
Second, because Leitch –and this is his longtime M.O., along with relying on unnamed sources to bolster his argument — does this “I’m a nice guy and I’m not about to say something mean or hurtful about anyone” schtick shortly before writing mean and hurtful things. He’s the Venomous Equivocator (“I can’t find a single person that likes Darren Rovell… that sounds harsh, but I don’t mean it personally”) I’d respect Leitch more if he just went 100% after Rovell without doing the whole, “but you seem like a decent enough guy in person.”
Like you, I enjoy much of Will Leitch’s writing. But I don’t respect him. I do respect Buzz Bissinger. I respect Buzz because he looked Will Leitch dead in the eye and said, “I gotta be honest: I think you’re full of shit.” Buzz said what he meant and meant what he said, directly to his subject. Is Will Leitch capable of that? Or is he guilty of the same thing of which he accused Rovell: “intellectual dishonesty?”