Mystery of Butler’s benching persists
What is it with the New England Patriots? Why must there always be an unsolved mystery after they appear in a Super Bowl? (Well, anytime, really, but especially after a Super Bowl.) A year ago, everyone was wondering who had stolen Tom Brady’s jersey from the locker room. This year, the explanation for the vanishing of Malcolm Butler remains unknown and, if Bill Belichick has his way, perhaps unknowable.
The cornerback, whose interception delivered victory in Super Bowl XLIX, was MIA on the field Feb. 4, benched for all but a special-teams play despite being in on 97.8 percent of the Patriots’ regular-season snaps. It made no sense, particularly given how the Philadelphia Eagles marched up and down the field, scoring almost at will. At the time, unnamed sources speculated to NFL reporters that Butler was being disciplined for his behavior during Super Bowl week, but Devin McCourty, one of the first New England players to speak about the matter, said that wasn’t the case.
“As far as I know, all of that is the furthest thing from the truth,” McCourty told NJ Advance Media. “We all knew he wasn’t starting all week. That wasn’t a secret to the guys on the team. I get why people are fishing. The guy played 98 percent of the plays. I just hate that for him characterwise going into free agency. It’s just not true. As far as I know — and I was there all week — not one time did anything come up.”
But did teammates know why he wasn’t playing? If McCourty did, he wasn’t saying, which would be in keeping with Belichick’s passionate embrace of “omertà.”
“It sucked for him,” McCourty said. “He put a lot of time and effort in. However it falls, the last thing you want to do is not play a snap (on defense). To me, the worst part was to see all that (anonymous) stuff come out after.”
Owner Robert Kraft has professed to not know the reason, either, and it may not matter if Butler departs the Patriots when free agency begins in March.
As for Butler, he’s also said he’s in the dark, but denied accusations from unnamed sources that he misbehaved.
“During my four-year career with Patriots I have always given it everything I have to play at a high level, and would never do anything to hurt my team’s chances of winning a game, including this year’s Super Bowl where I visited with my family every night,” he wrote on Instagram. “During Super Bowl week I never attended any concert, missed curfew, or participated in any of the ridiculous activities being reported. They are not only false, but hurtful, to me and my family. Although I wish I could’ve contributed more to help my team win, I have to get ready for the next opportunity.”
His post drew one eyebrow-raising response. “Love you Malcolm!” quarterback Tom Brady responded in the comments. “You are an incredible teammate and player and friend. Always!”
Butler said he believes he could have changed the outcome of what became the Patriots’ third loss in eight Super Bowl appearances in the Brady-Belichick era. As for the man who could end this, he’s saying nothing.
“We put the players and game plan out there that we thought would be the best, like we always do,” Belichick said.
So the mystery lives on. At least we know what happened to Brady’s jersey.
The Winter Olympics are a global competition, with athletes representing 92 countries. But one event is dominated by Americans and Canadians like no other: Zamboni driving.
It is conspicuous, this army of 37 mostly imported Zamboni drivers, doing their quiet, mesmerizing work of resurfacing the ice, back and forth on their big machines, when the action pauses and the cameras turn away.
“I have really good American drivers,” said Remy Boehler, an ice expert from France in charge of the surfaces for the figure skating and short-track speedskating arena and practice rinks. “For me, it is a dream team.”
Ice is hardly a foreign substance in South Korea, especially when it’s this cold, yet when it comes to making it and resurfacing it, the Pyeongchang Olympics organizing committee outsourced it to foreign experts.
Can’t anyone else around here drive a Zamboni?
The answer is more complicated than a simple yes or no. It has to do with the small pool of Zamboni drivers in South Korea and the three men, none of them Korean, hired by the Pyeongchang 2018 organizing committee to oversee the ice at the venues. Each wanted to assemble an Olympic-caliber crew.
“I look for two things: someone who is competent operating a Zamboni, and someone who wants to be part of a team,” said Mark Messer, a Canadian in charge of the ice at the Gangneung Oval, home of speedskating, and working his seventh Olympics. “We’re immersed in this — eight guys, together 16 hours a day. Unless you have good chemistry, it’s got the possibility of running off the rails.”
To keep the Zambonis running straight, Messer built his team with six Canadians and an American. As if to give their work a local flavor, they christened their three shiny Zambonis with names of things they have consumed in their rare offhours: Pork Belly, Soju (the omnipresent Korean liquor) and Kloud (a Korean beer).
The experts say that driving a Zamboni takes more skill and experience than fans may realize, and the deepest, most-experienced pool is in the United States and Canada.
“I can teach anybody to drive the Zamboni,” said Don Moffatt, overseeing a team of 16 drivers at the ice hockey arena, “but it takes many, many years to learn how to actually operate it and operate it properly.”
The Olympics, he added, “are not a place to train people.”
(Let’s pause for an important lesson in ice-related nomenclature: Not all ice resurfacers are Zambonis, the way not all tissues are Kleenex, but these are, with their logos concealed because of Olympic sponsorship rules.)
Zamboni is based in California, and 17 of its machines are in use at the Olympics. If the drivers were athletes, the nation of Zamboni would be the 22nd-largest contingent at the games. Altogether, 15 are from the United States and eight are from Canada. South Korea supplied nine drivers, most working practice rinks. Five are from Japan. Just one — Barbara Bogner from Colorado — is a woman.
Mainly, the ice chiefs found trusted drivers by tapping into connections at home. Most of those at the hockey venues work at NHL arenas in places such as Edmonton, St. Paul and Denver. At the figure skating and short-track speedskating sites, most drivers work smaller arenas or oversee the ice operations at recreation centers. Those at the long-track oval have specific experience in ovals, which require a more pristine sheet of ice.
“It has to be absolutely perfect,” said Paul Golomski, whose job at home is facility director of Pettit National Ice Center in Milwaukee. “Thickness is critical. The amount of speed they’re carrying, the ice has to be perfectly flat.”
Every ice sport demands a different surface, with variations in thickness, temperature and hardness. At Gangneung Ice Arena, Boehler split his crew between figure-skating and short-track specialists. Figure skating requires thicker, softer ice. Short-track needs colder ice, but not too brittle that it gives way on the tight corners.
Beyond the complex refrigeration systems, Zambonis are the primary tool in making the ice and keeping it in good condition, a big machine that does a lot of detail work.
“I could give you a 5-minute tutorial, and you could drive the Zamboni out there,” Messer said, nodding to the huge, glassy oval. “But you’re not going to understand the effect of turning the blade up or down, which controls how much you shave, which can make or break the ice. Or how much wash water you’re using, the amount of water you’re using for flooding, where the low spots are on the rink, where the high spots are.”
Zamboni drivers, like athletes, see the Olympics as the pinnacle. The ice chiefs, fully understanding the importance of perfect ice, are putting only their top drivers on the ice during competitions. In hockey, the ultimate honor is to drive for the men’s gold medal game, but the pair has not yet been chosen. served outrage and derision on social media.
“It’s not some adult Disney world where you go to take selfies,” one responder wrote on Swaney’s Instagram account. “The Olympics are a showcase of the BEST athletes in the world and Swaney made a mockery of that. She made a mockery of people’s life work. She made a mockery of halfpipe skiing in general. She did this so she could flaunt the title of Olympian. Unbelievable.”
While Swaney’s case is extreme — and should immediately lead to reforms that prevent it from happening again — she’s hardly alone in lacking the world-class credentials that most Olympians are expected to have.
At least two North Koreans skiers who finished a combined 98 seconds behind the gold medalist in men’s giant slalom were part of a last-minute delegation intended to bring a bit of reconciliation to this divided land. No such justification could be made for the skier who finished just ahead of them, 17-yearold American Charles Flaherty, competing for Puerto Rico and more than 38 seconds behind the winner.
He took up skiing after watching the 2014 Sochi Games. Four years later, he was able to represent Puerto Rico — where his family moved when he was 9 — at the Winter Olympics.
It should be harder than that to get here.
Of course, Flaherty is a grizzled veteran at his craft compared to German Madrazo. The 43-year-old Mexican only took up cross-country skiing a year ago, which was somehow enough time to land a spot in Pyeongchang. Not surprisingly, he crossed the line last among the 116 competitors who finished the 15-kilometer event — nearly 26 minutes behind the winner.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re 43 years old and it doesn’t if there is no snow in Mexico and it doesn’t matter if you don’t have the money to pursue the sport,” Madrazo said. “What matters is that if you want to do it, you can do it.”
That might be a heartwarming sentiment, but imagine being one of those worthy athletes stuck watching from home, knocked out of the games through legitimate qualifying methods.
The International Olympic Committee always makes the claim that opening up spots to underqualified athletes such as Flaherty and Madrazo might spark interest in countries that have little to no winter sports heritage.
But rest assured: Puerto Ricans will never have any interest in Alpine skiing; Mexico is not about to become a cross-country skiing hotbed.
These athletes — quite often the only member of their country’s Olympic team — seem to serve mainly as a conduit for well-connected suits to land an all-expenses-paid trip to the Olympics.
If you had actually looked past shirtless, oiled-up Pita Taufatofua when he marched into the stadium during the frigid opening ceremony, Tonga’s lone athlete at the Pyeongchang Games, you would’ve seen at least three well-bundled officials from the South Pacific island following behind him.
While you can make a strong argument that athletes such as Taufatofua and Madrazo, not to mention the bobsled team from Nigeria following in the tracks left by the Jamaicans, bring some much-needed diversity to these largely white games, the same cannot be said of Swaney. The Californian simply scammed a hugely flawed system, turning up at enough events to gain an Olympic spot by doing nothing more than not falling. She had no chance of qualifying for the U.S. team, but was able to represent Hungary because her grandparents are from there.