Trial and error and America’s game
Football damages the brain. We all understand that even if the links are scientifically written in pencil, rather than ink. Not every player walks away damaged, but many do. And like many other professions, some people are of very little brain before they walk through the door.
Anyway, this brings us to the acting attorney general of the United States. His name is Matthew Whitaker, and before he was a big bald meatheaded acting attorney general of the United States he was a legal commenter on CNN, and before that he was a failed candidate for the Senate and the treasurer in his native Iowa and on the board of a company that was eventually penalized for widespread fraud and shut down, and before that he was a lawyer who worked as the U.S. attorney for southern Iowa under president George W. Bush.
And before allllll that, he played football.
Whitaker was a tight end at the University of Iowa from 1990-92, where in three years he caught 21 passes for 203 yards and two touchdowns. They were run-heavy teams, those Hawkeyes. They lost the Rose Bowl to Washington after the 1990 season, and tied the Holiday Bowl with Brigham Young in 1991, and in his final year they stunk. Merton Hanks, the 49ers safety, played in that era. Iowa has produced some NFL tight ends over the years, too, like Dallas Clark and George Kittle.
Not Whitaker, though. Based on his Twitter account he stayed a huge football fan (and as it happened also a hockey fan). He retweeted Green Bay Packers tackle Mike Daniels’ campaign to make the Pro Bowl, because Daniels went to Iowa. He is a huge Vikings fan who admires the hell out of retired receiver Randy Moss, calling the hall of famer “an intriguing figure and a great football player.”
He also was a big Tim Tebow fan. As a quarterback. In professional football. Tim Tebow. As you may see, he has some judgment issues. And now he’s a meathead who became acting attorney general after he went on CNN with his big ol’ bullet noggin and said the president should not be overly prosecuted by special prosecutors, and wrote the same, and he allegedly told fellow guests he was doing it so he would get a federal judge gig if the president saw him on TV. Well, look at what happened! Meathead like a fox!
Look, it’s nice when a former college football player manages to graduate from law school, because a lot of football players sacrifice education for the game and don’t go pro. Sure, it’s sad when the result of that education is that you wind up on the board of a company that gets convicted of fraud, and depressing when your legal opinions are laughed at by sane lawyers, which is like the old joke: What do you call someone who graduated last in their class in medical school? Doctor.
And man, it’s a real bummer when a former college football player gets entangled with the bad magic of America, and gets on cable TV to attract the president’s attention so he can scam a nice lifetime judge appointment back in Iowa, and instead get enlisted as an apparatchik to obstruct justice. If only Matt Whitaker had gone to a passing school, like a Florida, where Steve Spurrier was starting out. Maybe then Whitaker makes the NFL, makes a few million and invests in a … oh wait, the scammer company was based in Florida. That wouldn’t have worked.
So how much did football create Whitaker? Was he just a scam-friendly dumbo when he walked in? Is he just the product of an America that rewards the con men of its age? I guess we’ll never know. But you know what this means: America’s best hope for justice might be an intervention from Randy Moss.
Last week this space went 10-3. As always, all lines could change.