Tag: Colin Cowherd

When Alone was Charming

What’s your favorite aspect of the 1990’s? Colin Cowherd of Fox Sports and The Volume posed this question to author Chuck Klosterman.

The two were discussing Klosterman’s latest book The Nineties and its ideas about media coverage of Michael Jordan’s stint in Minor League Baseball, Sosa and McGwire’s home run race, and eventually OJ Simpson.

The murder trial, nearly thirty years ago, took the American news media to the apex of the most sensationalist and titillating reporting. A full departure from the days of Walter Cronkite and Ben Bradlee.

Even more frightening, the trial coverage predated the emergence of social media.

In the nineties there were far less avenues to share your opinion and ideas with the world. You had to be ravenous for the spotlight and attention of television or writing.

Social media offers anyone the opportunity to share their face, voice, and words on their local taco shop, Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, or SCOTUS overturning Roe V. Wade.

Most everyone, including yours truly, regularly takes up the mantle to yarl from the mountain top. Do we all participate simply because the means conveniently exist? Or has groupthink and herd unanimity homogenized?

Klosterman’s book and his answer to my and Cowherd’s questions concludes the nineties was the last decade before prominent social pressure to be involved with society.

It was understood to have your thoughts and keep them to yourself.

Chuck Klosterman

If you wanted to engage in public discourse obviously you could, but you didn’t have to. There was no expectation. To be completely alone and isolated with your own thoughts was fine.

It would have been odd to even ask a celebrity like Tom Hanks about the Anita Hill allegations in 1991 yet today Hanks would likely offer cogent thoughts about the public hearing.

An anonymous person, not just celebrities, likely have canned responses and reflexes prepared to avert public scrutiny and shaming. Everyone carefully minds their public avatar. Their brand.

Yes, again, yours truly as well. Just follow just check my instagram story. I pay to keep this blog alive despite reawakening my scribbling.

However, I find myself more content with my thoughts on my own terms rather than persuade, in essence control, the public narrative.

I wish I could just delete my Instagram but I have an abundance of excuse trap cards ready to counter any move. No cop-out I make physically prevents me from deleting the account. I delete the app from my phone periodically, but I just check my account on my laptop or redownload the app again.

Call it social engineering or my desire to share my views. I’m an addict but a self-aware addict establishing my own terms.

Always an opinionated boy, I grew up during the infancy of social media. 2006 was a far more innocent time puddling around on Gaia Online than reading Twitter comments today.

Gaia was a charming first place for me to discover digital connection. Sharing your thoughts back then online was still new, inspiring, and truly liberating, but those days are long gone.

Social pressure to be active in society exists, specifically on the internet. At the same time there’s a brudan of anxiety, humiliation, and sometimes even harm for participating.

CAUTION: ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK (but you kinda have to)

The nineties was the last time one could be alone with their thoughts and not even imagine there were any consequences for it.

Photo by Pauline Loroy

Something I Herd

I listen to Colin Cowherd almost everyday after work. In his daily “Opening Rant” Cowherd usually shares a personal anecdote to relate to one of many sports headlines of the day. Today he went in on Kevin Durant’s recent public exposure he’s still sore about his time in Oklahoma City. Quick back story, Durant was caught using “ghost” social media accounts to argue with trolls and detractors. Colin wasn’t “perplexed” by Durant’s behavior and I wasn’t either after his argument.

We learned last summer of deep personal discontent between Durant and Russell Westbrook and the rest of the Thunder organization. Everyone got exposure to what Durant likely wanted private. Cowherd related Durant’s public scrutiny to a public divorce. There’s a new chip on his shoulder and desire to prove sports fans and media wrong about his decision. Kevin has nothing to prove. He won a championship, was the best player in that Finals, and solidified himself as one of the best to ever do it.

Durant’s not unique among other greats though. Cowherd used a favorite NFL Film’s clip of mine. Tom Brady, now a five time champion, wept when asked about the day he was drafted. I stamp this as Exhibit A for why Brady stands as the great quarterback ever. Even now, and then too, falling to pick # 199 vexes his core. It’s helped motivate five Super Bowl victories and a wealthy life. I look and think about his story a lot, personally.

I’ve never written this publicly. My biological father gave up his parental rights to me when my parents divorced. Did you read that? I said gave up, not terminated, which is the proper/legal phrasing. I still feel like he gave me up. Now I’ve forgive him but never told him that. I may never tell him. We haven’t talked in over five years. I don’t know why he did it and at this point I honestly don’t want to know.

He was probably 27 or 28 years old, not much older than, and he fucked up. I fuck up, all the time. He made a mistake. It doesn’t justify it for me but I understand he fucked up. He was young and I’m certain it’s probably his biggest regret. While I’m really proud of myself for forgiving him and moving forward I cannot deny it still infuriates me. Like Brady and Durant, I’m bigger and better than my scars but they’re always there and I’ll never forgot the shame and abandonment I felt.

Those negative feelings have motivated my personal success more than anything else. I’m just being honest. It almost disgusts me how adverse my motivation is, but it’s taken me to places I didn’t think climb to. A therapist told my mom and dad (stepdad) how lucky they were I was on the trajectory you’d want your kid. Looking back on my school days I can see some many classmates and former friends that never escaped the emotional rut of a broken home or simply themselves.

Like Cowherd, we’re both children of divorce. I think there’s something about the abandonment and failed marriage, for me, that changes you forever, like leaving an everlasting crater. When that pain comes back through bad parenting, friends cutting you off, and girlfriends leaving you I’ve struggled to overcome those… I call them failures. They’re really disappointments and learning experiences but some side of me, perhaps my ego, sees them as failures.

With every “failure” comes a new challenge to rise up and overcome. I’ve made it. It took longer than I would have liked but I did it. The hardest hurt to get over was a break up. Seems like lifetimes ago. It’s negative and positive at the same time. I unfortunately compare myself and measure where I am in life. Conversely it’s pushed me to succeed where I didn’t think I could. I hope in achieving my goals I can leave behind abandonment once an for all.

What I herd today from Colin made me see I can put my pain to rest. I’ve committed myself to lose weight, and I have. I’m making progress in my career to climb up where I want to create my best work.