Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

This photo doesn't necessarily have anything to do with football besides the incidental fact that I'm wearing a Packers shirt and am very happy about it... which is usually how I feel when I wear that Packers shirt: unduly pleased. I wanted to post a photo of myself with more directly related football content but when I'm out on the scene I spend so much time behind the camera I rarely cross over to the other side of the lens. So this one will have to do.

Anyway, this photo was taken by my friend Stephanie, an excellent photographer, and I like it very much. I guess I just wanted to give you a shot of myself in that unlikely case you pass me on the street, maybe now you'll stop and say "hi" or perhaps more likely just do a double take and wonder if you recognize me from somewhere.

Later today, I'll post here one last time, a final imploration to join the Norman Einsteins mailing list, which will go something like this:

*Just email thelist-join@normaneinsteins.com then reply to the confirmation email.*

The Norman Einsteins is a new project bringing together talent from around the web to dish on sports and culture. I'm really excited to be getting this new project off the ground. Our first issue will be published online June 1st at normaneinsteins.com.

But right now I wanted to thank everyone who took the time to check out this blog in its lifespan.

June 27, 2007 to May 26, 2009. Exactly 700 days. Nearly two years. Thousands of hours of writing and research. Countless words crossed out, ideas scratched, lessons learned, and every so often the occasional completed piece advanced just how I hoped it would be.

This page will remain up but not updated after today. I have no intentions of pulling Fuhbaw down. Hasselbeck will remain forever in agony atop the banner. I still hope that people will stumble upon the Practice Theory or my best columns in the sidebar.

There were many stories that never happened, countless hours of leg work that never amounted to a single published word. An Ivy League game between the Columbia Lions and the Princeton Tigers comes to mind. An aborted interview attempt with Dick LeBeau after I ran into tons of interference from the Steelers.

Let me share with you one of these stories that never happened.

This year, I went to cover the NFL Draft on the scene. I attended the year before and thought I had the whole thing down pat. I expected to roll up to Radio City near daybreak and find a serpentine line of cracked-out football fans stretching blocks through the leviathans of midtown Manhattan.

And so I did, roll up to Radio City in the early morning hours. I emerged from the subway shortly after daybreak, light beginning to cling desperately to the city's forms still slowly shaking off the night's silence.

However, the street was desolate. No lines, no people. Just empty barricades stretching down the street. The entirety of my story had vanished. I planned to walk up and down and simply talk to people who waited all night. Why do you come? Why do you wait? What do you expect? What are you hoping for?

But the NFL had outmanuevered the tradition. And for good reason. The last several years, the long wait for the limited free seating at the draft had occasioned stampedes on the doors when it became clear there were more wrists than wristbands.

At the time, that knowledge didn’t comfort me. I was standing on the corner with no story and no clue what to do. I gathered what info I could from a bemused looking Browns fan then started to walk up and down the street, searching for any inspiration, any story whatsoever.

I met him on the corner of 51st Street and 6th Avenue. An overlarge Joe Horn Saints jersey was draped around his considerable frame. A phone jutting straight out from his ear so prominently that it wasn't immediately that I realized that he was talking to me.

But he was... in a stream-of-consciousness rant about just how the NFL screwed him over.

I just tried to keep up as he talked about the years he’s been coming to the draft. How he’s been heartbroken time and time again by the Saints. Which fans were worse, the Eagles or the Jets (his money, the Jets by a mile). What stadiums he still had yet to visit. Which free agent contracts were ridiculous. What draft prospects were overrated.

In the span of some three hours we wandered around trying to find a way into the draft and we talked football the entire time. I tried to turn this guy’s plight and a few other shutout fans milling about into my story. But in the end it just wasn’t compelling enough. Sure, the NFL changed the rules and didn’t tell anyone by giving out the wristbands for admittance the night before. But the decision froze out only a handful, a fair price to ensure the safety of the majority.

Instead of a story, however, I found a fast if brief friend. We eventually went our separate ways. But for those few hours the two of us shot back and forth about every topic imaginable concering this sport we love. It’s an experience I doubt I would’ve had if not for writing this blog for the past couple years.

And that’s special to me. I’m thankful that starting this blog has, contrary to the general depiction of bloggers as stuck in their parents’ basements, pushed me out into the world, whether the world of ideas or the bustling one of real people.

Most of all, though, I want to thank you who took the time to check in on this blog from time to time and allowed me the space to share knowledge, make mistakes, and organize my thoughts. Some of you have come and gone and come back again. Some of you have just come then gone. Some of you have diligently clicked that bookmark every day.

It's been fun. But now it's time to grow and change. Please join me in that growth and change... and allow me one last plug (no, not for the Norman Einsteins, that comes later today... and yes, you should join the list) but for Throwing Into Traffic where Zac will be dropping his always thoughtful, always entertaining NFL football knowledge.

Zac's been an indispensable brother-in-arms in the day-late, big-idea football analysis game. And no one’s even come close to what Zac does for the NFL beat. That's the nice thing about the internet, there's always something else out there to be discovered.