Simone Biles, Fantasy Football, Taylor Swift
A rough draft of my email invitation to my fantasy football friends. I ended up cutting out all the sports commentary for "length and clarity," as they say, but don't worry—I saved it for you, here.
This is what I wrote when I sat down to write an email inviting my friends to pick dates for Megan and I’s fantasy football draft. Turns out almost none of what I wrote actually said “pick one of these dates for our fantasy draft.” So I cut it out. Here it is. “From the Vault,” as Taylor would say.
And in case you don’t follow the NFL—the first game of the season is happening now. It’s too late to join my fantasy league.
Hi hi hi!
It's August 13th, which means you woke up 13 days ago thinking "It's Madeline's birthday month!" And, if not that, you woke up and thought, "Time to listen to the 8th track of Folklore!" We're thirteen days in and the month is being sipped away like a bottle of wine (or, in this sober household, like a jar of kombucha or a can of Diet Dr. Pepper).
As an aggressively not-morning person, I do not think anything right when I wake up, except perhaps how cozy my bed is and how many ways I can think to stay in it for as long as possible. I thank my previous day's self for not scheduling early meetings. I stop thinking and resume sleep.
Anyway! Regardless of where your brain was at those first few hours of this lovely summer month (or, as Viv said, this miserable month whose only bright spot is my birthday), it's August, and NFL preseason is here.
Many of you were lucky enough to compete in the first M n M Bowl last year, which involved picking winners for the college bowl games. Fun was had. This year, we've planned ahead enough to do a proper NFL Fantasy league. Before we drop the details for that, a quick run-down of sports happenings since January:
Jalen Hurts lost the Super Bowl. He fumbled a ball that KC immediately turned into a touchdown, and that is probably the thing he thought about first thing on the first day of August, and every other day this year. Our hearts break for a perfectionist who is struck by such an undeserved, high-stakes misfire. Especially when he is kind and gorgeous. Technically, his entire team lost the Super Bowl, but my sympathy is channeled towards Jalen individually. As someone who has a B-level work ethic, I have serious respect for humans with A-grade work ethics. When something doesn’t go my way, it makes sense. When you bench press the weight of a small island and study film 25 hours a day and only drink sugarless lemonade, a fumble into a touchdown in the Super Bowl is cosmically unfair. Anyway, more on the Eagles later.
The long winter of insignificant sports is over. What are these sports? Ummm . . . handball? Hockey? Track? I truly don’t know. Men’s basketball? I loved it for one season when CP as head of the players’ association brought the NBA back as the first professional sport during Covid. Haven’t paid much attention since. Unless re-reading Boom Town counts?
Women's basketball is going strong, but after Courtney Vandersloot left the Chicago Sky for the New York Liberty and Candace Parker left the Sky for the Las Vegas Aces, our championship dreams are hibernating. Maybe I should have gone to that victory parade two years ago. Thank you for 12 amazing years and a championship, Court. All the love, Candace. Our current 15-21 record misses you guys.
Simone Biles is competing in women's gymnastics once again. Did I say competing? Correction: Winning. Her first competition was outside Chicago; neither Megan nor I went but I will take every opportunity to mention the greatest city in Amer--Illinois. The Midwest? Anyway, she absolutely nailed it. She also got married and watched her Ken play his lil game. Then she won nationals and I teared up reading the ESPN article about it. I love her.
I attempted to write code for a fantasy women's gymnastics league, but I wanted everyone to be able to draft the GOAT, and if 15 people draft Simone Biles then everyone's a winner. As this is a high-stakes, cutthroat group of people, we turned away from the sparkles and art and brute strength of gymnastics and sought greener pastures. Like, actual grass. Occasionally turf. You know, football. As I am a technologically challenged grandma who suffers too much tech difficulty in my day job, that bit about learning coding was a lie, and this paragraph was an excuse to talk about gymnastics more than just during the Olympics.
The US Women's Soccer team didn't win the World Cup. Shoot. If only Brock had grown taller and Megan hadn't gotten those pesky concussions, maybe we would’ve had a chance. Sadly our national team was stuck in Australia/New Zealand with a different Megan, and someone who's friends with Taylor Swift, and an eighteen-year-old. And a crummy coach if the ESPN articles I didn't read are to be believed. As the only child in America who didn't play soccer at age 5, I have nothing to add to this commentary. Except a promise to cover this summer's most athletic feat occurring in US stadiums later in this email.
Baseball does things; they changed a rule to speed up the game and there have been more lopsided scores than I’ve ever seen. Ever in my five years of being a Dodgers “fan” and having the ESPN app show me White Sox scores because I live in Chicago. I guess that means it worked? Danielle and Megan and I keep talking about going to a Sox game but haven't nailed down a date. Mookie Betts, my favorite Dodger, competed in the Home Run Derby at All-Star weekend in July, which I forgot to watch in the thrill and excitement of the other huge event of that week, Sarah Gay's 60th Birthday Extravaganza. He did not win.
Did you know the Dodgers are the only major league team whose stadium is an accredited botanic garden? Did you know they built their stadium where a working-class neighborhood with good proximity to downtown had been razed? Did you know they're called the Dodgers because when their HQ was Brooklyn, people weren't used to anything but horse-drawn carts, then trolleys were invented and people were literally run over by the trolleys and macerated and killed? Go Brooklyn Trolley-Dodgers!!!! Imagine yelling that. Does that make them one of the only sports teams with an absolutely non-offensive people-group mascot?* Is it in fact the most inclusive and heartening, because (opposite of, for example, ye old Redskins) it encourages survival of all people in the neighborhood?
The greatest and most pervasive summer cultural and sporting event has been, of course, Taylor Swift's Eras Tour. As JJ Watt so kindly pointed out, she performs for 3 hours and 15 minutes with no breaks. When in Philadelphia, Taylor Swift confirmed that a line in Gold Rush about “your Eagles T-shirt hanging from your door” does indeed refer to the Philadelphia Eagles football team rather than the band The Eagles. I told you we'd come back to them. When in Chicago, she played her song The Lakes because....look at a map if you need an explainer on that one. Don't call Brock; she called it the ocean the whole time she was here.
The non-Eagles Kelce brother tried to shoot his shot with Taylor Swift when she was at work. Here’s Travis on the pod: “I guess she doesn’t meet people before shows, or at least she didn’t want to meet me.” Sir! Do you hold meet and greets before games? No! And there are fifty-three of you to spread out fans’ attention if you did. Does your job require you to use your vocal cords constantly and technically and pleasingly for three hours straight? No! Do you have stage makeup and glittery leotards and three pairs of tights to get into? No, but you do have your own version of pregame prep and I’m sure it doesn’t include meeting random fans, even if they have clout. If Taylor Swift wants to talk to you, you will get a call from Tree. Until then, be like Kobe, put respect on her name, and move on.
Speaking of the Kelces, I obviously was pulling for Eagles Kelce Jason to get his second Super Bowl this past February, as he is Jalen Hurts’ center.
On another Kelce-related note, did anyone else find it skeevy how Roger Goodell had both Donna Kelce and Damar Hamlin in his box at the Super Bowl? Keep your good marketing ploys close and your potential deaths closer?? Gave me the ick.
This fantastic New Yorker article says everything I have to say about the incredible feat that is the Eras tour.
Lastly, let's give it up for Tulsa native Nicole Lynn for getting her feminist client (and M & M Bowl favorite) Jalen Hurts the (at-the-time) highest paying contract in football.
Our fantasy league [has already drafted teams]. Let me know if you want to [subscribe to my Substack by clicking the button below!]
Madeline
(and Megan, Committee Chairs of M & M Bowl / M & M Fantasy Football)
*In the true spirit of Chicago, this is just a blast of wind. Its purpose is comedic. I am not proposing that all people-group mascots are a problem when there's a team called the Buccaneers. Pirates are one of the first masters of branding in our modern age! They would be hugely proud that a largely non-seafaring people honors their centuries of treasure hunting with a billion-dollar football franchise. I am not proposing anything at all except that you huff a small laugh at my wit and hilarity.