One of the exciting frontiers for the legal community is the area of intellectual property, where someone’s original thought is considered as much his personal possession as his mechanical cow milker or the black socks below his Bermuda shorts.
And so the XFL surely will have to decide at some point–possibly at its funeral–who owns the phrase “He Hate Me.” XFL players are allowed to put nicknames on the back of their uniforms, though they certainly can use their stale, boring last names if they wish. Las Vegas Outlaws running back Rod Smart put the aforementioned “He Hate Me” in block letters above his number, and a star was born.
This led to an obvious question: Who hate you?
“They do,” he said, nodding at the other team, the people in the stands and English teachers everywhere.
Smart said this me-against-the-world approach works him into the proper rage for game day, and anyway, he’s making money off the T-shirt sales.
The XFL is a lot of talk, a few funny names on the backs of jerseys and very little substance. If the league had been smart–and there isn’t a whole lot of intellectual property in danger of being stolen–it would have had Dick Butkus put on a jersey that reads “You Dead.”
Butkus was in town last week for Saturday night’s war between the Chicago Enforcers and the New York-New Jersey Hitmen. He still looks like he could kill a man 10 different ways with his bare hands, at least two ways with his forehead and maybe once with a good-sized bunion on his foot. He still has a buzz cut that could clean golf spikes. He still has the same menace in his face.
When you look at him you realize what a fraud the XFL is. What they are trying to sell, besides dollops of sex, is violence. If there has ever been anyone more overtly violent than Butkus, let me know. Dick Butkus–has there ever been a better football name? “He Hate Me” looks like John Doe in comparison.
Butkus originally was to be the Enforcers’ head coach but became the league’s director of football competition instead. Bad move for everyone involved.
“I just like what I’m doing now because I’m involved in a lot more with the league,” he said. “It’s kind of neat. Coaching is one aspect of it, but that’s about it. When you’re working at the top, you see all phases. [Coaching] might have been great for the first year, but I might have gotten tired of it and maybe not done as good a job.”
My initial concern was that Butkus wouldn’t be able to help himself as a coach, that at some point he would run onto the field and make an unassisted tackle. I’ve come to the conclusion that Butkus is exactly what the league needs, and if I were in charge, I’d recommend a whole series of Woody Hayes roundhouse rights from the sideline, or at least one per team per half.
The XFL needs Butkus’ emotion, his locker-room eruptions. Butkus was never better as a civilian than when he was a color analyst for the Bears’ radio broadcasts. His contributions consisted mostly of three phrases: “Oooooomph,” “Arrrrrrggh” and “Jeez, tackle him, will ya?” Everything came from the heart. In the XFL, everything comes from the libido.
The game’s the thing for Butkus, and you can’t convince him the XFL is anything less than that.
“I went to L.A. and there’s a double-overtime game,” he said. “People were going crazy in the parking lot afterward, so I thought, `What could the L.A. Times say about this game?’ I look at the paper Sunday, and the article is all about some [bikini-clad] strippers in a hot tub at the game. What [was the Times] looking at?”
The strippers in the hot tub, Dick, like everyone else.
Maybe this is where Butkus will find his irreconcilable differences with the league. The Times said someone affiliated with the Los Angeles Xtreme hired the strippers. Butkus says the XFL wants “real football,” but with second-rate talent, lowest-common-denominator attitudes and girls, girls, girls, who really cares about the football? The XFL isn’t the end of the world culturally, but it isn’t good football either.
“Some people are so adamant about not seeing this be successful that they’re going to be surprised,” Butkus said. “It’s going to come back to haunt them.”
I doubt it, but being haunted by the XFL scares me. I can hear Vince McMahon’s voice interrupting my dreams. I can see hard cheerleaders thinking up ways to torture me with tire irons and bad football. I can see Butkus growling and pawing the ground.
I can see all of them agreeing on one thing:
They Hate Me.
