Monday, June 4, 2012

Hip Dad, Cool Dad

When we were growing up, we all knew these two types of dads, didn't we?

There were many, many kinds of dads we knew, but we all knew at least one hip dad and one cool dad--or at least most of us did.

You know the difference, right?

Hip Dad....yeah, kind of a sad case.

Hip Dad, man, he's the dad who buys you the pot to smoke in the garage and usually smokes it with you and your friends. He tries so hard to be one of the guys. He talks about how he'd like to hit Molly Cyrus' shit and tap Britney Spears' well worn ass.

He means well, and makes everyone uncomfortable. Really, life lost all meaning for Hip Dad when he graduated from high school.

Hip Dad is harmless. He's a tool. He's an embarrassment. But still, he's harmless.

But the money dad......that was Cool Dad, huh?

Cool Dad was good looking. Cool Dad fit in easily with your buddies. Cool Dad could eye up a sixteen year old chick's tight ass, then look at you and chuckle and wink and you'd all bust up. That Cool Dad! What a dog! That rascal! I bet he banged his share of hot ass when he was your age!

That's cuz Cool Dad......he, at heart, truly was one of you. And he was just sayin' what you were thinking! Cool Dad let you drink beer and smoke pot in your room--just as long as you were discreet.

Want to bang the shit out of your girl? Cool Dad would wink, give you a thumbs-up, and toss you a box of rubbers and take Mom out for dinner. Cool Dad would always cover for you while you went and "got some pussy".

Fuck yeah. Everybody wanted to hang with Cool Dad. Nobody wanted hang with Hip Dad. Hip Dad sucked. He tried too hard, man. Cool Dad, well, it all came so easily for him.

Then one day, something bad happened to Hip Dad's and Cool Dad's families.

And whatever the crisis, whatever the problem, that embarrassing hack, that joke, that pathetic Hip Dad.....he was there, wasn't he? He stayed. He struggled. He stopped trying to be hip and with-it. He was working too many hours trying to get the family out of trouble, whatever it was.

Yeah, Hip Dad was there. Hip Dad......he came through. Hip Dad, well, maybe he wasn't really embarrassing at all. He didn't seem as sad and pathetic. You.....holy cow.....kind of admired Hip Dad. Maybe, at the end of the day, he WAS a tool. But he was tool with some character, right?

Cool Dad, not so much. You see, usually, when a Cool Dad's family got into trouble, he was the cause of it. You see, whereas Hip Dad always knew that he was bending or breaking the rules, he always did know where to draw the line.

Cool Dad, well, quite frankly, the reason he didn't care if you broke the rules is that he always thought that rules were for suckers. And if Cool Dad used to think rules were for suckers, they didn't apply to him, because if there was one thing he was not, it was a sucker. You see, Cool Dad always believed his own press releases.

Usually, Cool Dad would get busted for some kind of embezzlement. And while formerly Hip Dad worked his ass off to get his family out of trouble, Cool Dad not only caused the trouble, he never hung around to, you know, fix it.

Cool Dad was the type to take all of his embezzled money, as well as any money in the family's checking account, pick up his righteously hot admin and head to South America--usually in a country with no extradition agreement in place with the United States.

So let's look at the NFL's version of Hip Dad and Cool Dad, shall we? Let's start off with Hip Dad!



Jim Irsay!

Yeah, Jim's Hip Dad. He gets on Twitter and tries to be funny and he's more often than not, his stuff falls flat.

He came from money....oh that's not cool in our society, right? And he has that goofy goatee. And he hangs around with celebrities and lets us all know about it. He posts pictures of himself at parties.

Hip Dad Jim.

But Hip Dad Jim knew when to come through. This year, his franchise was faced with cutting ties with Indy's favorite son, Peyton Manning or keeping Peyton and passing on Andrew Luck.

If Hip Dad Jim kept Peyton, he had a max of a few years left with him. And that was assuming Peyton's neck was fully healed.

Hip Dad Jim stumbled along the way to the draft. He and Son Peyton engaged in some politicking, trying to win the favor of Colts Nation. Hip Dad Jim went Hip Dad and called Peyton--a guy I have no doubt he really did love--a politician. And Peyton courted public opinion as well. Of course, Prized and Beloved Son Peyton was the winner of this contest.

But when push came to shove, Hip Dad Jim was there, doing what he thought was best for the future of his franchise: releasing the most beloved athlete in Indianapolis history, Peyton.

And I watched that news conference that day. And I saw dorky, goofy, weird Hip Dad Jim crying. He knew he had to do what he was doing. It would be absolutely fucking insane to keep Peyton, pay him a 28 million dollar roster bonus, and pass on Luck without even knowing if Peyton would ever be truly healthy.

And yeah. That's the price of doing business. But it tore both of them up. Both knew what Peyton meant to Colts Nation and what being a Colt did for Manning. Hip Dad Jim wasn't concerned about looking hip that day. He didn't care. He was in tears. And so was the Prized and Beloved Son Peyton.

Hip Dad Jim.....could have taken the easy way out. He could have passed on Luck and paid Peyton the money. And if Peyton never healed and Luck was in another town, he wouldn't have gotten ripped for it. He would have been lauded for "being loyal". But foolishness hidden behind sentiment isn't loyalty, it's propaganda. It would have been the easy way out.

Hip Dad made the tough decision. And he's been bearing the ire of Colts fans since that day. Colts season tickets sales have come to a halt. Hip Dad did the right thing, and sadly, sometimes the right thing costs a lot in the short run.

Colts fans, be proud of Hip Dad Jim. He's quirky, he's dorky, and he makes you roll your eyes. But when the future of YOUR team was in his hands, he had the balls to do the right thing for the Colts. It hurts to see Peyton go--but at the end of the day, realize that Peyton could have pushed back the date for that roster bonus and didn't.

After that press conference, Jim became Hip Dad Jim again, trying to convince us--for whatever reason--that Luck wasn't a lock for them. I think this was Hip Dad Jim's awkward way of paying proper respect to a kid he did like as well, Robert Griffin lll. Nobody bought it and we all rolled our eyes at Hip Dad Jim.

Such a dork...... LOL And when RG3 declined to work out for the Colts, we really rolled our eyes. We couldn't believe Hip Dad Jim even asked him to work out. That Hip Dad...sheesh....

Now let's look at the NFL's answer to Cool Dad.



Pete Carroll.

We all bought into this guy, didn't we?

But it was soooooooooooooo easy to do that. Pete was the ultimate redemption story.

In 2000, one of the NCAA's most prized programs, USC, was a mess. And USC did a coaching search to find someone to replace Paul Hackett, who had been fired. And they took a chance on Carroll, a fired NFL head coach.

And he turned the program back into a powerhouse within two years. And we all loved it--or Pete, to be honest. He wasn't really a failed NFL head coach. He was a .500 NFL head coach. He was fun, the players loved him, he was good-looking as all fuck (trust me male readers, he is), he was charming, and quite frankly, the cameras loved him.

Now before we go any further, 90 percent of what Carroll did was legit. He did turn USC into a recruiting giant. He did turn the program around and into a national power. No doubt, USC was so strong due to what Carroll did in those early years that it survived harsh NCAA sanctions. Well, at least it survived partially due to what Carroll did.

You know the story. USC won a ton of games, dominated the Pac-10 (now Pac-12) forever, and won a couple of national titles. All from a guy the university had fourth on its wish list.

Funny how at the time, this wasn't a popular hire. Remember, Cool Dad Pete wasn't a great NFL success. And he had been out of college coaching since 1983. But Cool Dad Pete turned USC--and his career--around 180 degrees.

Cool Dad Pete was a blast, too. He loved to prank his own team. One Halloween, he and his running back LenDale White, staged a fake argument during practice. A few minutes later, somebody held up a dummy with LenDale's jersey on top of the building next to the practice field and LenDale "jumped" off the roof.

All was good. Man, Cool Dad Pete was awesome!

Then one day, the Reggie Bush scandal broke. And the NCAA came down hard on USC. Because of a self-entitled little cheater like Bush, USC got fucked. And the only reason that Bush's violations came to light was because he didn't honor the agreement he had made and he was sued. In other words, Reggie tried to cheat out the guy who had helped him cheat to begin with.

Anyway, the Trojans were stripped of their BCS title, USC haters had a field day and Trojan fans gritted their teeth and took their medicine. (which is more than Ohio State fans ever fucking did, oh by the way).

And when his family was in trouble, when the family that gave him a second chance needed him, Cool Dad Pete suddenly decided that it was time to accept one of those offers to return to the NFL and hightailed his ass to Seattle. Funny how Cool Dad Pete turned down so many NFL offers until that one day. Cool Dad Pete says that was just a coincidence.

I think Cool Dad Pete is bullshitting us--not that we really care now, do we?

So USC got that weird uncle who always puts his foot in his mouth, Lane Kiffin, to come back. Oh, University of TN fans pissed themselves in phony anger when Weird Uncle Lane left, but come on. They hated Weird Uncle Lane the second he became their head coach. They were thrilled to get rid of a guy who wasn't a "Volunteer Guy".

The most important family member, other than Uncle Lane, was Prized Son Matt. As in Barkley. The prized son could have left, and no doubt could have gotten the NCAA to waive the one year wait-to-play requirement.

Prized Son Matt would have had just about every university in this country coming to him like NBA teams came hat-in-hand to LeBron James a few years ago.

It would've been easy. No one, not one person, would've blamed Barkley if he left.

But Barkley didn't leave like Cool Dad Pete did. Barkley, whose college career would be so unfairly affected by the selfish and arrogant actions of Reggie Bush, stayed. And not only did Barkley stay, he embraced Weird Uncle Lane.

And that's not all. The prized son went to his teammates and convinced THEM to stay. He convinced them that they could hang together, get through the sanctions, and keep USC a viable, strong football program.

And a funny thing happened. USC kept putting it's foot up just about every team's ass that it played. Barkley got better and better. And now, after losing so many scholarships that they had to limit tackling in practice to avoid injuries the past couple of years, USC will enter the 2012 college football season as a favorite to win it all.

All of a sudden, Weird Uncle Lane doesn't seem all that weird now. And Prized Son Matt is more prized and loved than ever.

Had Cool Dad Pete stayed, imagine what his legend would be. Had he chosen the harder road, imagine his legacy. But he bailed. Cool Dads are never really, truly evil. They're not truly bad, evil guys.

But unlike Hip Dad, Cool Dad never realizes when playtime's over. Hip Dad stumbles all over himself, but in the end, tries his best to do the right thing.

Cool Dad doesn't. He's lovable. He's fun. He's nice and he's charming. But Hip Dad, he's the guy who ends up delivering.

Pete Carroll isn't a terrible guy. He's not even the reason for USC's troubles. And he did far more good than bad. His only crime was running too casual an environment. Fuck, you can't have every player tailed by a private detective. The real reason is Bush. He tried to get paid early and cost USC a national title and much more. But this happened on Cool Dad Pete's watch.

USC is better off that Carroll was there. But this goes both ways. Carroll is better off now than when he wasn't a hot property and needed and wanted a major university to take a chance on him. And when that university needed him to stay, he did not. He went to South America with his hot secretary.

Hip Dad Jim stayed. He made the hard choice. Indy is better off for it.

And despite all of this, I still like Carroll. He's funny. He's still Cool Dad. It's how he rolls. But I admire Hip Dad Jim so much more. I trust Hip Dad Jim. Cool Dad Pete is still the likable guy we've always known. But Hip Dad Jim is trustworthy. Hip Dad....he took care of his family.

Cool Dad Pete took care of himself.

You remember how I mentioned that Hip Dad really never got over leaving high school? Well, Cool Dad never really DID leave high school in his mind.

But in a year or so, we'll all roll our eyes at Hip Dad Jim's goofy Twitter statements, blame him for the Colts inevitable era of losing as they rebuild, and we'll smile at that old rascal Cool Dad Pete when he pranks Marshawn Lynch by putting moth balls in his Skittles.

Kids, it's just how we roll. And that says far more about us than it does them, doesn't it?