Time for your weekly edition of the Defector Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag. You can also read Drew over at SFGATE, and buy Drew’s books while you’re at it. Today, we're talking about dumb PA announcers, selling yourself, coaches, and their hobbies, and more.
Your letters:
Jeff:
Do you have a bucket list? A literal list you've sat down to write or you keep on your phone? I'm only 37, but I've been considering making one, although it feels slightly morbid to do so. I just think it might be good to have a list of things I wanna do and places I wanna go in my life while I'm still here. Is that so wrong? Care to share any of your own bucket list items?
I don’t have a bucket list and will never have one. This was a realization that I had after I nearly died eight years ago. If you make a bucket list, you’ll just spend the rest of your life worrying about all the shit on it that you didn’t get to do. And if you don’t do everything on it, you feel like you failed. That’s no fun. It’s certainly not relaxing.
I’ve already been in the workforce for decades, so I don’t wanna spend my retirement in a frantic rush to finish off a goddamn to-do list. I have things I’d like to do before I die: places I’d like to travel, books I’d like to write, things I’d like to eat. But I’d rather keep those things loosely organized in my brain, to pick and choose from according to my late-stage whims. Maybe I’ll visit Antarctica. Maybe I’ll just fuck around at home and watch more football. I’m gonna allow myself the freedom to choose, because life is destined to be incomplete.
I’d also like to see the Vikings win a Super Bowl, but that’s not something that I can do myself. Unless I somehow poison all of the other 31 NFL teams, which is too much work.
Christian:
Now that we know Mike Tomlin does Minecraft, what other hobbies do you think different head coaches keep wrapped up? I could see Joe Mazzulla secretly maintaining Bonsais, or Dan Hurley really into rare books for whatever reason.
Do womanizing and alcoholism count as hobbies? No? Gregg Popovich and Sean Payton are both known as dedicated wine snobs, so maybe that’s distinguished enough to qualify. And Niners assistant Chris Foerster really liked to do blow once upon a time! That’s hobbyish!
You don’t really need my speculation here, because you’re about to find out, for real, which coaches are into which relatively niche extracurriculars. Tomlin’s Minecraft video did big numbers, so you better believe that the football media has already begun searching for more stories just like it. You’ve seen this genre of story done repeatedly with NBA players, and ESPN’s Kevin Clark made his name publishing multiple “This NFL team is obsessed with this non-football thing!” stories. Pieces like these make for an easy pitch, because A) They generate traffic by serving as general interest posts, and B) You can get players to talk about their crazy model train habit without them worrying it’ll make headlines for the wrong reasons. Both parties win in the exchange. Meantime, Deshaun Watson gets the comeback treatment from Amazon for being a serial frotteur. The mainstream media’s priorities in 2026 are jussst a bit askew.
Anyway, you won’t see me publishing such articles, because I don’t really give a shit what players and coaches do in their spare time. As a fan, I want them to think about football and only football, otherwise they deserve to live on the dole. But if I had to wager a guess about coaches and their hobbies, put me down for any control-freak head coach (Payton, Kyle Shanahan, Matt LaFleur) being into one of the fussy habits: model train building, molecular gastronomy, serial killing, and such and such.
Steve:
I was minding my own business watching the Steelers, hoping to kill time before another game started. Maybe I’d even see A-Rodge eat some shit. Then I noticed that every time the visiting team in Pittsburgh reached third down, some recorded ass bellowed, “Thiiiiiirrrd doooooowwn!” When did this start? And was there some Jackass Zero who thought this up?
Yeah, that sounds dumb enough to be a Steelers fan thing. That city has an imagination deficit that would astound even Zack Snyder. It’s not all that different from the Detroit Pistons’ PA guy shouting, “DEEE-troit BASSS-ketball!” every time there’s a change of possession. American sports fans can’t handle more complex cheering schemes than that. This is why Duke basketball fans have to pass around flyers to one another before every home game.
I’m not immune to indulging in this kinda shit. When I attended Michigan for a single doomed semester back in 1994, I went to every Wolverines home football game. The student section had two different rituals back then. First of all, if the ESPN cameraman came near us, we pelted him with marshmallows (no I don’t know why). Second, on any third down, everyone in the stadium would take out their keys, hold them up, and jangle them. Because it was a key down, you see. To this day, I will pantomime jangling my keys on every third down my team faces. I’m dumb as a post.
Paul:
I was wondering about reading books vs seeing movies, specifically thinking about Project Hail Mary. I'm a terrible reader; books intimidate me to be honest. But I bought the PHM book, optimistically thinking I would read it before having the chance to see the movie. As these things go, I saw the movie the other night. Absolutely loved it. So the question is now: Is it still worth reading the book? Does that hold for all book/movies or just certain ones?
It’s always worth reading the book, even if you’ve already seen the movie in question. Both art forms are inherently different from one another in terms of how you absorb the story, which automatically makes any film adaption—even if it’s 100 percent faithful to the source text—its own thing.
Plus, consuming a story both ways stimulates your critical thinking lobe. You get to analyze how the two works diverge and why you might have preferred one to the other. To use PHM author Andy Weir as an example, I read his first novel (The Martian) and then saw Ridley Scott’s movie of it. I really enjoyed the book, even while I recognized that Weir’s writing was pretty limp, almost in an Ernest Cline sort of way. Meanwhile, the movie is a truly great piece of entertainment, much better written than its source material while hewing to the science that made Weir’s book feel so possible. I couldn’t have appreciated the craftsmanship that went into Scott’s film without having read Weir’s book first.
By contrast, I didn’t read Weir’s PHM book before seeing the movie, which I thought was weak in the second half. Maybe if I’d read the book first (or at all), I’d feel differently. But I have a nasty habit of seeing the movie without reading the book. I definitely know that it’s costing me.
The Slow Horses books, and the show that it’s based on, are another good example here. Slow Horses is the best show on TV, so much so that I started reading Mick Herron’s novels while it was on hiatus just to get my fix. They’re perfect pulp novels. I didn’t get the thrill of watching Gary Oldman joyfully farting on camera, and each novel’s storyline is almost identical to the show’s beat for beat. But Herron’s writing, which is off-the-charts brilliant, makes the novels their own distinct entertainment experience. I’m glad I started in on them. I’m also glad the show is back, because Gary Oldman is elite.
Hugues:
What should the bar be for a team having a locker room champagne celebration? I just saw a clip of the Yankees having a champagne celebration for winning a wild card series. Dude, it's the wild card round and the Yankees win playoff series all the time.
Yankees fans, who have gone a whole 17 years without a title (oh noes!) will take umbrage with your assertion that their precious little team wins playoff series all the time. I remember having to work at a production studio once where the woman in charge would earnestly shout, “It’s hard being a Yankees fan!” to anyone within earshot. That lady was fucking awful.
Back to the question at hand. The baseball season is a long slog, and the playoffs are a mathematical crapshoot. So if you win any playoff series, I believe you have the right to celebrate like a fucking animal. Spray the champagne. Hit the clubs. Twerk. I’ll never begrudge anyone their right to party hard.
Joe:
One thing I really appreciate about your style is that you promote your books in a way that does not make you sound like a used car salesman. Joe Posnanski is a great writer but is constantly encouraging people to buy his next book. He will tell his readers a few times a week, "If you're in Portland come visit the X and Y bookstore on October 14th and I will sign my new book". Assuming I even had the ability to write a book, I would not like this part very much. Is it common for authors to spend a lot of time shilling their new book at bookstores around the country?
This is America, Joe. The way our country works is that everyone must be shilling something at any given moment. This is especially true if you’ve just published a book. Your publisher isn’t gonna purchase Super Bowl ad time to promote it; nope, all of that promotional legwork will usually falls on you. This includes collecting blurbs for the cover jacket, which is a mortifying process. I hate having to do it, but I have to if I want my shit to get stocked nationally. Because of that distaste, I don’t go as hard on the salesmanship as other authors, Pos included.
But there’s no chance I sneer at Pos for constantly hucking his wares. I also can’t ding podcasters who come on strong every time they blast out an episode link (“This was a really good one”).
The audience out there isn’t fixed in one spot. You have to repeat your pitch over and over again to make sure everyone knows about your book/podcast/vanity tequila brand. That’s just the nature of things, and people out there need to earn whatever living they can. Go communism, etc.
HALFTIME!
Jonathan:
If the entire world suddenly, simultaneously stopped farting, how long until social media notices and it's a trending subject? How long until The Nightly News reports on this phenomenon?
Who says that the world actually has to stop farting for someone in the media to declare that it’s happened? All it takes is one middle-aged Times/Atlantic writer to go two days without hearing someone fart for them to declare all farting extinct. It satisfies their core belief that anything that happens to them has happened to the entire world, and “The Death Of X” headline usually gets easy clicks. So if everyone really did stop farting, you’ll have already read three different “What Did We Lose When We Lost Farting?” thinkpieces before scientists actually confirmed the phenomenon.
By the way, I farted just now. Just in case Jonathan’s question had you worried about the future of cropdusting.
John:
I stopped smoking because I don’t want smoke in my lungs anymore, and I stopped eating the candy because I don’t want too much sugar in me. This stuff does the trick. The guy at the dispensary says you can even put the stuff in your coffee in the morning. Zero sugar and zero smoke. Green for morning, blue in the evening. It even comes with a little measuring cup. And you only need a little teeny bit. Most important: it lasts forever and it’s super cheap.
OK, but should you really be dosing your morning coffee with weed every morning, much less weed from the "Crooked I" St. Ides that can’t even make trustworthy malt liquor? I had a stretch not too long ago where I was noshing on a gummy damn near every night. It caused problems, so I had to cut back. If I had also been waking and baking all of those mornings, I’d be divorced and jobless right now. So mind your weed intake, both in terms of quantity and quality.
I don’t wanna sound like a narc, because I fully support legalization. But you can now get brain-melting doses of THC from a single hard candy, and you can buy a whole box of that candy over the counter, and for relatively cheap. That’s not the greatest thing for those of us who struggle with the very concept of moderation. Just like this country to ruin a good thing.
Alex:
During Bears-Eagles on MNF, Ben Johnson went for it on 4th and goal from the two-yard line, and Troy Aikman lost his mind. It felt like Aikman complained about the Bears "leaving three points off the board" for 10 straight minutes. This was one of the more obvious decisions to go for it on fourth you can imagine, between how close the Bears were to the goal line, and starting their QB3. Oh, and by the way, Chicago won 27-7. Are we ever moving away from this line of conservative thinking from older football minds?
Unlikely, but guys like Aikman are in a pronounced minority now, to the point where I can find their anachronistic ways more amusing than irritating. Nothing Troy Aikman says against going for it on fourth is going to make the public change their minds on this issue. Shit, ESPN even has a big ANALYTICS graphic running on every fourth down now, which often contradicts what Aikman is saying as he’s saying it. Again, I find this mildly entertaining.
Aikman has also been around for so long that I’m fond of him, enough to consider him grandfathered in to certain old-man takes. I do not offer a similar grace to any announcer I’ve always hated (that’s you, Phil Simms).
Aaron:
In two weeks my siblings are coming into town, and the three of us are going to sit down with our 73-year-old father to review his finances and convince him to go see a doctor. His mind is in good shape and, being a life-long athlete, he is (seemingly) very healthy for his age. But he suffers from spells of severe gout and has not been to a doctor in at least 20 years. He also drives a 25-year old BMW that leaks oil and sounds like it’s going to explode. I have offered to lease him a basic Honda Civic a few times, which he has refused. He and our mom divorced 25 years ago, so he is totally on his own. He is very private about personal matters, and will NOT be excited for our talk. Any advice?
Oh my God, my wife just had to spend weeks convincing her folks to get rid of their shit car. These goddamn old people. Stubborn as mules, they are!
Or stubborn as children. One of the predictable but sobering facts about taking care of your aging parents is that it’s a lot like taking care of children. Both factions are extremely headstrong, don’t enjoy listening to reason, and think they know everything. That means—unfortunately for you, Aaron—that your planned sit-down with your old man isn’t going to instantly yield the results you and your siblings are looking for. There’s a good chance he reacts to you guys the same way an addict reacts when they realize they’ve been lured into an intervention.
However, that shouldn’t dissuade you from having that talk with your dad. You just need to understand that this will mark the mere beginning of your effort to convince your dad to sell his car/see a doctor. Convincing an intractable family member is a multi-step process. With this first talk, you will be incepting the idea of self-care into your dad’s brain. He doesn’t like the idea of selling his car, but you’ve surreptitiously planted the seed inside of his mind that it’s an option. Once you’ve done that, you have to follow up with him, endlessly, about it. It’s not unlike plugging your book!
It often helps to be subtle in your constant reminders because—and this part is important—you want your dad to feel like he still has agency in the decision. So you call him up and drop a “How’s the BMW looking these days?” or “I just went to the doctor myself and they discovered I have an abscess on my big toe! Good thing I saw someone about that!” You’re alluding to the idea without sounding like you’re hectoring him about it. So that when he finally does decide to sell his piece-of-shit car down the line, he feels like it was HIS decision, rather than something he got bullied into. Best of luck!
John:
Through Reddit clickholing I’ve found a Chinese purveyor of good-quality sports jerseys. I’ve ordered an Ohtani and a Haaland for my son, and a Manny Mota Dodgers jersey for myself, and they’ve all been pretty nice. Anyway, the extremely sketchy mechanism for doing business with this company goes like this.
1. Pick out what you want on their (extremely 1998-design-coded) website and put it in your cart, which displays no prices
2. Email them a screenshot of your cart
3. They email you a price and you email them back your shipping details
4. They send you a link to an entirely different website on which you complete a credit card transaction (for the previously quoted dollar figure) that makes it look like you’re buying an ugly suit
5. They send you proof pics of your actual order, which you ok
6. They mail your order and you track it with yet another extremely janky-seeming website
7. Jersey
And here’s what I’ve realized: I enjoy this extremely dubious and shady process. (Or at least I’m gonna enjoy it until they steal my identity or some guys show up at my house demanding one of my kidneys or whatnot.) The skullduggery makes it seem like I’m doing something much more exciting than getting a cheap replica jersey. I also enjoy it because I tell myself that, by being a black market participant, I’m not enriching further Michael Rubin.
So. What extremely low-level crime or sketchy/questionable behavior do you regularly enjoy, Drew?
To avoid the Fanatics death star, I always buy my merch from DHGate: a site that’s just as shady as the one you’ve mentioned, only with a more efficient user interface. I do NOT like sites that make me work to get a price quote. That was true when Priceline first arrived on the scene, and it remains true now. If you can’t tell me the price of your shit from the jump, you can go get fucked. Yes, I always click BUY NOW on eBay instead of submitting an auction bid. Why do you ask?
As for lightweight criminal activity, I’ll go ahead and skip by the obvious choices—speeding, jaywalking, violating open container laws—and pick vandalism. I am no longer a vandal, but I still fondly remember my tweenage years when my best friend and I would stuff a pack of Black Cat fireworks into a mailbox, light the fuse, and then run away. Now was that a nice thing to do to an unsuspecting neighbor? No. But there’s no better childhood thrill than doing some mildly illegal shit and then sprinting away from the scene of the crime as fast as you can. That was cocaine to me as a 12-year-old. Maybe I should get back into the game.
As for shit I still do on occasion, let’s give it up for trespassing. So I jumped the fence and I yelled to the house, “Hey! What gives you the right?!”
Email of the week!
Mike:
I made it to Pope Hat Night at THE RATE to see my beloved White Sox play 7 1/2 beautiful innings before heading home. It was glorious - me, my Dad, and son (7) just basking in it all. Nun first pitch! Mascot in priest garb! Dudes dressed as cardinals! Mid-game humanity pep talk from Father Tom! We even made it on the jumbotron and smiled right at the camera. Incredible. We boogied after the stretch. The Sox lost the lead and the game. We had guys offering $10 for our pope hats on the way out but there was no goddamn way I was giving mine up. We're the Pope's team now. Surely this won't backfire, right?
Not thus far!
