The Atlanta Falcons have kicked off another rebuild, and their old quarterback is coming back to help them with it. The team announced Saturday that Matt Ryan will return to the franchise and serve in a newly created role: President of Football. Yep, that's it. Just "President of Football." Ralph Wiggum must have consulted on the name.
Before hiring Ryan for the new position, the Falcons put together a pretty farcical interview process. Did anyone really think the team wouldn't hire the guy who owns basically every meaningful franchise passing record? As funny as it is to imagine Matt Ryan getting a form rejection email from Falcons HR, telling him the company's going in a different direction, that wasn't happening. The role will have Ryan reporting to team owner Arthur Blank, and "collaborating with Falcons President and CEO Greg Beadles" as they search for a new general manager and head coach to replace Terry Fontenot and Raheem Morris, who were both fired after an 8-9 season. The new GM and HC would then report to the ex-QB.
I have no clue whether Ryan will turn his former team into playoff contenders. Frankly, that's not my concern. My focus is on that stupid job title. The NFL, as an institution, loves to take itself too seriously and rely on exhausting verbiage to suggest a high level of tactical intelligence within the sport. In this case, the Falcons went in the direction of brevity, but it sounds like a kid's playtime invention.
Although the job is new for the Falcons, this kind of title inflation has become a recent trend in sports. The Boston Red Sox had Chaim Bloom as Chief Baseball Officer—essentially president of baseball operations—and when he was fired in 2023, Craig Breslow assumed the same role. This past October, the Duke men's basketball team invented a job for Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum: Chief Basketball Officer. That sounds a lot loftier than the reality of the position, which from my interpretation is a former Blue Devil being available to chat with the players. Is Tatum joining "periodic virtual sessions with the team and coaching staff to provide ongoing perspective throughout the season," or is he hopping on a Zoom call to give them a pep talk?
This phenomenon is not exclusive to athletics, of course. Every line in a résumé gets puffed up with five superfluous words, and if there's a way to add in "executive," it'll be there. Pretty much anyone can be an executive producer in Hollywood these days. Personal brands are lifeblood, and if you don't have one, you're screwed. You are the protagonist of reality, and to get anywhere in life you need to sound more important than you actually are. Hell, I co-own Defector, and it's Sunday, so nobody can stop me—I'm excited to announce that I will be giving myself a new title at the company: Chief Executive Minister of Blogs. Before anyone asks, the hiring process did comply with the Ratto Rule.
