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 sentence diagrams, proper oven temperature, forbidden urinals, and more.
Before we get to the business at hand, a quick reminder that All Ball, the Defector NFL podcast, debuts tomorrow morning. Co-host Arif Hasan and I are bringing you 100 percent football takes, with no added gambling or fantasy talk. Look for it in the organic podcast aisle!
Your letters:
John:
Should college football have an age limit?
Let’s savor the twist of fate here for just a moment. Not too long ago, there was discourse over whether or not some football players were too young to turn pro. Now everyone is freaking out over players who are potentially too old to play college ball. Boy, it sure is fun to argue over such things.
I gotta provide some background in case any readers missed it. Just before Labor Day weekend, a handful of would-be NFL rookies who received a visit from the turk at the end of training camp announced that they’d be returning to play college ball at LSU. Like most people, my initial reaction to the news was, “Wait, you can do that?” LSU head coach and tanned eel Lane Kiffin believed you could. SEC officials disagreed, and then it became a whole thing, with the conference threatening to boot LSU out entirely and Kiffin backing down at the last second. His Tigers, boasting a roster already loaded with over 40 transfers for this season alone, would go on to beat the unholy shit out of Clemson in the opener anyway.
It won’t be the last time we encounter this argument. Thanks to NIL, the lines between college ball and pro ball have become increasingly blurry, to the point where a college head coach can credibly ask, “Hey man, why CAN’T dudes come back from the pros to play for us?” While Lane Kiffin is sleazier than a strip club with no cover charge, he’s no different from any other college coach looking to find an edge over other schools, no matter how low they gotta stoop. College football has been like this my whole life; the sleaze is simply taking on a new flavor now.
So I can’t get riled up one way or another over who “wins” this fight. College players are getting paid now, and every recruit—regardless of age or standing—deserves the chance to earn a living playing it. Where this gets dicey is when you have a college landscape where 26-year-old men are routinely competing against 18- and 19-year-olds. That’s not the safest way to stage football games, but then again football kills all of its players anyway. So capping the age of eligible players would only serve as a PR band-aid … which, as you might have reckoned, is exactly the kind of cheap solution that college athletic administrators love reaching for. That shit’ll pop up in the news cycle well before this season is over, especially if LSU keeps destroying everyone.
Barry:
My kids are at the "When am I ever gonna use this stuff?" phase of their education. Generally I hate this argument; I think every adult has used random school stuff more than they expected. Except for diagramming sentences. Is this strictly a skill taught to future English teachers? Or do professional writers, such as yourself, break down your sentence structure on the reg?
I do NOT diagram my own sentences. In fact, there’s no chance that I could properly diagram a sentence for you right now. I know the subject goes on the left-hand side and the predicate goes on the right, but after that, forget it. I’m not sure I can even label my parts of speech correctly. Does English have a pluperfect conjugation? No? Well fuck a duck, I’m getting a D in English.
But that’s the point of teaching kids this shit. You force them to break down the anatomy of a sentence in visual form, and then they get it down so that building their own sentences becomes instinctive, to the point where they can discard all of the legwork that went into honing those instincts. If I were still diagramming sentences today, A) I would be a nerd, and B) It would mean I still don’t know how to read and write correctly. The average intelligent adult shouldn’t require a periodic Hooked On Phonics refresher. That’d be like taking bike riding lessons when you can already ride the fucking thing.
So yes, even sentence diagramming has its future use for your little ones. It just won’t feel that way when they ask you to help them with their homework and you have no fucking idea what you’re looking at. I remember knowing how to graph a parabola once. That’s gone. Bye bye.
Sandy:
What are your feelings about the first four letters of your last name being MAGA? Have you suffered any ill effects? Any residual confusion from Trump people about where you stand on The Issues or anything like that?
Nope, no one mistakes me for a Republican just because of the first four letters of my last name. Kind of incredible, when you think about it. I’m not even sure members of the Trump administration possess object permanence, and yet Americans are still smart enough to take my name at face value. A miracle.
The only potential ill effect I might suffer from the MAGA-Magary connection is people assuming my last name is pronounced MAG-uh-ree instead of muh-GHAIR-y. But people fuck that up all the time anyway, even though I’ve clarified it many times over. In fact, some of you are already saying to yourselves, “Wait, you mean I’ve been saying it wrong this whole time?” Indeed you have. If only my last name had been McGary instead. Would have saved me a micron of grief.
Nick:
All the ovens I've ever had default to 350 degrees when you push the "bake" button. Considering how many recipes call for the oven to preheat at 400 (Tombstone pizzas), 425 (Jack's pizzas), or 450, wouldn't it make more sense for 400 to be the default? How many times do you stay at 350 or go lower?
Three-hundred fifty is the default temp on every oven I’ve ever used as well, including the oven we now own. I’ll keep the temp at 350 if the recipe (back of the brownie mix box) tells me to. I’m an obedient little boy when it comes to that sort of thing. But if I’m cooking from memory/instinct, my optimal oven temp is 375. That’s my oven, mind you. No two ovens work the same, and mine runs on the hot side. So 375 usually gets the job done.
That’s if I’m feeling patient which, as you may have guessed, isn’t one of my defining qualities, especially when it comes to eating. So I’ll happily crank that shit up to solar flare temps if I don’t wanna wait around to eat my Shake & Bake. Then the food gets done too quickly and I have to lower the oven temp all the way down to 200 in a fruitless effort to keep our food at the exact state of doneness it was when I pushed the oven too far. Our oven also has a Keep Warm function that only keeps the food tepid. Cooking isn’t always an exact science (for me).
And you may be asking, “Wait Drew, if you’re so horny to eat, then how can cranking up the oven finish the cooking process ‘too quickly’?” Well, it’s because I’m often cooking for the whole family, and my wife and kids are far more willing to wait until our designated family suppertime (6:30 p.m.) to dig in. I can’t go sitting down and taking my first bite 20 minutes earlier because that’s rude to the rest of my family, and because I would be done with my meal 15 minutes before they’ve even sat down. So oftentimes, and this is true, I have to leave the kitchen after finishing cooking dinner, so that I don’t drive myself insane with the hungries. You would have thought the Wegovy I take would help mitigate these cravings. You would be wrong. The late Robin Harris and I have the same weight problem. We can’t wait to eat!
Lee:
Say you're strapped in a room with no internet or other TV for every NFL game this regular season. Before Week 1, you have to pick the 10 QB's you get to watch. You can watch every offensive snap they take, but no defensive plays for that team. How would you rank the QBs you'd pick for this?
Fuck, my team’s QB situation is gonna hog like three of these slots, if not more. My team always takes viewing priority over the other 31, and right now the Minnesota QB room is populated by a dwarf who always gets hurt, a busted old man who sucks but “knows the offense,” a third-year bust who’s dumber than Cam Skattebo, and the immortal Max Brosmer as the emergency practice squad guy. I won’t even be able to watch the Vikings' defense play in this scenario, and it’s the better unit! I hate you, Lee. I’ll kick your ass for putting me in this wholly imaginary bind!
But you asked the question, so I gotta answer it. Here are the QBs I’d want to watch the most during the 2026 NFL season.
- Kyler Murray (and there’s no real point in picking any of the guys beneath him on the depth chart because if/when Kyler gets hurt, my team is fucked)
- Josh Allen
- Lamar Jackson
- Drake Maye
- Caleb Williams
- Sam Darnold
- Matthew Stafford
- Baker Mayfield
- Joe Burrow
- Patrick Mahomes
I’m taking a risk including Mahomes on here, because I have no faith he’ll magically return to form less than a year after having his knee turned into coleslaw. I also left Jalen Hurts off here not because I deem him un-elite, but because he’s a boring watch. If I never have to watch Jalen Hurts run another Tush Push, I’ll be a happy man. And even when he hits on a 40-yarder downfield, he still manages to make it boring.
PHILLY FANS: “Go birds!”
Oh please, even YOU losers can’t stand watching that dullard play football.
HALFTIME!
Sam:
Do professional athletes have to go through the same HR stuff that everyone else in an office job does? Do they have work email accounts? Do they have an HR department? Do they have to do cybersecurity trainings and fire-safety modules?
They have an even worse onboarding process than office drones do. First of all, every rookie has to endure a league-mandated transition program that lasts for days on end, and usually includes a guest lecture from Michael Rubin on how to build your own personal brand. And they’re not even free after that. Because what is a tape session but a sexual harassment training video without any of the campy entertainment value? And what is that weekly all-hands with your head coach but an HR head reminding you what your responsibilities to the company are, over and over again? And don’t think you can whip out your phone whenever you’re bored out of your skull, because the least essential employee on your team’s staff will leak that intel to Mike Florio before the workday is over. I’m someone who breaks out in hives if I’m stuck in a Zoom meeting for longer than 10 minutes. Force me to attend all these NFL meetings and I would probably start drinking again.
Did I ever tell you that I was in an onboarding meeting when 9/11 happened? True story. It was my second day at a new job and they were conducting a benefits seminar when someone burst into the conference room and told us that the World Trade Center was on fire. Then we went downstairs and watched the whole thing unfold on a standard definition TV. Then my new boss told us to go home. I’ve never been less grateful to be pulled out of a pointless meeting.
That reminds me: happy 25th 9/11 to all who celebrate (Rudy Giuliani). Osama bin Laden is laughing his ASS off at all of us right now.
Not A Soccer Player:
What if, rather than standing in the middle of the goal on a penalty kick, the goalie stood over to one side or the other? Now everybody knows which side the kick is going to, and the goalie can time his leap over to that side with the kicker, who now has only the narrowest slice of goal to aim at. Genius? Or have I gone full Chip Kelly in my reinventing the wheel here?
Take a moment to think about the potential flaw in your logic there, Woody Boyd.
By the way, if you feel bad watching a pro soccer player biff a pen, wait until you see a youth player do it. If that had ever happened to me, I would have dug a hole on the pitch and never come out of it.
Dan:
The men's room in my office has two stalls and four urinals. Today I walked into the restroom and it was empty, save for an OUT OF SERVICE sign on the first urinal in the row. I walk by urinal number one and get comfortable at urinal number two. As soon as I get going, another person walks into the bathroom, walks right up the urinal that has the OUT OF SERVICE sign on it, and just starts going like the sign isn't there. Am I obligated to notify building security? There were other urinals and stalls open.
Well, at least now you know who’s an alcoholic at your office.
But don’t snitch on the guy. It’d be one thing if he took a dump in the urinal (I just tried searching for the UrbanDictionary term for this and couldn’t find it and now it’s torturing me; no it’s not an upper decker, that’s when you shit into the toilet tank). But brashly pissing into a broken urinal isn’t a violent enough crime to report to the authorities. I wouldn’t share a pizza with that guy anytime soon though.
Steven:
My wife and I have a fellow couple-friend that we visit to cook out, watch football, and drink beer with. They’re great company, however they stock their guest bathroom with tissue-paper thin toilet paper. Can/should I confront them about this?
Nope. That’s no-go territory. Only way you can even begin to consider bringing it up is if you’re shitfaced with the husband and already goofing on one another. And even then, it’s fraught. Because you could be like, “Yeah well, you guys have toilet paper in your bathroom that’s cheaper than Trump!” and still get the record scratch. I may or may not have just watched The Drama, so I’m hyperaware of all faux pas presently.
Kevin:
What's the etiquette for ditching my old team for a new one? A lifelong Jets fan turning 50 in a couple of years, I realize I am not getting any younger. I want to spend my twilight years actually enjoying football. With the Jets as my team, that is just not an achievable goal.
I’m a fan purist, so my answer is that you picked the Jets, so you’re stuck with them. Tough titty. You can try to bail all you like, but you’ll never be as attached to your new team as the one you grew up rooting for. That’s the way I see things. However, plenty of my friends and colleagues feel differently. Our own Kelsey McKinney adopts the home team of any city she happens to be living in. I will never tell her how repulsive I find this habit, but it’s a free country.
Brandon:
What's the best way to check if your fly is open in public? I pretend to check that my shirt's tucked in, then give a brief brush over and once I feel some zipper, I think I'm good. Do you have a best practice without looking like you're diddling yourself?
Exactly what is your baseline criteria for looking like a sex offender in public? If every guy who looked down at his clothed crotch in public were a potential offender, we’d all be in jail (except for all members of the Epstein set, who are apparently allowed to molest kids without fear of consequence). No one gives a shit if you have to check your fly in public, so just do it. Your dick won’t suddenly come flying out of your zipper and attack a nearby meter maid.
Pete:
The first day of school, I always do crowd work by asking students to name their favorites. Yesterday, a kid told me his favorite movie was Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. My internal reaction was, "Wow..." but I said, "that may be the first time I've ever heard that!" I'm glad I have at least one kid to talk with about Star Wars, so that's cool. But if he would have said that to a diehard fan, I'm sure he would have gotten a more dour response. Which fanbase is the worst?
I have no statistical evidence of this, but I’m pretty sure that the Star Wars hive has more or less died out in recent years. The franchise stretched itself so thin that audiences could barely be bothered to go see the new Mandalorian flick. And, despite the presence of Baby Goose as the lead, the next Star Wars theatrical release looks even less essential. So there has to be a fair number of fanboys like me who have moved on to obsessing over some other bullshit. That said, if a kid told me their favorite movie, out of ANY movie, was Attack of the Clones, I would dropkick that child out of a third story window. Get some taste, you little piece of shit.
As for Pete’s question, I’m gonna leave it open to the comment section below. I’ll just say that the astounding success of Spider-Man: Brand New Day (which is now the No. 2 domestic box office earner of all time) does not exactly fill me with joy. I’m sure it’s a perfectly fine movie, but the last thing I want is an MCU comeback. I want that thing to stay dead forever.
Kurt:
I’m rewatching Indecent Proposal the other night as a grown adult (as a pre-teen Demi Moore rolling around half naked in $$$ was enough) my question is, unless you’re already rich and famous, you’re taking that $1 million for the one night offer right?? Or am I the crazy one??
Ah, let’s all remember that stretch in the '90s when everyone in America wanted to fuck Demi Moore. A more innocent time, ironically. Anyway, for the young people reading this column (all six of you), Indecent Proposal starred Moore as a fetching young lass who’s in love with Woody Harrelson, but gets offered a cool $1 million for a one-night stand with super rich guy Robert Redford. She takes the deal, and emotional turmoil ensues from there. The best scene in the movie comes when Redford sits down at a gaming table in Vegas and coolly tells the dealer, “One.” Then the rest of the table gasps and murmurs each other, he wants to bet a million. It’s highly amusing. You don’t really need to know much about the flick beyond that.
Anyway, of course the average American takes that deal. Although, given the rate of inflation since that movie’s release, I might play hardball with Redford. If he wants this good thing, he’s gonna have to pony up more that just One. Call it … five.
[everyone reading this gasps and murmurs]
Email of the week!
Veronica:
Drew I'm a city girl. I grew up ironically in a pretty rural place in the Hudson Valley. But my family never went camping. Not once.
My wife and I live in MN and have 3 kids. Last year we went camping up on the North Shore of Lake Superior. It was my first time. It went just fine. This year my body decided it simply will not poop. On the second night we roasted hot dogs over the fire and I probably had one too many. Add in a single glass of cheap white wine and a 5mg thc drink and this was a recipe for heartburn.
That night, I had to get up to get some Tums, but I realized quickly that it was not just heartburn. So hoofed it out of the tent and made my way to the bush. As I knelt there a new problem presented itself. I was finally going to poop. Somehow my body was telling me that actually this poop was more of an immediate problem. So I immediately dropped trou. I was sweating and shaking from simultaneously passing a very compacted massive shit and on the verge of hurling. But I did it. I stood and looked at what I can assure you was the most massive shit I have ever done. I stood in awe of what my body was capable of when the smell hit me. I lost my stomach.
I felt better so I walked to the toilet to finish the job. I spent the night in our van. It was way more comfortable than the awful ground in the tent. I told my wife this story and I don't think she looks at me the same way anymore. This was a harrowing experience. Camping sucks.
Sure does!
