BALLERS
                                                      (but not shot callers)


This past weekend, HBO ( informally known as the Hell, Bondage, and Oppression channel) according to one of my former pastors, provided a sneak preview weekend for non-subscribers.  I haven't had paid cable subscriptions for almost two decades so the highlights, updates and unfolding drama of popular shows featured in this environment are only learned vicariously.  As a true die-hard fan of the NFL ( not for long), I was curious to find out what all the buzz was concerning the show "Ballers"  starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as an ex-player now turned financial concierge.  It also features the progeny of my generation's Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington, who may look like his moms but sounds exactly like his pops.

I have an inordinate amount of love/hate for a league that ostensibly is seen as Beulah Land for hundreds of thousands of young men from hamlets and hoods all over this country.  After reading "League of Denial- The NFL Concussion Crisis" my fomenting disdain can't wait to see the game meander through this potential PR crisis.  I initially struggled with what felt like a moral dilemma.  The NFL, like most male-dominated sports that have machismo as a requisite part of their culture, is under girded by hypersexual, who am I kidding, gauche objectification of women and pornography as part and parcel of its cultural landscape.  "Scrip" clubs, precipitation (makin' it rain), and cursory drug use are as pervasive as team prayers that follow a profanity-laced motivational speech to get everybody jacked up.

Ballers features all of the seedy, salacious, narcissistic, materialistic, hedonism that the league works so diligently to keep under wraps in an effort to protect the brand. While the show at times looked and sounded like an over-the-top hip hop video trying to cram as many scantily-clad thots and f-bombs in a one-minute segment, it was quite transparent in exposing many of the challenges that young men given a king's ransom to play a kid's game face.

Now here's where I digress. ESPN's 30 for 30 did a feature on the 2001 Miami Hurricanes ( that was painful to type).  This team was chock full of NFL-ready players and is widely considered one of the most talented squads to ever suit up in Division 1 football.  Antrel Rolle, the cousin of the player featured in the picture for this blog said something that was both an epiphany and a tragedy.  "Me and my crew out the gate were looking at a 100 mil in contracts" he proudly heralded.  It was at that moment that I wish I had been afforded an opportunity to shift the paradigm of these young men from seeing themselves as 100 million dollar commodities to a consortium of potential ownership and financial leverage.

Ballers, in a most sinewy, profane, and transparent way removes the veneer in which 21-28 year olds have to fight to not only secure their childhood dream, but discern, cut, and limit the parasitic ties of family, friends, financial advisors and all manner of humanity who literally see them as everything from ATMs, seed money for specious investments and baby daddies to secure their future.  In the midst of all that testosterone being sloshed around with a constant enticing, if not toxic, presence of estrogen, fortunes were literally being lost, transferred and forfeited in this Bacchanalian field of dreams.

Where the show really gains traction and credibility is in its sub-narrative of players who find themselves at the crossroads, the back end of their microwave careers, where everything from the new rookie drafted to the non-contract offer lets them know that they are no longer welcome at Disney World. The lights, camera, action and commissioner that welcomed them onto Paradise Island is replaced by the ignominy of a cleaned out locker and a handshake.  The collective income of  the players is about half of the revenue of the league.  Even with that enormous financial leverage, the average player rarely sees himself as anything but an employee of the team.  Myron Rolle took the unusual approach to see the league as a means to an end, a utility, a revenue source to ultimately, conceivably fund his dream of being a neurosurgeon, ironically focusing on the untenable complexity of the human brain.  So many of these men , even with their front-loaded, multi-million dollar pensions don't seem to have much to foster an identity that doesn't involve full gear while passing, catching, running or tackling. The real ballers, the real shot callers are the ones who not only write them checks with a whole lot of zeros, but those who recognize that football is what they do and not who they are.  That way when their services are no longer needed, EVERY ONE gets fired-even Hall-of Famers, they can call the shots in the next phase of their life outside of football.