I had drafted the following post last weekend, with the intention of cleaning it up and going live early this week. Some meetings and phone calls pushed publication back a bit, and I’m glad they did. On Wednesday Chase Claypool, whose character I had been planning on Gavrilo Principing, put out this tweet championing mental health awareness and acknowledging the challenges he’s facing. The guy has clearly been through a lot, and I give him a lot of credit for his advocacy.
I’m still going to hit publish because the post is tongue in cheek, but the whole incident is, for me at least, a nice reminder that you never really know what someone is going through, so it’s generally a good idea not to be a dick.
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As most, if not all, of you know, I am an ethnic Catholic and as such a devout Notre Dame Football fan. In accordance with the Council of Nicaea I observe NDFB games in the fall as a second Sabbath. You can thus imagine my excitement when Chase Claypool (a former classmate of mine, Notre Dame ’20) was drafted in the second round by the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 2020 draft.
It started off so innocent. Chase immediately embraced the city and her eccentricities. He began his career on a tear, scoring ten touchdowns in his first Eleven games. Over that span, the Steelers went undefeated, prompting this all-timer from our boy:
But, as scripture warns us, pride comes before the fall. The Steelers would go on to lose four of their next five and were bounced from the playoffs in the first round by a lesser (fewer?) Cleveland team. This much is fine, though. I’m an adult, and I realize things fall apart. I can accept losing. But there are certain things I can’t (won’t?) tolerate.
From the beginning there were oddities, flags that were not quite red but perhaps medium-well pink, in Chase’s behavior that I happily ignored. Chase, for example, launched a YouTube channel and a merchandise line soon after being drafted. Now, I realize NFL players have done far worse things, but it’s reminiscent of self-promotional activity / dumb shit that’s gotten some of our other receivers in trouble. He also maintained a colorful Twitter presence (see the gem above), but we let it go unchecked because we were winning, and if we’ve learned anything from Tiger Woods’ blissful life it’s that winning takes care of everything.
Tragically, things got much worse in the offseason. After losing to the Browns in round one, Chase responded by running his mouth, calling Cleveland classless and predicting they’d get “clapped” the following week. And in an incident underscoring how much he’s changed since his days in South Bend, a video emerged in March of him kicking a man in the head during a bar fight. I can’t (can’t) tolerate that.
Enter Najee Harris, running back from the University of Alabama and the Steelers’ 2021 first round draft pick. Najee is a martian on the field; in the CFB playoffs for example, he politely let us know with a simple hurdle that he is from different genus, perhaps even a different phylum, from everyone on ND’s roster. Critically, he is also by all accounts a fantastic guy. While Chase has spent the offseason hanging with lower case b-list celebrities (Paula Deanda? sick dude ?) and getting dressed up “to go the bodega” (there are none in PGH you fraud), Najee has been out completing corporal works of mercy, hosting his draft party at the homeless shelter that housed him and his family when he was a child. Now I know I’ve said some unflattering things about Alabama in the past but I retract that bit, for now at least: we must protect Najee.
It is thus with a heavy heart that I announce COS’s third endorsement; this time, we’re adopting Najee Harris as the site’s favorite Steeler and, crucially, removing the implicit endorsement Chase Claypool has enjoyed since the blog’s formation. The second they start selling Najee block number jerseys I’ll have one shipped to the ‘Ken.
If you love someone, set them free. If they come back, they’re yours; if they don’t, they never were.