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" On its surface, the HBO documentary series 'Hard Knocks,' about the New York Jets' training camp, resembles another HBO series, 'The Sopranos.' Both star the stout patriarch of a New Jersey 'family' preoccupied with food, intimidation, and florid profanity. "

Steve Rushin

New

New York

Training

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" Baseball consists of a million threads of dullness, on a loom of ennui, woven into a tapestry of tedium. "

" For most of the twentieth century, a Minnesotan abroad could fix his home state in the cosmos by invoking for his hosts the name Charles Lindbergh or Bob Dylan, native sons who were claimed by the world and never really returned to the Gopher State. "

" As a kid, I always had my nose buried in the side of a cereal box. "

" Scarcity drives up demand, and the short golf season in Minnesota makes residents of that state mad for the sport. It's the same reason ancient Scandinavians worshiped the sun: because they saw so little of it. "

" If you own face paint and a bulb horn and you're not a circus clown, you might be uncool. "

" I can't putt. The reasons are infinite. When lining up a putt, I can't remember if the ball always breaks to the ocean or to the valley or away from Pinnacle Peak. And because I took up the game in Minnesota, in what is often called Middle America, I also grew up asking, 'To which ocean does it break?' "

" I turned 7 in 1973 and remember Bobby Riggs arriving at the Astrodome on a chariot pulled by showgirls before his 'battle of the sexes' tennis match against Billie Jean King. "

" In our house, the name for all athletic shoes - any that weren't dress or 'church' shoes - was 'tennis shoes,' or 'tennies.' "

" Grafted onto street clothes and removed from the field of play, jerseys don't even flatter men in their physical prime. Witness any baseball player wearing a uniform top over dress shirt and slacks at a press conference podium. "

" In 1972, there was still a New York City law prohibiting women there from 'furnishing refreshments to the audience or spectators at any place of public amusement.' That's right: Until the law was repealed in 1977, it was technically illegal for women to work as popcorn vendors in Madison Square Garden. "

" If Charlie Sheen is the 21st century figure most closely associated with 'Winning,' it is perhaps time to consider an alternative to victory. "

" Tough guys have to be tough. But tough guys don't have to be guys. "

Steve Rushin

Tough

Guys

" As a bald man who happens to play golf, or a golfer who happens to be bald, I'll never know the pleasures of a golf visor. "

" I'm a product of the 1970s. "

Steve Rushin

Product

1970s

" 'Hard Knocks' seems to have done for the self-serious NFL what the witch did for Rapunzel: persuaded it, somehow, to let its hair down. "

" In the Gospels, we are reminded, 'The very hairs of your head are all numbered.' And your numbered hairs, like your numbered days, recede daily. "

" When should a man stop wearing sports jerseys? When the buttons of his White Sox top finally pop, like rivets on a distressed ocean liner? When the pinstripes of his Yankees shirt have grown wider at the midsection than at the top, as the longitudinal lines on a globe? "

" It's one thing to wear jerseys at games, which fans have been doing in great numbers for 30 years, dressing as if they might be summoned from the stands on a moment's notice to pinch-run. But those same jerseys are now omnipresent on airplanes, in restaurants, in doctor's waiting rooms. "

" Compassion and empathy are anathema to sports. "

" The phrase 'NFL combine' always sounds redundant, because the league is a combine harvester, reaping and threshing everything in its path. "

" As good as NFL Films is at making players human, it's even better at making players superhuman. No Hollywood studio has made movies that are more grand or gorgeous. Every meticulous shot of 'Hard Knocks' is a vision: every slow-motion spiral, every shaved head steaming like a Manhattan manhole cover. "

" I had started writing for 'Sports Illustrated,' which was really my dream job growing up. But the writing probably read like I was auditioning to write for 'Letterman' or '70s-era Carson. "

" Hurricane Irene's advance coverage was heavy on worst-case scenarios. Thank goodness they didn't pan out. "

" My first interview at 'SI,' I sat in silence next to Guy LaFleur for five minutes on the New York Rangers team bus until he finally broke the ice. Those early interviews, every one of them was like a terrible first date. "

" History is not just written by the winners; it's written about them. "

" Sam Snead had perhaps the most stylish solution to the balding golfer: A snappy fedora that became his signature style, so much so that many never knew he was tonsorially bereft. "

" Quitting has always been the worst possible thing you can do in sports. It's downright un-American. "

" As a kid, I didn't know that 'All in the Family' was satirizing male chauvinism or that Bobby Riggs was a self-promoting put-on. Many of us didn't get the irony and went on making fun of women and girls who wanted to play sports, especially the same sports that men and boys traditionally played. "

" A lot of people say they eat, drink, and sleep sports, but does anyone really do it, ingesting nothing but Dodger Dogs and Soda Shaqs and Greg Norman Zinfandels 24/7? "

" Outside Buckingham Palace, the Royal Standard flies only when the reigning monarch is in residence. Sadly, there's no similar flag outside The Woods Jupiter, which Tiger opened in the summer of 2015, spending a reported $8 million to make an upscale sports bar-and-restaurant in his image. "