The Code

The verdict in the court of public opinion is in: Mike Shanahan was a fool for allowing his franchise quarterback to play on an increasingly gimpy knee in the Redskins’ first round playoff loss to Seattle on Sunday. His risk was rewarded with the nauseating sight of RGIII laying prone on the grass, his immediate, and perhaps long-term, future in doubt. Pundits everywhere have characterized Shanahan’s failure to protect the most valuable asset the long suffering Redskins have had in at least twenty years as an epic fail.

The public and the pundits are doing the automatic Monday morning quarterback thing we all do so well, pretending that the actors involved in the moment as the shit went down were operating out of the same moral universe that these critics awakened to on Monday morning. But the world of professional sports, especially that of professional football, has its own set of moral imperatives. First and foremost among these is the requirement to, at all times and in all places, man-up. The code of manhood that rules professional sports is perhaps best exemplified by the fact that in 2013, when gay marriage is increasingly available at the nearest courthouse, and when gays are breaking down barriers left and right, including most recently that uber-exclusive club the United States Senate, we still have yet to see an openly gay athlete compete in any of the four major professional men’s sports leagues in North America (NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL).

Two recent examples will suffice as exhibits of the manhood code that rules pro football. In the Dallas-Washington game just one week prior to Griffin and Shanahan’s partnership in crime (just who enabled who here remains unclear), superstar Dallas pass rusher Demarcus Ware played with a chronically separating shoulder essentially duct taped in place. Hours prior to the game Ware Tweeted that “Pain is temporary; quitting is forever.” And in the NFL playoffs just one year ago, as astutely pointed out by former pro hoopster Etan Thomas in The Washington Post, Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler was universally excoriated as a quitter for coming out of the game with the same basic injury as Griffin, a balky knee. The requirement to man-up in the playoffs is trebled, at least. One either complies with the code, like Ware risking the future functioning of his arm, or, like Cutler, one is labeled a quitter and, much worse, less than a man (it goes without saying that being less than a man means being a woman, so that the word quitter is code for girl).

It is only within the confines of this code that Shanahan’s outrageous gamble, which appeared to be the thoughtless risk of at least a decade of future winning seasons in hopes of securing one wildcard victory (reminding me of the story of the husband who showed up with his unaware wife to close on their new house having gambled away the check from the bank at the racetrack), comes into focus as a decision made with Griffin’s best interest in mind (given the strictures of the code). Baseball managers, as in the case of the Washington Nationals shelving of Stephen Strasburg this summer to protect his surgically repaired throwing arm, can get away with rational precautionary measures. But baseball is a pastime, whereas professional football is a proxy for war. Had Shanahan sent Griffin to the bench at any point that Griffin could still limp onto the field, he would have sent the message to Griffin, the team, and the millions watching on TV, that he didn’t think Griffin was man enough to tough it out, play through the pain, etc., pairing Griffin forever with Cutler (since “quitting on his team” Cutler has become persona non grata to the point that e.g. ESPN Magazine, wishing to make a case for why 2-time Super Bowl winner Eli Manning isn’t actually that great, simply compared his stats to Cutler’s on the magazine cover, which was remarkably like Republicans’ efforts to smear Obama by comparing him to Jimmy Carter). Sending Griffin to the bench would have been to effectively emasculate him as the team’s field general. It would have been like Lee sending Stonewall Jackson to the rear guard with a flesh wound. Seen through the lens of the code, Shanahan’s decision to keep Griffin in the game ultimately came down to this: he risked having Griffin cut off at the knees rather than personally cutting off his balls.