SI Writer Says Gronk is a'Meathead' Who Got a 'Free Pass'
Andrew Brandt in SI - Rob Gronkowski’s retirement last week was hardly surprising. … Rather, I look back shaking my head at the free pass that Gronk constantly received from fans and media, even beyond New England. “Gronk being Gronk” became an easy catchphrase and rationalization about behavior that (1) was certainly not admirable and (2) would not create the same response for other players.
Listen, I get it; Gronk is a goofy and likeable meathead. And likeable players can get away with things that players with a more serious tone cannot. That, however, shouldn’t give them free passes. I ask you to pick another player, any player; I will not pick one for you, as that would skew this experiment. Now imagine that player shown slamming beers, partying regularly with bikini-clad women and generally promoting a hard-party lifestyle. Would we say it’s just “him being him” and let him have his fun? I doubt it.
I know this is not a popular stance and some of you are offended I would raise these questions about the lovable Gronk. And Gronk, with his partying, has not broken any laws and is just having a good time. But consider this: It is a fair question to ask whether Gronk would have been injured less and had a more productive career had he partied less. …
[F]ans and media usually don’t laugh off his kind of off-field persona the way they have with Gronk. Gronk’s behavior led to rationalization, whereas the same behavior coming from others would typically lead to excoriation.
We’ve been hearing some variation of this theme since the first time Rob Gronkowski ever dry-humped a half-drunken club chick to a loud bass beat. And my question now is the same as it was then. When did America’s sports media get such a gigantic stick up their collective ass?
Do we need a history lesson here? Gronk might have perfected the art of having fun in his off time, but he sure as holy hell didn’t invent it. Were sports writers acting like wealthy dowagers clutching their pearls and falling over backwards onto their fainting couches when the 1980s Mets were doing rails of blow bigger than the Shea Stadium baselines? When the Larry Bird Celtics were drinking Boston dry on a nightly basis? When the Big, Bad Bruins used to blindfold Bobby Orr and spin him around in the middle of a club and which ever girl he ended up pointing at was the one he took home to bang and Wayne Cashman said his wife didn’t know he was a drunk until he came home sober? Did they think Joe Namath was firing down apple juice in those highball glasses at Toot Shor’s while he was getting double-teamed by chorus girls? And if I’ve got my dates right, when Babe Ruth was getting hammered on bathtub gin, he was not only breaking Yankees curfew, but the U.S. Constitution as well.
That said, what is the point of this exactly? What I don’t know about being SI’s football columnist could fill a library. But when you say something, aren’t you supposed to just come out and say it? It seems to me that would make it a lot easier on the readers. Is this an identity politics thing? Like is Andrew Brandt saying that we’d all judge it differently if another player acted like Gronk?
Alright, let’s try it. Without skewing the experiment. Just to pull names at random, here is how I’d react in any of the following situations:
–If Odell Beckham, Jr. drank a $500 bottle of wine at a Super Bowl championship parade, I’d say he’s a Super Bowl champion and earned it.
–If Haloti Ngata shotgunned beers while he announced his retirement at the top of Mt. Kilamanjaro, I’d consider him one of the best nose tackles of his generation and a potential Hall of Famer.
–If Josh Brown twerked in a club during his playing days, I’d have said he’s an abusive, domestically violent shitbag who belongs in a penitentiary.
See how easy that was? It’s always much simpler to sort out when you judge people as the individuals they are and how they behave. Gronk didn’t get a “free pass” as much as he got the Free Parking that we are all entitled to on life’s great Monopoly board. If he ever actually fucked up – got in trouble, committed a crime, did someone dirty, acted irresponsibly or cost his team with his shenanigans – it would be a different story.
Non-judgmental people with the capacity to enjoy life love “Gronk being Gronk” because there are no victims. It never cost him in games or even at practice. He rode hard on the field and off, but he was always a professional who delivered when called upon. The suggestion that he got injured because he danced on cruise ships or wherever in the offseason would be laughable if it wasn’t so patently false. Every injury he ever got was because he was balling out. Because he only had two speeds: Full and Stop. And he never once shifted into Stop until a game was over.
In a league that’s been littered with the trash of wife beaters, child abusers, dog killers and murderers, it’s ridiculous to fire a synapse of your brain worrying about the way Rob Gronkowski “behaved” until you can find one person – just one – who was hurt or offended by a grown man having grown man levels of fun. If that’s you, it is the ultimate “you” problem. I’ve never once met someone who thought that way I’d ever want to spend five minutes with.