I love the NFL Draft. Seeing 22-year-olds get picked up by teams hoping to be the next Brian Urlacher or Peyton Manning, when they could as easily be the next Akili Smith or Tony Mandarich. Hell, I love any kind of sports draft; NBA, MLB, MLS, Fantasy, I even watched the 2010 WNBA Draft because I wanted to know which NBA pro Tina Charles matched up with. I think what is so tantalizing about these over-hyped, never-remembered events is the prospect of potential.
Anyone who is a religious follower of a major American sport knows the term “potential” is thrown around like the balls they play with. Drafting is an inexact science where you can have the number one pick be a complete bust or the number 199th pick win the Super Bowl three times. These young men will make a lot of money with just their pure talent alone. And these men can throw away all their money with their pure stupidity.
With star athletes, we can argue about their potential and their physical gifts, but ultimately they are the masters of their own domains. If they want to eat their way out of a contract or get an addiction to codeine (hi JaMarcus Russell!), that’s their own prerogative.
But why do we get so mad when these athletes that we’ve never met throw away their lives when we do it almost as frequently? I’m not saying I have a sizzurp addiction or my reliance on Taco Shop will be my downfall, but man do I have untapped potential that needs to be realized.
I guess we can see the potential of athletes because it’s in their muscles, their size, their speed and their play. The potential of Joe Schmoes like me is so much more hidden that there needs to be extra attention drawn to it. Every fucking second I spend on Reddit I could be doing something so much more productive; go to the gym, write this goddamn article I started 12 hours late, fix my LinkedIn (jk, what even is LinkedIn?).
This is what I call (hey, Michael started a new trend, which is creating his own phrases, one every week, shut up this is new) potential apathy. Potential apathy is the refusal to do something you know is good for you in the future so your present is more enjoyable. Is potential apathy the same thing as procrastination? Good question Patrick, potential apathy is procrastination and all of its brothers; procrastincubation, procrastinception and of course, procrasturbation.
Potential apathy is the reason why new bands spend more time coming up with a name than practicing, why aspiring actors have already written their Oscars speech before even learning their lines, and why I will never get anything done until the day it’s due.
But do not cry for me, reader, because you do this too, we all do this. This is the beauty of life, where personal gain today seems to be better than personal gain tomorrow but it really isn’t. That 15th page of Reddit, that 100th refresh of Twitter, that sixth time you googled Kevin Bacon (seriously, he’s overrated), they’re all distractions to the semi-Matrix that we call life.
So next time you hear Tyrann Mathieu talk about his drug tests, or you see an athlete get a DUI, do not judge, because you’d do the same thing in their shoes (jk about the DUI stuff, that is literally the dumbest thing you can do). We all make mistakes and we all have potential. It’s only the strongest and the smartest that realize their potential and become famous rock stars or economists (wait, what?).
Just be thankful you can get anything done. I know I am thankful this is the last sentence of this article.
What were you putting off while reading this article? Michael wants to know, so email mvoloshin@wisc.edu to increase the number of distractions in his life.
