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Having risen from the ashes of a crippling injury and a four-game suspension, Julian Edelman has cashed in on his fame as the Super Bowl MVP. His documentary “100% Julian Edelman” aired recently on Showtime, and the diminutive receiver called in all favors to make sure it gets its just due.
Mark Wahlberg does the intro, Erin Andrews gives an overview, Deion Sanders and Michael Strahan do cameos and Snoop Dogg takes a pull on his E-cig and reads the NFL’s suspension letter: “Dear Mr. Edelman: Pursuant to Article 39, Section 7 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, this will set forth the NFL’s disciplinary action in relation to a performing enhancing substance…”
Born and raised in the Bay Area, Edelman’s father owns a garage in Mountain View, Cal. Football Frank won championships, Pee Wee championships. His wife Angie calls him “very patient, easy going.” His daughter Nicki calls him “intense, rough, scary.”
Under his father’s tutelage Edelman became a classic overachiever. He took Kent State’s scholarship offer to play quarterback and get 60 touches a game, and after a dazzling NFL Combine workout the Patriots took him in the seventh round of the 2009 draft.
When Wes Welker left for Denver, Edelman became Tom Brady’s go-to guy for short yardage. Sure-handed and resilient, the 33-year-old Edelman relishes getting crushed by roving linebackers. His next regular season catch will be his 500th.
“He’s like a Labrador receiver running for the ball, bringing it back, panting,” jokes Brady. “He’s the kid brother I never had and never really wanted.”
The documentary focuses on the 380 days between tearing his ACL and returning to the gridiron, which he calls “my happy place.”
Tearing an ACL is akin to snapping a bunch of celery in half, or so says restaurateur and celebrity chef Guy Fieri. “Tear this bad boy 20 years ago,” says Fieri, holding the celery stalks, and your career would be boom! You’re done.”
The camera follows Edelman into the hospital the morning of the surgery, where the orthopedic surgeon tells him, “It’s always the gladiators who make the most post-op phone calls.”
After months of painful rehab and subsequent offseason passing drills, the NFL suspended him for using performance enhancing drugs. Edelman doesn’t explain why or how long he used PEDs, nor do we get a glimpse of the Swedish model who filed paternity papers on Edelman, though we do see their 3-year-old daughter Lily.
Edelman produced the show and it’s a fine line between documentary and self-promotion. The dialogue becomes vacuous — Sanders calling him “one of the best receivers in the NFL” and Strahan saying “physically he’s quick as a cat.”
“This is his life. He just wanted to play football,” says his mother.
“There’s a lot of ways to get to the top of the mountain,” says Football Frank, who wears a T-shirt that says, ‘Tough times don’t last tough people do.’
As mesmerizing as the clips are of Edelman progressing from Pee Wees to college to pros, the “I love you bro” hugs get tedious. Erin Andrews summed it up when she said: “It’s almost so storybook ending you wanna puke.”
Patriots fans would object, but NFL Nation would agree.
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Former Pioneer Valley Regional hoops star Adam Harrington is coaching the Brooklyn Nets in the Las Vegas NBA Summer League.
After he graduated from Pioneer, Harrington became the first freshman in N.C. State Wolfpack history to lead his team in scoring. He subsequently transferred to Auburn and from there played eight years in the pros, including a brief stint with the Nuggets and Mavericks.
He’s worked his way up the ladder and is entering his fourth season as a Nets assistant coach. He’s also the team’s director of player development, and this is his first head coaching opportunity. At this writing the Nets had won three of their first four games.
Hoops fans are speculating that Harrington might have helped lure Kevin Durant to Brooklyn. A 10-time All Star, Durant signed a four-year deal worth $164 million to play for the Nets but is recovering from a torn Achilles tendon and Harrington was his personal trainer when they were at Oklahoma City.
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RIP Jim Bouton, who changed the course of sports journalism by giving readers their first behind-the-scenes glimpse of baseball life. He paid a price, he was ostracized and virtually run out of the game. After “Ball Four” was published in 1970, Bouton was working a spring training gig for ESPN. One afternoon before a Yankees-Red Sox game in Winter Haven, I heard an angry shout and looked to see Yankees catcher Thurman Munson chasing Bouton away from the batting cage.
He altered the rules: everything’s on the record unless it’s requested to be off the record — “deep background” as today’s scribes call it. “We loved baseball and were more than ready to hear that sports was as corrupt and poorly run as the rest of the country and Bouton gave us that,” said Crosby Hunt, who introduced Bouton at a sports seminar at Middle Tennessee State in 2010. “He confided that it was his first public appearance since his stroke. He was gracious, very nice to me and thrilled to be at our event.”
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Sorry, but a microphone’s place is not on the baseball field. Every player at the All-Star game was wired for sound, and Joe Buck made it his sworn duty to interview all of them. He spoke with all three Astros at once, grilled outfielder Charlie Blackmon about his beard and deposed infielder Francisco Lindor.
The game of Babble On was OK for casual observers, but difficult for anyone keeping score. Eventually I had to mute the sound and concentrate on finding which of the split screens was showing the game. A producer once asked the late Curt Gowdy about plot lines, and Gowdy replied, “Plot lines? How about we just follow the ball?”
Indeed, for once I agree with Stephen A. Smith who calls the idea “just plain stupid.”
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College football starts in seven weeks and the “CBS Sports 129” ranks BC No. 38, UMass No. 111 and UConn No. 128. UTEP is only team worse than the Huskies. The Minutemen play the Huskies on Oct. 26 at McGuirk Stadium and open at Rutgers on Friday, Aug. 30.
This is the 150th anniversary of football at Rutgers, the birthplace of college football. The Minutemen are listed as 14 1/2-point underdogs by 5dimes.com and Boston College is a 2 1/2-point underdog against Virginia Tech at the Heights on Aug. 31.
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According to MILB.com, 162 minor leaguers have been suspended for testing dirty since 2017. The list includes Boston’s Michael Chavis who missed his first 80 games with Portland last year after he tested positive for dehydrochlormethyltestosterone.
If they nab that many players in the minors, why only a handful in the majors? Probably wouldn’t be good for business.
This week USA Today’s Bob Nightengale quoted former Orioles infielder David Segui saying, “Six percent of guys today easily are doing stuff. It reminds me of our era. You think these home runs are just because of the balls?”
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SQUIBBERS: Avalanche defenseman Erik Johnson was in the winner’s circle at Saratoga on Thursday after his horse Comical won the Schuylerville Stakes for 2-year-olds. … Grant Paulsen watches a lot of BP home runs. “They call it 5 o’clock power,” said the MLB host. … The Red Sox were 17-25 at the break against teams .500 and over, according to covers.com. … Hockey folks are scratching their heads over the three-year, $11.7 million deal Ralph Krueger got to coach the Sabres. Krueger’s only prior head coaching experience was in Edmonton where the team tanked on him three straight years. … A good Jim Bouton quote: “Statistics are about as interesting as first base coaches.” … A great Jim Bouton quote: “You spend a good deal of your life gripping a baseball, and it turns out it was the other way around all the time.”
Chip Ainsworth is an award-winning columnist who has penned his observations about sports for four decades in the Pioneer Valley.