Fat guy in a little coat. Fat guy in a little coooooat.
It’s bad for the guy. It’s worse for the coat. And that classic moment from Chris Farley in Tommy Boy came to mind this morning after someone pointed out the flight accommodations for the large humans who are heading to Indianapolis.
The NFL flies prospects to the Scouting Combine in coach. We’ve heard about one player who is 6'5" and 275 pounds — and who was shoehorned into a middle seat in coach.
Here’s the reality. The NFL (and plenty of fans) will dismiss enduring such inconveniences as part of the extensive job interview process. But in industries where the applicants have the ability to choose their employers, they don’t have to deal with that. They get wined and dined and flown to the interviews in first class because in the end the choice belongs to them, not the employer.
What are incoming NFL players going to do, refuse not to go? The league and its teams have brainwashed everyone into thinking it’s an honor and a privilege to be drafted. In reality, it’s an honor and a privilege for the teams to be able to pick and choose their employees — after getting them to go through an extended stretch of insults and indignities and dehumanizing activities, all in the name of figuring out which of them will become the best football players at the next level.
The NFL can afford to put these large bodies in first class, where they’ll have more room to get comfortable, and where the people on either side of them will have a better chance of being comfortable, too. This isn’t the time to be cheap.
But the NFL is being cheap on this because it can be. Because the prospects will take it. Because it’s an honor and a privilege to be expected to deal with everything that goes into the process of ultimately being told where they’ll be required to spend the first four or five or six or even seven years of their careers.