As a wise man once told me, the only thing better than being rich and famous is being rich. Giants receiver Odell Beckham Jr. is now really rich, to go along with being really, really, really famous. And he now realizes the price of fame.
“I really feel like a zoo animal,” Beckham said on the debut of HBO’s The Shop, featuring LeBron James. “Like that’s where life’s gone for me. You know, you used to take your kids to the zoo and we used to be like, ‘You know, I want to see the lions or let’s go see the lions.’ And you go out there, and the lions are laid out. You know what I mean? And it’s like, ‘Why aren’t they doing lion stuff?’ You know what I mean? Like, I’ve got people who call out, ‘Odell, dance!’ Like, I’m a show punk, a show monkey or something.”
The quote comes from a conversation regarding whether African-American players are held to a different standard when it comes to requests from members of the public for photos, autographs, and other interactions. James believes that this may indeed be the case.
“I’m talking about the phone is on,” James said. “We’re like, ‘Yo, get that f--king phone out of my face. I’m with my family.’ If we’re out with our family, and we say that sh-t, and somebody posts it, and if Aaron Rodgers or one of those guys say that sh-t, and they post it, somebody’s going to be like, ‘Hey you guys should respect Aaron Rodgers.’”
James is incorrect here. If any player, regardless of race, were to say to a fan with a phone, “Yo, get that f--king phone out of my face,” it would become a story. And the question of whether the fan was respectful to the athlete would depend on the actions of the fan, not the reaction of the athlete.
As to Beckham, the more important question is whether he understands that he’s now seeing the consequences of the notoriety that he openly courted early in his career. But it’s hard to blame him for embracing fame when it was new and fresh and not nearly as tiresome as it has become over the last four years.
"[T]hat doesn’t feel good, but it’s like, damn, that’s what life became,” Beckham said. “But, can you ever really detach from that?”
You can. It’s called retirement, and then wait for about four or five years to pass. Football has a distinct out-of-sight-out-of-mind quality, and people eventually would not find Beckham quite as fascinating as they currently do.
But the longer he plays (and plays well) the harder it will be for him to ever to be simply rich. So he probably should accept the reality that he’s rich and famous, which is still a lot better than being neither.
