NFL – Memphis Flyer

Here we go, Titans, here we go! Right? Well … not so fast.

An NFL team representing Tennessee — the state in which Memphis has long lived — is one win away from playing in the Super Bowl. So naturally, those of us in the Bluff City will find a Derrick Henry jersey or at least some shade of blue when the Titans face the Kansas City Chiefs Sunday for the AFC championship. Or will we? The Titans call Nashville home, of course, however they choose to present “Tennessee” on team merchandise. Nashville and Memphis share a home in much the same way Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier once (actually three times) shared a boxing ring. So might red be the color of choice this Sunday, support leaning toward a team — the Kansas City Chiefs — a half-century removed from its last Super Bowl appearance?

Herewith, a case for Memphians to root against the Titans this weekend … and a case for full support of “Tennessee’s team.”

• Titans down!
If you’re old enough to remember the 1997 Tennessee Oilers, you’re as likely to wear a Patrick Mahomes jersey this weekend and pull for the Chiefs as you are to don Titans gear. Houston Oilers owner Bud Adams departed Texas for Tennessee after the 1996 season when taxpayers wouldn’t fund a new stadium for the franchise he founded in 1960, longtime tenants of the Astrodome. Trouble was, it would take a couple of years for Nashville to build that swanky new coliseum. So Adams convinced Memphis mayor Willie Herenton (among others) to let his team play two seasons in the Liberty Bowl. Memphis would pay for dinner but let someone else take its date home.

Those ’97 Oilers went 8-8 and featured a pair of rising stars in quarterback Steve McNair and running back Eddie George. But Memphis saw through the artificial wooing of Adams and didn’t even take a seat for that dinner. Tennessee drew the smallest crowds in the NFL that season, selling an average of 28,028 tickets for its eight home games. (The next-lowest total was the Atlanta Falcons: 46,928.) The most popular sports brand in America got a collective “who gives a s*^t” from Memphis. If “Tennessee’s team” wasn’t ours playing at the Mid-South Fairgrounds, you think they’re our team today? This is Cowboys country, Saints country. Hell, this is Falcons and Steelers country before Titans territory. The most famous player in Titans franchise history is Earl Campbell, and he never carried a football in the state of Tennessee.

• Titan up!
An informal survey of Memphians among my Twitter community yielded a lot of support for the Titans (“they’re not the Nashville Titans”), with skeptics interrupting (often with a mention of Adams, who died in 2013). There’s something to be said for regional support of a pro franchise. Six states claim the New England Patriots as their own, and those are merely the geographically connected. (Wouldn’t matter if they were the “Boston Patriots.” Maine loves the Red Sox. Vermont adores the Bruins.) The fact is, the Titans are the closest NFL team to Memphis (and this would be the case were we on the west side of the Mississippi River and called Arkansas home). Someone can wake up in Midtown on a Sunday morning, be seated for a noon kickoff in Nissan Stadium, and be home in time for 60 Minutes. (Yes, this person would need radar protection, but it could be done.)

The Titans have never won the Super Bowl. They are one of eight franchises that have played since the dawn of the Super Bowl era (1966) without winning a championship. These are underdogs, and what’s more Memphis than that? The team’s logo features the three stars representing each region of the Volunteer State, and symbolism matters, especially in sports. Finally, we need a team to pull for on Super Sunday. The nachos taste better, the commercials are funnier, and the halftime show goes by quicker. I’ll leave the final word to one of my Twitter pals, a man who understands the NFL landscape in 2020 better than most. Says Chuck Rogers (@ourpoppy), “Any team that beats the Patriots is worthy of my support.”

When each of my daughters reached second grade, I taught them how to make a fist. And deliver a punch. Thumb curled on the outside, wrist firm, knuckles forward. Drive with your shoulder. They’d seen plenty of Spider-Man cartoons and read their share of Wonder Woman comic books. They knew what a punch was. But they needed to know how to deliver one. I let each of them treat my open right palm like the Green Goblin’s snarling face. The sting felt good.

I’ve held off writing about the Ray Rice affair (and the Adrian Peterson affair, for that matter), hoping to deliver some thoughts with emotion removed from my delivery. I’ve been married to the same woman for 20 years. I’m the father of two daughters. My only sibling is a woman.

Seeing what Rice did to his then-fiancee in an elevator last February made nerves fire that I don’t often access. Janay Palmer being dragged from that elevator by Rice — the coward clueless how to handle his now-public atrocity — elicited thoughts I don’t often allow to dance in my brain. But those nerves continue to fire, and those thoughts dance randomly, especially when I look at my wife and daughters and consider the three most valuable elements of my life.

First, the disheartening reality of domestic abuse: it’s near us all. An abused woman lives a short drive from your home, whether you know her or not, whether you know she’s abused or not. Violence is pervasive, in one form or another. Has been since the first troglodyte wielded the first club. For the majority of human beings who refrain from lashing out with a fist, knife, or gun, this is a grim, cynical view. Domestic violence can be stopped. It’s our responsibility to make sure it’s stopped. And now.

But the contributing factors to domestic violence are simply too numerous and, frankly, too scattered for any movement — no matter how publicly driven — to completely eradicate the pain and agony caused. When there is no more poverty, violence will end. When there are no more unwanted children, violence will end. When there is no more religious discord, violence will end. This is like catching every leaf that falls from that massive maple tree in your front yard, each leaf with a blood-drawing razor’s edge. No, domestic violence can’t be eradicated.

We can shine light, though, on the atrocity. And this is where, irony of ironies, we have the NFL to thank. I’ll venture to guess that the security camera that caught Rice delivering his infamous left hook captured at least one more violent act on that very same Atlantic City elevator last February. And a few more since. How many of those were picked up by TMZ, though, and shared for the world to see?

Had Rice been a contractor from Hoboken accompanying his girlfriend for a casino date, would sports columnists near and far be considering — and writing about — the severity of domestic violence in our world today? The NFL, for good or ill, is a looking-glass for modern American culture.

Those who represent the NFL “Shield” become highly glorified lab rats, capable of lifting spirits on a visit to a children’s hospital, and capable of the same dark breakdowns that fracture
families in our own neighborhoods.

Neither of my daughters has delivered a punch to date. My hope is that they never will. Honestly, if they find themselves in a situation where that first punch is required, I’ll have larger concerns as their father. (Knowing modern gun culture for what it is, I’d be the last person to recommend a woman striking her abuser until it’s her last chance for survival.) But having a sense of their own strength, their own toughness, is a component of my daughters’ character I consider important for the days I’m not around.

Women of strength, one at a time, are the antidote to domestic violence. These women know how to make a fist, and they will know when it’s time to leave.