How I (Game) Manage: The Trent Dilfer story

Do you enjoy football? Are you looking to play it in college? How do you feel about buzz phrases like “Take the cheese”? Well, the University of Alabama Birmingham is looking for highly motivated high school football players willing to work for free, and learn the intricacies of the modern game under the tutelage of Super Bowl-winning QB Trent Dilfer.

Dilfer, whose most notable work came as a talking head at ESPN where he passionately defended the honor of the game’s best… game managers, parlayed that into a gig as a head coach at the high school level. Despite a level of condescension that even Aaron Rodgers can’t man-splain away, and that time Dilfer went viral for screaming at and shoving a player, his success at Lipscomb High School caught the eye of UAB.

Wait, Trent Dilfer is a head coach?

The new head coach is now fully ensconced at the university, and putting that patented Dilfer charisma on full display.

A sign on his office door reads: “UAB football. No problems… only solutions!”

His former place of work wrote a lengthy profile on Dilfer that I’m sure was voluntary and not prompted by the ex-employee cashing in a chit. And you know it’s hard-hitting journalism by the headline: “‘Fire breathers only:’ The story of UAB’s big gamble on Trent Dilfer.”

What that means, or whether it was just a homage to the UAB Blazers’ fire-breathing mascot, who the fuck knows. What I do know is that my brain tried to flush itself out of my ass within the first 500 words of the puff piece, and instead of depositing that runoff into a toilet, I figured I’d share it with the world.

How quickly would you roll your eyes if Trent walked into your living room to recruit your child and said, “I love the challenges because challenges come with solutions”?

Or how about this gem:

“I will hire people that have figured out-ness,” he said. “Yes, I made up that word. I think I made it up on TV one night when I was tired at ESPN and people laughed. I want people that can figure stuff out.”

While it’s a generic metric that I can certainly get on board with — I am familiar with stuff, and have a history of figuring stuff out — it’s utter nonsense. Going on air in Bristol and talking until words lose all meaning is the norm for their NFL talent, but I wouldn’t even categorize it as bullshitting.

It’s a level of discourse so devoid of intelligence and thought that merely stepping onto the set of NFL Live drops your IQ to that of a block of cheese, or at least a chunk of muenster with a take on whether Joe Flacco is elite. (Sorry, Mina Kimes! You deserve so much better!)

I’m not sure where I’m headed with this other than “Hey, remember Trent Dilfer? He sucks.” So I’m going to stop, put on the World Wide Leader, and allow my brain to go into rest mode while subconsciously judging analysts for future insult-laden rants.