Parody is a stylistic device used by writers to reconceptualize an event, circumstance, or situation for the purpose of showing it in a different light. It’s not meant to be critical, but it is a form of critique. This parody’s “what if” focuses on the 1993 film Rudy.
“Mr. Ruettiger,” Bartholomew purred, his voice dripping with the effortless condescension of someone who billed four hundred dollars an hour just to look at an email. “You are an adult man who wears clip-on ties and currently owes back rent to an establishment called ‘The House of Subs.’ You cannot play middle linebacker. You will explode upon impact. You possess the structural integrity of damp saltine.”
“Bartholomew,” I replied, leaning across the table until my nose was two inches from his heavily pomaded part, my pupils dilated to the size of fifty-cent pieces. “Let’s talk about interstate commerce. Let’s talk about the Sherman Antitrust Act. Let’s talk about the exact moment your athletic director accepted five million dollars from a brand of industrial floor cleaner to slap their logo on the Gatorade coolers. You call it amateurism. I call it an unregistered cartel operating without a permit from the Federal Trade Commission. Now, either you hand me a helmet with air padding, or I subpoena your tax returns from the Cayman Islands and leak your group chat with the booster club.”
He didn’t last forty-eight hours. By Thursday night, U.S. District Judge Harold “The Hammer” Higgins—a man whose jurisprudence was dictated entirely by his hatred of his ex-wife and his desperate desire to be home in time to watch The Great British Baking Show—signed the temporary restraining order with a stroke of a gold-plated fountain pen.
“Listen to me, you miserable litigious parasite,” Judge Higgins muttered, not looking up from his ham sandwich. “If I have to read one more seventy-page memorandum citing maritime law in a dispute over a collegiate slot receiver, I am going to hold the entire university athletic department in contempt of court and sentence them to community service picking up cigarette butts outside an Indianapolis bus station. Suit him up. God help us all.”
The locker room on Saturday morning was not a temple of brotherhood—no Knute Rockne speeches about winning one for the Gipper. There was only a massive offensive lineman named Tank, who weighed three hundred and forty pounds, smelled intensely of menthol cigarettes and Bengay, and looked like he ate gravel for breakfast—sliding a digital copy of a non-disclosure agreement across the wooden bench.
“Listen to me, you weird little man,” Tank grunted, his voice sounding like a garbage disposal digesting a bag of iron nails. “If you drop the ball on third-and-short, I am going to fold you lengthwise and mail you back to your mother in a manila envelope. Do we understand each other?”
“Thanks, old pal,” I said, patting his massive, hairy forearm with the frantic energy of a ferret on a trampoline. “Just make sure you block the defensive end. I’ve already filed a motion for sanctions against his defensive coordinator for excessive use of zone-blitz schemes without prior administrative notification.”
Imagine if it did’t turn out this way? (photo, Elmhurst Magazine)
When the moment finally arrived late in the fourth quarter, with the home team leading by fifty points against an opponent from a directional state whose players looked like they had been recruited directly from a local mattress warehouse, the coaching staff had no choice. The offensive coordinator wept softly into his laminated play sheet, whispering prayers to a deity that had clearly abandoned South Bend decades ago. He signaled for personnel package Delta-Legal-Zero.
I trotted onto the turf. I did not run with the majestic grace of a gazelle. I ran with the frantic, high-stepping gait of a man crossing a parking lot covered in Lego bricks while being pursued by an IRS auditor.
The quarterback took the snap, scrambled for his life, and lofted a wobbling, dying-duck pass that fluttered through the autumn air like a panicked pigeon. I didn’t catch it. It hit me squarely in the bridge of my nose, producing a sound remarkably like someone dropping a carton of eggs onto a hardwood floor. The whistle blew. The stadium scoreboard flashed a congratulatory message sponsored by a regional chain of discount muffler shops.
Did my teammates hoist me onto their shoulders? Did the crowd erupt into a symphony of tearful, cinematic applause? Absolutely not. Tank grabbed me by the back of my jersey, hauled me toward the sideline like a sack of damp laundry, and handed me an itemized invoice for my pro-rated share of the post-game catered box lunches, along with a warning that my billable hours for the week were three minutes short of the minimum quota.
Amateur athletics were saved. The law had prevailed. And as I sat on the bench with a bag of frozen peas pressed against my shattered nasal cavity, watching the scoreboard glow in the gathering dusk, I knew one thing with absolute, unshakeable certainty: suing people is vastly superior to catching footballs, and if you scream loud enough at a federal judge, you can make literally anything happen in the great, glorious, deeply dysfunctional circus of America.
