On Darnold, Maye, and... Honnhold?
NFL Championship weekend gave us real edge-of-your-seat drama - or - did it?
There’s nothing better for a sports fan, or in my case, a sports fan who is a former professional sports broadcaster, than the biggest games there can be. That’s playoffs. Everything you’ve worked and trained all year for coming down to a series of singular moments. You win - you move on. You lose - everything stops. Jobs are on the line. Entire communities are entrenched and invested.
That’s where the stakes are highest. Every little step and move are analyzed. One mistake can cost you everything.
Well - maybe not exactly everything - as we saw Saturday night from Taipei. So, while the NFL and its broadcasters engaged in the usual high-drama activities and accompanying hyperbole on Sunday, there was an athlete who was actually doing something where the stakes were indeed - the highest - and one mistake could actually cost him everything the night before.
While NFL players were having their final meetings and run-throughs, and broadcasters were back in hotel rooms with notebooks and laptops preparing fodder to call the action, Alex Honnold was climbing a nearly 1,700 foot tower made of slick glass and sharp steel alone, without ropes or safety nets, or any sort of backstops.
One mistake - ONE - ends his life. His wife was there watching. And it was live. LIVE - on Netflix (with a 10 second delay in case the worst happened). And I watched it live and in real time.
And that event on that night made me question every way I ever viewed or described a tense and highly important playoff game or championship moment.
