Mark Leibovich's Big Game exposes a rarefied caste of powerful idiots.
Leibovich has in a sense spent his entire career preparing himself to write Big Game, his new book about the NFL and the vain weirdos that populate its upper castes. It helps that Leibovich is himself a serious NFL head—an old-growth Patriots fan, as he notes often, one whose fandom dates back to the since-vanished age when being a Patriots fan was as unpleasant to endure as the team’s dreary dominance now is for everyone else. But it’s Leibovich’s years in the field—his long tours in the melting shadow of those garish ice sculptures and the blast zones of those open bars—that prepared him best for the work he does in Big Game. His book is about the league’s power elite—owners like Jerry Jones of the Cowboys and Robert Kraft of the Patriots and commissioner Roger Goodell, but also sleep-deprived scooplet-merchants like ESPN’s Adam Schefter and Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, unquestionably one of the great players in the game’s history and, more questionably, someone presently attempting (with the help of his personal wellness svengali, Alex Guerrero) to pivot into being a sort of aspirational lifestyle brand.
- The Baffler
