Editors Note: This the first in a series of random Rants that will occur on Footballtime.com because it’s the off-season and all of our minds wander. We hope you enjoy it.

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It is impossible and fruitless to judge yourself based on the past. Tennessee’s current Quarterbacks would do themselves a disservice if they spent their time comparing themselves to Peyton Manning for a multitude of reasons, not least of which because NCAA Football, The University of Tennessee and The State of Tennessee were all very different back then. That is also true of writers. The economics of 90 years ago were such that people with talent, like Hemingway or Fitzgerald, could subsidize entire lives of alcoholism with a few short stories and novels. Even now, with the written word triumphant due to the internet, no one has that sort of power. Not even the truly gifted.

But as I look across the current landscape, there are voices that many of us turn to almost as a reflex when BIG TIME SPORTS and HOT TAKES are required. The point of this column is to pay tribute to two of the best.

These are two writers I read compulsively, as do many of you, and then I feel bad about myself and my meager attempts to write anything. There is a craft to this and I know I’m only average at it. These two are masters. It’s like watching someone dunk when you can only hope to have a decent looking layup. Which is also a good way of describing my high school varsity basketball career.

This column is an unabashed praising of their frustrating brilliance and how it impacts my own scribbling. Yes, it would be healthier if I took the advise I’ve given to Tennessee’s current QB crop.

But I’m an idiot.

Onward.

On Will Leitch

The founding editor of Deadspin has many strengths yet the chief brilliance that Mr. Leitch brings is simply because after reading one sentence of his work, you like him. Compulsively. Read this, where he actually took over the format of Drew Magary, and enjoy a genius at work.

You read that and thought that your best friend Will was telling you a secret at your lunch table in High School and you loved him for it. It was conversational, observational and brilliant.

I want to write like that.

But I’m not as good.

Mr. Leitch, and I will always refer to him as Mr. Leitch for reasons that shall be self-evident later in this column, has frustrating brilliance.

Mr. Leitch is intelligent and so ahead of the curve on the market of writing, you wish he’d focus his brilliance on giving you stock advice. Based on interviews, he and I write in a very similar manor, but were I actually to punish myself intellectually by comparing Will Leitch to my writing, I’d probably just get drunk and think dark thoughts. What’s important to note, thus why I’m writing this, is that those of us that consume online Sports Writing (Also known as Internet, The according to the dictionary) all owe Mr. Leitch a profound debt. As the founding editor of Deadspin he is already on the Mount Rushmore of writers, but he’s actually more important than that. He wrote about sports, yes, but he also wrote about his life and about his family and a ton of other things that paved the way of any scribbler from the future.

Here is the best compliment I could possibly give to Mr. Leitch about how good he is: I never got mad at him for it.

Jealousy is a permanent fixture of life. We all feel it acutely in a variety of ways be they professional or personal. But Mr. Leitch, as a writer, is so damn likeable you never get mad about how good he is. I’ve had the pleasure of talking to Mr. Leitch in private and he is just as if not more pleasant than in the columns he writes. To be that talented and still nice is an amazing trait. I will relay now a story, told, for the purposes of those looking to sue me for libel, at a gym, so the veracity is really questionable, but it’s too good not to share. It’s also about writers.

Here we go:

Paris 1920s in a pub: Two writers are talking amongst a crowd. Unsurprisingly, a large amount of booze is consumed. Thus, one, an insecure pale man, is now at the point of babbling incoherently about his insecurities. Another writer carries him back to the hotel. He has also had more than enough to drink, but he handles it in his own way, quietly. They arrive back at the hotel. The frail drunk asks his more secure friend to read over the submission that the frail has just sent in. The frail isn’t sure it’s any good. The masculine man of the town says he will, but likely only to get this drunk to bed. Then the caretaker reads.

It’s morning.

The frail drunk awakes in an embarrassed state when he sees his more established friend at the table reading his work. He calls out in a chastened state, appropriate for someone who blacked out and had to be taken care of; the answer he receives is very different:

“Good morning, Mr. Fitzgerald.”

The drunk was F. Scott Fitzgerald and the man who took him home and read his work was Ernest Hemingway. The work was The Great Gatsby. After reading it that night, Hemingway always referred to F. Scott as Mr. Fitzgerald.

I don’t care if that’s true, I’m running with it. My source is a man who knew Hemingway at the end of his life when the great man was frequently bombed out of his mind and acting like a jerk on a yacht. But the dude telling the story had pictures. Does that mean this story is true? No and I still don’t care. I love that story too much to let it go. The point of sharing it in this column is to highlight how jealous writers are of good work.

I am often tempted to be jealous of how good Mr. Will F. Leitch is, but his brilliance is making a reader feel like a co-conspirator. You can’t be jealous of someone who you feel is letting you in on the joke. It’s an amazing talent. I marvel at it and am taken by it at the same time. Every day, Mr. Leitch writes a column that is better than what I can muster in double the time. Yet I enjoy it while ignoring the buzzing sensation of envy that inevitably rings in the back of my head.

It’s a talent that transcends.

The next man I’m going to highlight is so good it makes me acutely angry.

On Drew Magary

I will probably never meet Drew Magary. If I ever do our conversation will be forced and awkward and both of us will run back to a laptop to write about how awkward it was. But that bastard is brilliant. I understand Mr. Leitch and his brilliance, which occasionally makes it frustrating for me while I’m writing because I want to be better, more specifically, I want to have the same sort of transcendent brilliance that Mr. Leitch has, but the best I’ll do is on par with if Will got drunk and had a deadline of about five minutes. I recognize that and am sort of at peace with it, because I think that maybe, one day, Will Leitch will get drunk and have a deadline that sneaks up on him.

Drew Magary is so damn brilliant that he hits me like a shot. There is no five minute deadline scenario in my head. Even in that scenario, Magary will put something together that’s unbelievably good. Yes, he’ll rely on some poop jokes that I’ll skip over because they don’t do anything for me, but the rest of the column will be amazing and I’ll need to go for a walk so that I don’t cut myself just to feel something.

In the 1970’s and 1980’s Frank DeFord was the writer everyone needed to read. He specialized in long, detailed features wherein he had effective analysis of his subject and oh by the way his writing was so amazing you could read it while drinking Merlot and trying the cheese from your disgusting monthly magazine suggestion.

Drew Magary is that, Now.

He’s so disgustingly good that it makes me angry.

The amount of talent that he has that he casually throws away in “Dadspin” columns and for GQ which are incredibly amusing is just frustrating for me as a writer because he’s so damn good. He could have texted a sentence to GQ while dealing with one of his kids and half paying attention and that sentence will be more entertaining than anything I write for a month. But that’s ok because HE’S A GAMER NOT A GLORY BOY.

Drew Magary, as a writer to mimic, is something you aim at if you are a totally insane individual. The old methods of analyzing writers is truly broken. But if you were attached to the idea of shooting at the best and dissecting their work, as Drew and many at KSK made a living off of, famously mocking some famous columnists, and thought “I’ll make myself feel better by attacking Magary. That’ll work!” You’ll be so profoundly disappointed that you’ll drink yourself to death. Other than an occasional typo that someone unimportant like me should have caught, Drew Magary is safe as a writer and a commentator. His angle is always original, smart and hard to deny.

He’s a genius and it is annoying.

I’ve been reading “The Postmortal” Drew Magary’s BRILLIANT novel that all of you should buy and read and my hope is that it is tremendously successful as a movie. It is my partial hope that he stops shoving my face in how good he is like I’m a pledge and he’s the fratmaster and retires to be a WASP someplace else the way Harper Lee did. I say partial because if he didn’t have a column out one week I’d think “YES! People might actually read ME!” Then, after about five minutes I’d think: “Where is Magary’s column this week, dammit! I need to know what he thinks!”

That’s my relationship with Drew Magary’s talent.

Drew’s brilliance is aggressive, assertive and annoying. Drew Magary is not annoyingly good. That’s Mr. Leitch, but you don’t get annoyed because Mr. Leitch is awesome and you want to hang out with him. Drew Magary is *Slaps pornographic size junk on the table* good. I admire the talent but don’t want to be in the same room with it because I feel awful when compared. I know that every editor that deals with me would secretly like to be dealing with Drew Magary and is probably fantasizing about it while editing my best efforts. Then, when I leave, they read Drew Magary and dream about working with a real writer.

I’ve yet to drink with either of these writers, but in my head – which is probably not the safest place to bet on these things – I’ve thought through the Hemingway story I relayed as it pertains to these two writers. Mr. Leitch is F. Scott Fitzgerald and Drew Magary is Ernest Hemingway. Not because I think either would need to be taken care of during a night at the pub in the 1920s but because of how their brilliance has manifested itself.

Drew Magary writes in a style of your frat brother who you’ll listen to regardless of what he’s saying, even if it is brilliant, because of the chicks he brings around. He doesn’t need your damn approval. His style is brilliant and it’s gonna sit there with its beard and gun and you’re going to appreciate it you half-breed! Even if there is an occasional self-deprecating point in HIS FRESH HOT TAKE it is understood that the take is there and it is final and it is to be appreciated or you should die. Like mayo. That’s Hemingway. Hemingway lived his life and had his shotgun and didn’t care at all what you thought. As often as Magary reveals a degree of vulnerability, it still isn’t his style. Magary has organized the world around his creative instincts. He isn’t befuddled, merely reacting to the latest circumstance.

Fitzgerald was profoundly impressed by the world around him.

Mr. Leitch writes in a style that your most verbose friend sends in a text. He convinces you, even if you were dead against that opinion before the text and especially when you weren’t sure, what to think. Yet at the same time, no matter how seriously you take his opinion, he is unfailingly self-deprecating and likeable. His FRESH HOT TAKE is subversive to any other FRESH HOT TAKE and that’s why you enjoy it.

They are both so brilliant it’s filthy.

Their brilliance is intimidating, frustrating and enjoyable. If you’re not a regular reader of both, you should be. But there is another fundamental difference. Following Will Leitch is like being a fan of a baseball team. He’s out there every day and as a consequence, there is brilliance in accomplishing that feat. If you’re me, and I’d advise against that, you’re curious about what Mr. Leitch is tackling lately and if what you most recently wrote is similar and you’re hoping he doesn’t put you to shame with his brilliance on the same topic. You are rarely disappointed yet frequently depressed, because he always does.

Following Drew Magary is like following a football team. The frequency of his posts are more predictable and you find yourself itching for them, particularly during NFL season on a Thursday around noon when you know it’ll hit in a few hours. If you’re me, and I’d advise against that, you’re looking at what he wrote and cursing your limited skills and jokes and internally questioning your prohibition on poop jokes. You read several thousand words of raw genius, then look at the column you wrote and hate yourself.

But that can make you better as a writer. Sometimes, it’s an important learning tool. That’s not true of an athlete. So to bring things back full circle, a warning to Tennessee’s QB class: Don’t go down this rabbit hole. Watch the film that’s relevant, deal with your current teammates and your current opponents, always. Because if you actually analyze the predecessors you most admire, then spend too much time in their shoes rather than your own, you can limit yourself from making a play to win today.

It’s good advice for all of us, if we can take it.