If US Olympic Trials are the “swim coach Super Bowl”, then I’m out of superlatives for the Olympics. Perhaps because it is more exclusive in terms of what coaches actually get to don their glistening synthetic polo shirts. The Olympics just is, it’s the assumed final boss of everything that we do, the aspiration of many but also an unrealistic dream for most of that many.
So it was I found myself watching a middling women’s 100 breaststroke semi, and up strode the hope of the US team, Lilly King. She’s reached the point where she’s now “been around for a while”, which means that I, along with nearly every other swim fan (a term that is almost interchangeable with “coach”) has had a chance to change our opinion on her dozens of times.
My friend Garrett McCaffrey calls her “the Larry Bird of swimming”, which is mostly a reference to her shit talking ability and only slightly a reference to her being from Indiana. The truth is, some of the time over the course of Lilly King being around for a while I have found myself firmly in her camp. When I watched her race the 200 breast in Indy, seemingly willing herself to victory with grit and sheer force of will, I was captivated.
At other times, I’ve thought to myself the same thing my most loyal listeners and readers occasionally find themselves thinking: she’s “actually pretty annoying”.
opinions are like something something They stink ETC
This blog is not about my precise judgment of Lilly King. I think everyone is entitled to their own opinions even though mine are the most right. No, the next thought I found myself having was: “what a privilege it is for me to have an opinion on Lilly King”.
You ever listened to someone share their deep-seated belief about something and then wondered why on earth they would share it? Chances are, they found something tangential enough to fire off the spark in their mind to summon a thought, but didn’t have enough time to consider that actually, maybe, no one cares.
The more “famous” a person becomes however, the more likely your friends are to entertain your opinion on them. I could call up anyone of my swim fan (coach) friends and share my current Lilly King opinion and they’d probably fire there’s back. It’s not every day you can get other people to respond and interact with your opinion on something.
Lest you think that I am getting the sweetest part of this deal, I also believe that it is a privilege to have people opining on you. One of my career aspirations, one which I will sadly never achieve, was to have people bash me on a college swimming message board. College Swimming was Swimcloud 1.0, before Greg Earhart wisely decided that having a message board mostly led to toxic fights, inexplicably dominated by discussions of who would win that years men’s CAA (Colonial Athletic Association) title.
The only remaining place for people to spew invective against you in swimming is the Swimswam comment section, and I don’t find myself necessarily as interested in being personally attacked there. Whereas anonymous weirdos getting mad about you at College Swimming signaled some sort of street cred to me back in the day, Swimswam’s section appears to have actual career consequences, probably due to the fact that it is wildly more popular.
Which brings me to today’s big news outside of the Olympics, and another thing I very much enjoying having an opinion on: Brett Hawke. With the “resignation” of the prince of darkness himself, Beelzebub Markus Schubert, it appears that some parent board wanted to craft the biggest possible FU to their departing coach.
Therefore, they’ve replaced the man who frequently whined that the US had a long Olympic distance drought due to everyone being wimp’s now to the guy who says actually training for anything longer than a 25 might be child abuse. I have a confession to make in regards to that.
Many people say that social media is fueled by negative emotions, and I know they’re right. Because I find Brett Hawke’s social media presence very upsetting, and that’s how instagram knows to feed me Brett Hawke non-stop. I love to have an opinion on how bad the opinions that Brett Hawke shares are.
Now you might say he’s living rent-free in my head, but I think you’re wrong. There’s a cost for him, and that is that my estimation of him has changed dramatically. He has gone from someone who I found a bit cocky but would have wanted to share a beer with, to someone who I consider actively destructive to the sport of swimming.
He’s come to represent the opposite of what I would want from any leader in the sport of swimming. He’s willing to sell out his audience to promote himself. He’s ignorant to a point that strains credulity yet claims to be sharing wisdom. He’s a bully who followed Braden Keith around at trials calling him a “pussy” as if it was 1995 and they were both in middle school. Like all bullies, he’s actually terrified of any situation where his complete and utter unfounded “confidence” in himself might be shattered.
He’s a coach who took over the biggest juggernaut in modern college swimming history and amazingly over the period of less than a decade moved the men’s team from NCAA Champions to 6th in the SEC. When he recorded a much lauded series of podcasts with Eddie Reese, I couldn’t help but think that Reese should probably give him a pension for completely clearing the way of the biggest potential obstacle to Reese’s most recent run of NCAA men’s titles.
If what I just wrote seems savage to you, I’ll return to my original thesis. Brett Hawke has made enough noise, has become well enough known, that we have the privilege of having an opinion on him. I, for one, am grateful for that. What about you?