When The MMQB first bravely addressed this topic in 2019, there was no telling how much further into an abyss of societal self-importance and egotism we would dive and, yet, here we are once again trying to explain to the masses why retired jersey numbers make absolutely no sense.
Luckily, I have a solution. But before we get there, I feel it’s important to address our collective need to plant some cumbersome stamp of permanence on a completely impermanent existence. I don’t understand the fascination of imagining some post-apocalyptic trip to Soldier Field 3.0 and having some parent in 2097 forcing his tired and overheated child to AI conjure the exploits of Clyde “Bulldog” Turner (a 1940 to ’52 Chicago Bears player who got to keep his number retired, by the way, while the number the franchise retired for George Halas was brought out of circulation for a sixth-round pick named Bob Avellini—a great nugget unearthed by former colleague Jonathan Jones).
On a larger scale, I don’t understand the outsized panic over Abdul Carter asking Phil Simms and Lawrence Taylor if he can wear their respective numbers when we have literally built an entire global society upon the bones of anonymous ancestors who had far more importance as to the formulation of our life as it is today—again, no offense, Phil—but didn’t get the chance to be remembered or honored because, according to my Oregon Trail CD-ROM, they sustained too many snake bites and had to be tossed off a wagon.
On a smaller and more practical scale, I don’t understand how we can’t comprehend the fact that, in a sport with assigned number segments for each position, we’re rapidly barreling toward a future where top-drafted quarterbacks will have a choice between 17, 68 and 47 because the numbers represent the only uniforms eligible to be worn. This is especially true now that skill-position players can wear single-digit numbers. Single-digit numbers have taken on their own prestige, which will inevitably lead to a logjam of high schoolers and collegiate athletes wearing said numbers and hoping to do so at the professional level as well.
I’m asking this honestly. Isn’t a lifetime of adulation, and, for more modern number retirees, hundreds and possibly thousands of free drinks, meals, vacations, suits and jewelry, cushy television gigs, golf outings, vacation homes, government subsidized volleyball courts, millions of dollars and yearly laps around a full stadium of fans for a taste of that applause enough? We now need to make it so that no one can wear our shirt again? Up until the Obama administration, campaign donors could literally sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House. If that’s not sacrosanct, what is?
Let me pause for a minute to address what you’re probably all thinking: How dare he? It’s true that I am not good enough to have anything of my own retired. I am not in my high school’s Hall of Fame (though, in fairness to me, neither is a multiple-time AVN award winner who also went there, showing the high bar one must clear). So, clearly, I wouldn’t get what it’s like to be so dizzyingly successful that this would be a problem. I don’t understand what it’s like to work my whole life for something.
All fair points! But like a warming planet, this issue isn’t simply disappearing because we want it to. With each situation in which a franchise feels the need to drum up a publicity evening during a down season and retire the number of a legend, said franchise is taking a cool and relevant number out of circulation for another generation of fans to enjoy on the back of another superstar who means just as much to them as this distant comet of a human meant to their grandparents. Let’s take the New York Giants, for example, a team that, just last year, unretired the first retired number in NFL history (No. 1, for Ray Flaherty) and handed it to the No. 6 pick, Malik Nabers.
The Giants have only 87 numbers in circulation and only 11 numbers remaining for a quarterback to choose from (another Giants retired number factoid that underscores the unseriousness of this exercise: The franchise has retired the No. 14 twice. It’s super secret double retired and will zap your forehead like Voldemort if you go anywhere near it). This is dangerously close to a New York Yankees team that cannot hand out any single-digit numbers, or any numbers lower than 11. The Yankees have the best and most powerful player in baseball, Aaron Judge, who is wearing a hockey number and looks like he’s attempting a comeback for the Wei Chuan Dragons instead of cranking homers for the most distinguished franchise in sports.
The Chicago Bears have 14 retired numbers and had to stop the practice in 2013, which prevented Brian Urlacher from having his jersey retired.
The San Francisco 49ers have 12 retired numbers. Say George Kittle (No. 85) makes it another two seasons in the NFL and reaches at least one more Pro Bowl. That would give Kittle a statistical stranglehold over another retired 49ers number (No. 87, Dwight Clark). If Kittle were to have his jersey retired, San Francisco would only have seven remaining numbers in the 80s.
Retiring numbers like this leads to constant statistical, emotional and administrative pissing contests, which have the power of annoying the stuffing out of the club for years to come. For example, in retiring Donovan McNabb’s No. 5, the Philadelphia Eagles have almost certainly boxed themselves into retiring Jalen Hurts’s No. 1 upon his retirement. If Hurts’s number gets retired, how soon are the numbers of Brandon Graham, Fletcher Cox, Jason Kelce and Lane Johnson getting retired? And if you retire Kelce’s and Johnson’s numbers, can you leave out Jordan Mailata or Jason Peters in good conscience?
Every team has plenty of spaces in which to honor its best players. Rotundas, walkways, facilities, locker room hallways, meeting rooms and museums. There is also a literal Pro Football Hall of Fame, where almost all the players who are good enough to have their jerseys retired can remain frozen like bronze Ted Williams for all of time.
But—as promised—I have a solution that makes even more sense. And makes teams money in the process.
The patch
Quickly, one escape hatch paragraph to get me out of some trouble. Numbers that address some larger societal importance or serve as a very specific type of memorial are obviously welcome to be taken out of circulation. Major League Baseball doesn’t allow anyone to don Jackie Robinson’s No. 42 after he broke the league’s color barrier. The Arizona Cardinals have taken the No. 40 out of circulation forever after the death of Pat Tillman, a player who left millions on the table to fight for our country after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Don’t want Dale Earnhardt’s No. 3 to be pasted on a car ever again? No problem. Bill Russell, a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient who weathered racism and bigotry to become one of the most important athletes in American history, can absolutely have No. 6 removed from the NBA.
While we’re at it, one specific note based on my own history: One of my first big breaks in sportswriting came from being able to cover the Syracuse men’s lacrosse team. The No. 22 has its own kind of mythos, having been worn by all the team’s best players since current men’s head coach Gary Gait revolutionized the sport in the late 1980s. Instead of retiring the number after Gait, the team bestows it to a player. The seriousness of that gesture almost always forces the player to become the consummate leader and teammate, lifting the tide of the entire team.
That segues somewhat into this idea of viewing numbers as a kind of living honorarium, one that has an active life as a kind of passed down set of family armor. The University of Michigan installed and then quickly scrapped a “legends” program in which all jersey numbers were unretired, though the players who wore those numbers had to wear a patch honoring the person or people who made the number legendary in the first place. Michigan Man Jim Harbaugh’s arrival spelled the end of the program, amid questions from players about the singularity of it all. Basically, players were upset about a small number of players getting prestigious uniforms, which flies in the face of a “team” atmosphere.
Of course, at the NFL level, where teams consist of grown men who already deal with the reality of a few players having special uniforms with the letter “C” sewn onto it, the “legends” patch shouldn’t be an issue. Like the No. 22 Syracuse lacrosse jersey, a “legends” patch almost forces whatever player asks for or is given the number to try to live up to the expectations. The Dallas Cowboys already do this to some extent with the No. 88, which has been passed down to receivers Drew Pearson, Michael Irvin, Dez Bryant and CeeDee Lamb, among others. The sheer horror of a quarterback demanding No. 18 in Indianapolis and then pulling a Will Levis would almost guarantee more after-hours practice and film study.
At the very least, the jerseys are going to look awesome and sell out every time a high-profile first-round pick gets the opportunity to wear one. Think of an oval slightly larger than a dollar bill with the signature of the player who first made the number worth remembering on it. If you play a decade plus and make it to a bunch of Pro Bowls? Congrats, your signature is added.
Over time, so many of these retired numbers are going to be coaxed out of retirement anyway. We’ve seen the flimsiness of this process take place even inside some of the proudest and most historical NFL franchises. Players are going to continue asking, the boomers are going to continue folding the act of players asking into their forever narrative of the kids these days not earning anything and we in the media will simply continue to flood the atmosphere with useless think pieces about the value of retiring numbers in the first place.
Or, we can become true pacifying capitalists and kowtow to the attention-starved, I-deserve-it famous athletes in our life while simultaneously erasing the cool number shortage and preventing a world where someone like Carter has to be shot down or cold shouldered by a pair of franchise legends before his career even starts.
What’s cooler than having your number retired? Keeping your name on it in perpetuity.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Instead of Retiring NFL Jersey Numbers … Do This.