Bucs Pro Bowler Ali Marpet is a man of few words. A starting guard on last year’s Super Bowl team, the 28-year-old displayed his gift for brevity in a handwritten retirement letter to commissioner Roger Goodell. Marpet couldn’t even be bothered to punctuate his sentence, channeling his inner Ron Swanson (author of this delightfully concise park permit) with as succinct a goodbye as you’ll ever see.
Marpet’s economy of words (Ernest Hemingway, a pioneer in the minimalist literary movement, would be proud) is both refreshing and a helpful template for future NFL retirement announcements. For instance, Tom Brady’s sprawling retirement message was undeniably heartfelt but also longwinded, clocking in at an exhausting nine Instagram slides. By contrast, Michael Jordan famously announced his return from a two-year NBA sabbatical with a two-word press release.
Marpet’s note isn’t quite an Irish goodbye, but it’s darn close and a needed palette cleanser to offset self-involved victory laps like the one we’re currently witnessing in college basketball, with Coach K seeking praise and approval at every stop on his nauseating retirement tour. Of course, what would you expect from a player who spent his career in the trenches, occupying the thankless role of an offensive lineman? To quote the incomparable Kevin Malone of Dunder Mifflin fame, “Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?”
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