I finally got to watch the Dude Perfect 30 for 30 over Christmas break, so now those guys are on my radar. I keep thinking about the similarities between Dude Perfect, the Savannah Bananas, and The Daytripper on PBS. This is not fully fleshed out, but I’m just trying to make myself write, so here are some half-formed thoughts I’ll revisit later…

They have to do it themselves. That seems to be what unites them all in my mind. One of the talking head journalists in the 30 for 30 doc said something about Dude Perfect taking their own relationship with sports and running with it. I’ll look up the full quote later, but I think that’s the idea behind both Dude Perfect and the Savannah Bananas.

I feel like, if you made a Venn diagram of Savannah Bananas and The Daytripper, you would get Dude Perfect in between. There are probably countless other examples, but these are the three I’m working with. Good clean family fun, wholesome and devoutly Christian, almost entirely populated by white guys. But there’s also something of an entrepreneurial spirit that says “We’ll just create our own game.” I’ve heard The Daytripper tell multiple people in and around Georgetown, those asking how he gets to do what he does, that he just found sponsors. You just have to find a way to finance the thing you want to do.

There is also an element of dads or dads-in-training just wanting to entertain their kids in healthy ways, and making your kids laugh is one of the best skills a man, woman, or non-binary parent can have. This is probably really important to their success, but since I don’t have kids, I’m not going to linger here…

Back to overhearing someone ask The Daytripper how he got to do what he does, plus looking at the Dude Perfect college-guys origin story and remembering how every single dude I knew in college played idiotic games just like that, there is absolutely an element of “anyone could do that.” Anyone could film trick shots and post them on YouTube. Anyone could take a faux-journalistic approach to family vacations. Anyone could reinvent the game of baseball into a sideshow with random rules no one bothers to follow. Anyone could do it. But they didn’t.

I’m thinking of what, for me, was the most poignant scene in A Complete Unknown. Bob Dylan, king-of-the-world-newly-famous Bob Dylan, has just been in a scuffle with alleged “fans” who recognized him on a night out when he thought he was just enjoying the (Irish!) music at a session. He says to Sylvie/Suze, and I’m paraphrasing again here because I can’t research this one right now: They ask me where the songs come from, but what they really mean is, why don’t the songs come to me?

It’s the aspect of envy that, when someone is so expert at something they make it look natural and effortless, we all assume we should be able to do that thing just as easily and just as well. Why aren’t we famous? Why aren’t we getting paid for it? I’m guilty of doing this (in the distant past!) with dance: dancing is something that should come naturally to us, so when we see professional dancers, part of us thinks: I should be able to move like that, no problem. I took dance as a kid. I was on a cheerleading team that performed at pep rallies. I can move. But you can’t, not really, not anymore, not like that.

I would argue every single armchair quarterback has this mentality.

With Bob Dylan, the dude was steeped in music. He lived and breathed music, all kinds–it just happened to be folk that propelled him. He could sit down and write a mumbling, rambling song, full of seemingly off-the-cuff slant rhymes, because he has an encyclopedic knowledge of everything that came before. He found his place within the flow of music that has been co-created right alongside our DNA. (I would argue that this is what the biggest female pop star on the planet is doing now, that she is the Bob Dylan of the social media age, but I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole).

So when I watch the Dude Perfect dudes show off their new headquarters (soon to be complemented by a branded store, just like The Daytripper, full of DP merch, just like the Bananas), I actually don’t get jealous because all I can think is, “Dude, they really love sports.” Like, I can’t imagine loving sports that much. So I don’t feel my ego threatened by any of that, but I can empathize with someone who does.

And bringing it all back home…I’m reading the Dude Perfect book right now, because that’s how I function. I get the appeal; I’m just trying to understand how to make it work for me…without being a jealous dick who punches Bob Dylan in a pub. Suffice to say, this happens a lot with writing and publishing. Lots and lots of people have passion, and sometimes it finds its outlet in punches or posted comments. Sometimes, when we listen to our higher angels and some really savvy money guys and social media mavens, we can find a way to make it work for us, to make it pay.

Like I said, I’m still working through this one… 😉