I Got a Tee Time at 7 O'Clock!: The Lawrence Taylor Interview

While listening to Bill Simmons's B.S. Report podcast, Simmons made reference to Lawrence Taylor's bizarre Inside the NFL interview. So, as I love football and anything that is bizarre, I had to watch this video at 2 A.M. when I can't go back to sleep. If you are a sports fan or you like weird interviews, spend the 13 minutes to watch this video and then meet me at the second paragraph below!

What makes the interview so odd and hilarious in a wrong kind of way is James Brown and Cris Collinsworth's attempts to get an apology out of Lawrence Taylor. The discussion of his arrest goes on for so long because they probably expected an apology to come out within the first thirty seconds, and it never came. It's also hilarious because Brown establishes at the beginning that Collinsworth doesn't even want to be there to interview him about that particular topic.

There are some particularly quotable lines from Taylor in such a short interview including “I never told you I was different,” “I pretty much have to—every day,” “What I put Rockland County through” and my personal favorite (which I will now say anytime I make a mistake), “I got a tee time at 7 o'clock.” Clearly, Taylor has no public relations representative and possibly not even a lawyer. I kind of want to shout "I got a tee time at 7 o'clock" at Joe Theismann.

But, the most important quote that grabs at the core of Taylor is when he says, “As easy as football, it's as hard as life is to me.” It's evident in that as to what he is. Taylor is football's version of The Wrestler. He's a guy who loves football and clearly put all his energy into it to a point that he has no sense as to how life works. He also acknowledges being given the leeway to do whatever he had wanted in life, and now as his expectation is to be a family man, he does not really have an interest in being that or even perhaps an understanding of it. He doesn't comprehend what is “straight and narrow,” which also makes me wonder if he's been busted for both cocaine and solicitation of an underage prostitute over the years, there's probably a ton of other possibly intriguing laws he broke during his time on the Giants' defense. Even more evidence of who Taylor is comes at the 10:30 mark in the video. Notice how different Taylor becomes when it's the subject of football. He brightens up, he's funny, he understands it entirely, and he's totally engaged in wanting to talk about it. Lawrence Taylor is a Hall of Famer at football, and probably the exact opposite of that when it comes to life and how to handle himself in the public eye. What a strange but captivating interview.

On a side note, Inside the NFL really needs different chairs for their interviews. There is way too much sock action going on for Brown and Collinsworth in their suits.

Also, single men, heed the advice of the great L.T.: “All I could do is ask the question: How old you are?”