Dude had a decent game
If you’re reading this site you probably spent some time last night taking in the beginning of the college football season watching South Carolina take on North Carolina at home in their season opener. You probably root for neither of these teams but hey, it’s football, and you probably wanted to watch Jadeveon Clowney tear poor Bryn “The Gunner” Renner in half. After watching a pretty dominating Gamecock win you left feeling disappointed because, even though the Gamecocks won in convincing fashion you didn’t get to see the spectacle of awe-inspiring dominance that’s been hyped since last seasons disappointingly rote National Title game. Jadeveon Clowney at least for the first week of the season is a victim of his own hype machine.
Last night analysts searching for a new narrative after “Jadeveon Clowney: Best Defensive Lineman Ever?” met with reality last night and we found that while he still has a chance to live up to they hype Mr. Clowney is still for all intents and purposes a Junior in college who will have games where after seeing a night full of double and triple teams where he walks away with three tackles no sacks and nary a Sportscenter top ten play to drool over. It happens.
Mr. Clowney’s cool night reminded me of the last man who’s most popular name starts with J and left me with a similar experience. Jay Z had the world a-twitter in the run-up to his last LP. He sold a million copies before anyone heard bar number one. Commercials debuted during the NBA Finals. Kanye had just set the music marketing world on it’s ear with his “promo-less” promotion run and now Jay Z was one-upping his little brother with an even bigger event album no one saw coming and was more accessible to the listener then Kanye’s B L A C K I E-like sreamo album.
It was a pretty live commercial though
It left some, disappointed. Of course there are some who swear it changed their life but for most it was a pretty cool album that now has been kind of lost in the shuffle between Big Sean’s new joint and Kendrick Lamar’s “Control” verse. We tuned in to see pretenders to “The Throne” get torn in half and got a pretty good rap album and that wasn’t  enough to meet our expectations.
It’s inevitable of course that people will do all they can to promote their work and themselves especially when it’s success is based upon it’s consumption by others. Jay Z has much more agency in how he’s promoted than Jadeveon Clowney does but the fact remains that both may have hit the point where promotion can be detrimental. Jadeveon Clowney will now be subject to every snap he plays being put under microscope and found wanting because he failed to use his Madden hit stick to knock the ball loose. Jay Z has been under similar scrutiny for a pretty long time now but his ability to deliver such jarring bone shattering moments has waned a bit and no one knows how to deal with it. His critics claim he’s “fell off”, his supporters act as if he’s still the best rapper alive, most of us simply go along until we find the album out of rotation a few weeks later.