The Cult Of Cult: The Art Of Performative Pettiness - a podcast by SB Nation

In a year when not much else has stood out for the Washington Football Team, pettiness has been in no short supply.
On this edition of the Cult Of Colt, we have lots to break down both in the short term — a laugher of a loss against the St. Louis Los Angeles Rams last weekend — but also the bigger picture of what has, and continues to go south in Ron Rivera’s first season at the helm. The topic of pettiness was the central driving factor in our conversation, with the Rivera-Dwayne Haskins Jr. connection as Exhibit A. Neither party is faultless in what is fast becoming a toxic relationship. Rivera has found a way to poison the well, tanking any value left for potential suitors of his inherited young quarterback on the open market. Meanwhile, Haskins’ move to unfollow the team and his teammates on social media drew the ire of otherwise loyal followers. From the perspective of we two “olds,” this move does come across as immature and not something that we would do given the circumstances, but we do recognize that the youth shall inherit the earth and the mechanisms of conflict escalation and resolution can come in different forms between different generations. To that end, we discuss whether or not Dwayne Haskins time in Washington is in essence over, of if there is any hope for reconciliation between the former first-rounder and his childhood club.
We covered a lot of ground on this episode, but we would be remiss if we didn’t pay attention to the story of the week, if not the year in Washington: the return of Alex Smith to a professional football field. We spent a good amount of time discussing our feelings of seeing Smith trot back out behind a turn-style offensive line, and what it means to the team, to him, and to us, to see him back out there. While for us (and his family who the broadcast kept on cutting to) there was a feeling of abject terror, it is undeniable that with his return, Smith has re-written the narrative of his career and cemented his legacy.
A brief programming note: going forward we’re going to make an effort to include a full transcript of each episode available on the Hogs Haven post where the episode is hosted. We recognize that it’s a little bit sloppy (it’s a semi-automated solution) but we’re working on improving access to audience members who are hard of hearing or in the deaf community and really feel compelled to listen to us talk about the WFT — who are we to stop you from doing that? It’s a free country.


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