Rather be a Kid Rock than a Tom Brady

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 31/05/2011 (5410 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Rock star or professional athlete? It is one of the eternal paradoxes that has plagued mankind since the inception of world tours and Super Bowls.

Sports stars and musicians have been fans of one another for a long time. Musicians are often seen wearing the jerseys of their favorite pro athletes during their performances and competing in as many athletic pursuits as they can (see Justin Timberlake). And, I don’t need to tell you how many athletes have tried to produce an album or have even gone so far as to let musicians negotiate contracts on their behalf.

This mutual admiration stems from the ‘grass is always greener’ theorem. Famous musicians wish they were world-class athletes, and famous athletes wish they were world-class musicians. But who is right? Which dream occupation is a better gig? I have often puzzled over this quandary until I had the opportunity to explore the music industry close-up at the Kid Rock concert last Tuesday and then attend the U2 concert on Sunday.

First of all, it should be made clear that I’m not using my athletic exploits and experiences as a comparison for this study. The athletic equivalent of someone like a Kid Rock is probably a Tom Brady from the New England Patriots, and of Bono and U2, you would be best to use Michael Jordan, to be sure of comparing apples to apples.

Though I have not lived the grandiose lifestyle or experienced the athletic achievements of these superstar and celebrity athletes, I have an idea as to how they live and the fanfare they experience.

Now that we have identified the mutual admiration between the two industries — music and sport — it should come as no surprise that one of my teammates on the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, Kelly Butler, is good friends with Kid Rock, or as we came to know him, Bob.

When Kelly first told us that he and Bob were friends, it wasn’t the first time I had heard an athlete overstate his relationship with a celebrity, so I was more than a little skeptical. I will now never doubt him again. That skepticism went out the window once Ibrahim Khan, Darren Cameron (our Bomber media guy), Kelly and I were all handed backstage “family” passes at Bob’s concert after we parked inside the MTS Centre.

We had the run of the entire venue and could go wherever we pleased. We took full advantage, looking under couches for clues or evidence of the Atlanta Thrashers coming here. Thirty minutes after we arrived, Bob welcomed us all into his dressing room and told us to make ourselves at home. So we watched the Miami Heat play the Chicago Bulls on the flat screen as Bob smoked a cigar and we helped ourselves to his ample supply of Coors Light.

The best way to characterize meeting and hanging out with Kid Rock is to use his own words from his performance that night when he said, “You can’t buy cool.” He certainly had no need to.

Bob has an embarrassment of riches on tour, from a crew of 70 full-time staffers that travel with him to every destination and cater to his every need (we challenged his bodyguard to a mock fight so we could take his job) to a lifestyle best depicted in his song Cowboy.

But what Bob did not have on this very day, was enough dancers. His crew told me that at every Canadian destination on the tour they hire four dancers to perform on his set, two at a time, for a total of two songs. On this day there was a problem — they were short two.

As per usual, I had been running my mouth about Winnipeg and how beautiful the women are here, so the task fell to me to fill the vacancies — in under an hour. No job has been filled so easily since my good buddy Wade retired from football. I signed up a couple of ladies already en route to the show. They were gracious enough to take the stage and dance for a single song. I haven’t been so proud since I watched my dog swim for the first time.

All in all, we should be so lucky to be in either of these performer’s shoes, athlete or musician, but after what I witnessed last Tuesday, and watched at the U2 360 Tour, I know in this comparison, the grass really is greener on the other side.

Doug Brown, a hard-hitting defensive tackle with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and an even harder-hitting columnist, appears Tuesdays in the Winnipeg Free Press.