The Two-Day Trophy
"Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun."
Two years ago, A.J. Brown finally won the Super Bowl. He had spent years in the league chasing it — the training, the losses, the offseasons — all of it pointed at the one thing everybody told him was the greatest thing a player could do. And then he won it. Afterward he wrote something honest on Instagram: "I've had time to reflect on being a champion. I tried to feel how everyone made it seem that a champion should feel, but unfortunately, it was short-lived. Two days, to be exact."
Two days. A lifetime of striving, and the satisfaction lasted a long weekend. Then the only question left was: when do I get to do it again?
This is not a problem with football. It is the oldest problem in the world, and the wisest, richest man who ever lived already ran the whole experiment for us. Solomon had the throne, the treasury, and zero restrictions. "Whatever my eyes desired, I did not keep from them," he wrote. "I kept my heart from no pleasure." He could buy, build, and taste anything. And when he stepped back to survey the whole glittering pile, his verdict was brutal: "Behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun."
