Let me tell you about the dumbest story in the sports world this week that’s more than just a big dog sitting courtside at the Lakers game. (To be fair, it was a big, fluffy dog.) New York Giants QB Tommy DeVito got snapped by the cruel rubber band of fame after his agent, Sean Stellato, pulled the old bait-and-switch over an appearance fee at a pizzeria somewhere in New York or New Jersey.
Apparently, $10,000 was the initial agreed-upon number, but Stellato upped it to $20,000 to account for the rise in inflation and his client’s sudden popularity. After the internet admonished DeVito for not living up to the working-class stereotype that it created, he showed up to Coniglio’s Old Fashioned Pizzeria in Morristown, pro bono, topped a few pies, smiled for the cameras and probably threw a log of pepperoni around like it was a football.
However, fear not, because Stellato’s tough (predatory?) tactics will only be applied to football matters going forward, as DeVito hired an actual marketing agent and tasked them with setting up future meet-and-greets.
Thank the lord.
If you want to book Stellato for your next birthday party, I’m sure he’s available. Although his rate might increase if you ask him to wear his green Italian-American Hall of Fame suit that was in no way an even cheaper publicity stunt by the Italian-American Hall of Fame than Stellato showing up on the sidelines of a Monday Night Football game dressed like an extra from The Godfather.
The catch of the internet — aside from the Dark Web streamlining human trafficking — is if you want more of something, you can get it. It doesn’t matter what DeVito aspires to do with his opportunity, or that he’s genuinely taking it seriously, he’s an Italian from Jersey who still lives at his parents’ home and starts under center for the New York Giants. Exhaust the story until everything that’s fun and uplifting becomes insufferable and gross.
We should be allowed to use all the 🤌 emojis we want and dot our conversations with random “Ohs!” and “Mamma mias!” Bonus points if you can use “marone” properly. However you want to categorize DeVito’s spat with the pizzeria — kerfuffle, feud, disagreement, misunderstanding, ordeal — this level of coverage is usually reserved for gate-sized scandals. Or an Aaron Rodgers fart.
The Giants got pasted by the mediocre Saints on Sunday, 24-6, with DeVito and the offense tallying six points and less than 200 yards of total offense. You’d think that would be enough to temper the Tommy Cutlets intrigue.
Nope, the jackasses online require a near-daily human sacrifice to the content gods. Uplifting, heartwarming, demeaning, degrading, demoralizing, it doesn’t matter. DeVito went from beloved to selfish and back to beloved again, but each time, Americans gobbled it up, so keep the stories coming until novelty turns to nostalgia.
At some point down the road, we’ll all laugh (or cry) at those six weeks when Tommy Salami was a thing — which can be said about really anything viral. I’m looking forward to humanity’s collective realization that we’ve spent the majority of the 21st century staring at screens and debating dumb sh*t, and even dumber people, on the Internet.
