As with anybody who ever played in the NFL, the narrative of Matt Kalil’s sporting life can be conveniently measured out and quantified in statistics and numbers. He stood 6ft 7in, weighed 140kg and boasted a 27in vertical jump when the Minnesota Vikings took him with the fourth pick in the 2012 Draft. Over the course of six seasons in the league, he started 82 games at offensive tackle, made one Pro Bowl appearance, and his last NFL contract with the Carolina Panthers was worth $55.5 million (€48 million). Oh, and his penis is supposedly the size of at least two coke cans placed on top of each other.
We know this byte of crucial information, and right now way too many people are talking about this poor chap’s chap, because his ex-wife unleashed that knowledge on America while being interviewed on something called Twitch with Marlon last November.
Initially, the story made the rounds of tabloid media where it was reported in somewhat tasteful terms as her admitting the couple had experienced “intimacy issues” during their seven-year marriage. Soon, such niceties were dispensed with, and her description of his tumescence as being like “two coke cans, maybe a third” went mainstream, accompanied by audio of her describing the, ahem, sizable problems they encountered.
“That was the biggest factor,” she said. “Love him, but he’s my homie. No, because he’s like .01 per cent of the population. We’ve tried, impossible unless you’re going to be in tears-type shit. We tried it all: therapist, doctors. Not even lying. Looked up lipo-type shit. That’s why it’s kinda funny. It’s like my life is a comedy, and it kinda writes itself. That was the biggest factor.”
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Kalil had a perfectly respectable rather than spectacular NFL career. His wife was a former Miss Minnesota and very briefly a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model. These are not major figures in America’s cultural life. Most people would struggle to pick them out of a line-up.
Yet, more than six years after he retired due to injuries, the duo are making headlines out of all proportion to their name recognition. For reasons that one of them would rather not be in the public domain. In a society with an ever-decreasing attention span, her revelatory comments about his girth should have briefly flickered across the national consciousness before being forgotten. But earlier this month her ex-husband decided to seek redress. Unforced error.
In a lawsuit, he alleges that since her appearance on the livestream he has received “unwanted attention and invasive commentary from the public”, his family “have been forced to endure the ongoing public circulation of these degrading and deeply personal statements”, and his new wife, Keilani Asmus, has been inundated with frequent and disturbing messages from strangers. Claiming his influencer ex did all of this to try to increase her own “fame and fortune”, which have apparently been flagging, he says her quotes have hindered his ability to stay out of the public eye in retirement.
Somebody, a lawyer perhaps, should have pointed out nothing was more guaranteed to prick up people’s ears and pique interest in this tawdry affair than suing for damages of $75,000 (a paltry $25,000 per can) for invasion of privacy. His attempts to seek compensation inevitably amplified coverage of the sorry debacle. No sooner had he filed papers than her team countered with a move to dismiss the lawsuit. What might have been a one-week wonder has now evolved into a genuine saga with soap operatic updates on the ongoing allegations from both sides.
In calling for the case to be thrown out, representatives for Haley Kalil (she still uses his name) announced she was merely “exercising her sexual sovereignty by truthfully describing a sexual experience that left her in tears”. With pithy phraseology like that, not to mention a reference to her “erotic autonomy”, the headlines write themselves.
Days after those retorts guaranteed renewed widespread coverage, she smiled for the cameras on the red carpet at last Sunday night’s Golden Globes. She was not in the running for an award, but her mere presence generated plenty of photos and more regurgitation of the initial story about coke cans refreshing the parts other softer drinks can’t reach.
This whole episode is yet more evidence of the crass intersection of sport and entertainment, a very modern media affliction best exemplified by the relentless coverage in sports sections here of the courtship of Taylor Swift and her beau Travis Kelce. As some of the great American newspapers continue to die off, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette will cease publishing on May 3rd, entities such as the New York Post and Daily Mail thrive by relentlessly generating this type of prurient clickbait, documenting every rumoured assignation between athletes and celebrities of even the dimmest wattage.
Aside from offering mounting evidence of our collective dumbing-down, the commercial success of outlets peddling this tripe indicates there must be an insatiable appetite for guff. People really must want to read all about a budding romance between Philadelphia Eagles cornerback Cooper DeJean and WWE star Nikki Bella, the hard launch (no, seriously) of the relationship between New York Giants’ Jaxon Dart and influencer Marissa Ayers, and how WNBA superstar Cameron Brink gave her fiance a public, loving shout-out on his birthday.
We are scraping the very bottom of an already empty barrel. Says man who just wrote a column about the dimensions of somebody’s genitalia.
