The premise for Big Sean’s new music video is that he’s the best high school football player in America. We know this because a guy tells it to us in the beginning of the music video and holds up a newspaper.
New Big Sean music video reveals Kanye West is a football mastermind
Rapper Big Sean is the No. 1 high school football recruit in the country in his new video for “IDFWU.” But his lackluster play in the video and the bold work of coach Kanye West lead us to believe the guy on the sidelines has the most potential.
(Note: This video is called “I Don’t Fuck With You.” You guess whether it is NSFW for yourself.)
We’re told much of Sean’s future depends on his performance in this game. Colleges might pull their scholarships if his team loses. (In real life, this doesn’t actually happen; if you possess the talent/physical gifts to be an elite recruit, schools will want you even if your team loses every game.) But his team eventually wins, and another newspaper calls him “the most recruited player in history.”
(Why the unnecessary shot at Kansas, though? Haven’t they been through enough?)
So Big Sean walks away the most recruited player in college football history, with offers from every major school and also presumably the entire MAC and Conference USA and some schools in Canada and Mexico and Mars University.
But after watching the video, it’s our belief that colleges shouldn’t be looking at Big Sean -- a player the video proves to be undersized with so-so talent and with questionable character. Instead, they should be taking a peek at the coach on the sidelines, a man whose gutsy, innovative playcalling led Sean’s team to the victory: Coaching mastermind Kanye West.
1. Big Sean simply doesn’t seem like a very good quarterback
At 5’8, Big Sean already faces a lot of disadvantages at a college QB. He’ll be up to 10 inches shorter than his linemen, so he’s going to have trouble seeing over the line. He could make up for that if he were a nearly flawless player under center, with a booming arm, crisp decisions, and enough footspeed to turn him into a dual-threat.
Instead, we see this:
Sean sees a pair of breasts in the stands, gets distracted, and throws a terrible interception. He’s got a WR on a go route, and he throws a bullet right to a defender when a pass with some touch would’ve been an easy TD. A QB’s got to always have his head in the game. It’s bad enough that Sean looks into the stands in the middle of a play. It’s even worse that he actually allows what he sees to distract him.
Sean is just a high schooler, so you can chalk some of this up to youthful immaturity. But one wonders how any scout could view a player with physical disadvantages like Sean as elite when he makes mistakes like this. Not a lot of QBs wear No. 88, and judging from his skill set, maybe Sean should consider a position where that number is more conventional.
2. Kanye West is a coaching genius
We see that Sean’s team faces a 10-point deficit with just 1:30 remaining:
The comeback his team pulls off in the last two minutes is one of the most impressive displays of coaching I’ve ever seen.
We see Kanye West on the sideline making a wavey hand signal:
After this, a fat guy comes onto the field, and Kanye calls for Big Sean to hand off the ball to the fat guy (UPDATE: I am told this is producer DJ Mustard, whose music I was familiar with, but whose appearance I was not.)
Surely, this is suicide! Trailing two scores with under two minutes, Kanye has called a run play. And it’s not a play aimed for the sideline or on the goal line. This is a dive up the middle from about midfield. And to make matters worse, it’s with one of the slowest players on the team. This play is almost guaranteed to end with a player tackled inbounds, costing the team precious time as it tries to mount a comeback.
Not the case. Kanye’s out-of-the-box playcall leads to oodles of open space for the fat guy, who blows through a pair of defenders.
The next time we see the scoreboard, Sean’s team trails three points with just 10 seconds to go. Kanye, a noted special teams aficionado who spit an entire 32-bar freestyle about Shane Lechler’s punting ability in a pre-College Dropout mixtape track entitled “The Coffin Corner*,” presumably had his team ready to go for an onside kick.
* -- this is completely made up
With the clock winding down and the game on the line, Sean drops back to pass. We don’t really see what happens, but after swinging his arm as if to throw, Sean ends up stationary, in this position:
That’s right. Like Boise State’s Chris Petersen in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl, Kanye went to the Statue of Liberty play with the game on the line. Sean scampers into the end zone for the game-winning touchdown:
When we really examine it, none of Sean’s successes come without Kanye.
Earlier in the video, Sean is shown completing a simple pass. But when we look at it again, this pass is thrown to someone wearing jersey No. 77:
No. 77 is typically reserved for offensive linemen. We can’t see the setup, but we have to assume Kanye had drawn up some sort of tackle-eligible play that allowed No. 77 to come wide open.
You’ll also notice a cooler of Red Bull on the sidelines during the game, from which a player is seen drinking during the pivotal final drive:
It’s quite clear to me that Kanye follows in the coaching footsteps of Dana Holgorsen, the Red Bull-guzzling West Virginia coach who has piloted some of the most successful offenses in college football over the past few years. They even match:
For some reason, colleges seem hyped on Kanye’s young signal-caller, so much so that he has been recruited more than any human in history. However, if they were wise, they’d look to the man who facilitated his success, a coach who has clearly outgrown the high school ranks and is ready for the next level.
Seans will come and go, but a sideline savant capable of pulling the strings on a comeback win like this is once-in-a-generation.
(Yes, my entire point is that this music video is a metaphor for Big Sean’s career, deal with it)
