A Day In The Life Of
Josh Gordon
When a star NFL wide receiver gets suspended for the season, he does the only thing he can do: He sells cars.
On August 27, the NFL announced it had suspended Cleveland Browns wide receiver Josh Gordon — fresh off a breakout season that propelled him to the vanguard of the league’s youth movement — for the entire 2014 season. A week later, ESPN’s Josina Anderson reported Gordon had taken a position as a “goodwill ambassador” for the Sarchione Auto Group, a position that includes “all aspects of their car business including as an on-floor salesman.”
What follows is an account of Gordon’s last day on the job.
6:45–6:59 a.m.: Finish super-intense dream about scoring the game-winning TD in Super Bowl L — a quick slant from Johnny Football that hits me right in the numbers. I turn it into a 95-yard rampage through 11 Roger Goodell vampire cyborgs, stiff-arming the last one so hard his head severs and snaps back like a Pez dispenser. When I break the plane, Playboy bunnies light a bonfire of 500 kilos of “Tosh Gordon,” America’s first strand of 100 percent legal weed.
6:59: Wake up a tenth of a second before the alarm goes off. That’s how good I am. Could definitely play for Tom Coughlin if things don’t work with the Browns. Wait, that’s a terrible idea.
7:00–7:35: Time to shower. Find the nearest fire hydrant and rip it out of the cement with my hands. Breakfast — two huge-ass sacks of bolts and washers covered in jet fuel. Side of tree bark and bacon.
7:36–7:48: Put on my Cleveland Browns uniform. There’s a hole where the NFL patch used to be.
7:49–7:59: Head to the dealership, averaging 115 through the secondary streets in my neighborhood. Some sports radio asshat talking about my “poor life decisions.” I play a sport where some dudes get hit so hard, they literally get brain damage. I know a little bit about life decisions.
8:00–8:58: Show up to work an hour early. Squeeze in a quick workout: lunges with an Econoline van strapped to each calf and deadlifting spare engine blocks. Stock the free coffee and Danish station, which I do five times a day, even though everyone throws that shit out anyway.
8:59–9:07: First customer arrives. Thirty-something dude who immediately asks what the fuck I — Josh Gordon —am doing working at a car dealership. Explain how $3.7 million guaranteed over four years doesn’t go as far as you’d think, especially when you essentially defer a quarter of that. Thought about making a Ray Rice joke, strictly for comparison purposes, but decided to keep that one in the ol’ holster.
9:08–9:10: Customer admits he is, in fact, a Ravens fan, and starts lecturing me about learning my lesson the first time, and the law’s the law, and in the end Ray and I both broke the law so why shouldn’t we get the same punish…
9:10: Excuse myself to tend to the coffee and Danish station; slam my head through the drywall instead. Turn around to find the customer gone. Almost closed the deal. Probably should’ve offered the undercoating.
9:10–9:53: Sit through reprimand by floor manager, who tries to compare selling cars to me going up against linebackers trained to forcibly remove my spine through my mouth. An incentive-based position, he calls it, right before telling me that drywall repair will be deducted from my next commission. I haven’t even made a sale yet.
10:04–10:05: Second customer. Old-ass woman named June wearing a sweater with owls on it. Knows nothing about football. Wonders why I’m in a jersey covered in burn marks and motor oil. Possibly thinking about leasing a red Fiesta. That shit’s hilarious.
10:05–10:53: Fiesta test drive. The Weather Channel was talking about wind gusts of up to 15 miles per hour, so I load four extra tires into the trunk. Fiesta breaks down two miles from the dealership, so I carry it back. June worries this one’s got a little too much horsepower for her taste, I told her how I outran a Fiesta with a parachute strapped to my back last week. She says something about getting home to feed her cats. Another miss. Game’s playing me today.
10:55–11:21: Slows down big time around mid-morning, showroom completely empty. Turn on ESPN to catch the latest on my suspension. “Sources” say there’s a chance the Player’s Association could alter the league’s substance-abuse policies. Crack a joke to Steve P. (there are six Steves at this dealership — no shit) about how Goodell looks like a giant penis with hair from the neck up. Not even a laugh, man. Should’ve told it to Steve H. He’s hilarious. Not that Steve H. with the lazy eye. The one with the mustache.
11:21–12:21 p.m.: Lunch break. Knuckle pushups on the grate in the oil-change bay, jump rope with timing belt I tore out of a ‘98 Taurus that was just sittin’ at the back of the lot. Take Panera orders from the floor staff, stop on the way to pick up my lunch from the meatpacking plant: two whole cow carcasses, washed down with chocolate milk.
12:25: Browns PR nerd drops off flyers for cross-promotion crap with the dealership. Doesn’t even look at me, even though I rescued his cat last month from a tree branch 30 feet high. Did that from a standing jump in my sandals.
12:31–1:15: Another customer — mom and her 16-year-old son. Mom’s worried about safety with the Focus, so I pound the hood once to set off the airbags. Kid says he thinks I got a bum rap, wonders what I think about Rice getting cut by Baltimore. Wait, WUT?!
1:15–1:40: Grab the lobby TV remote from some old-ass Ranger owner who’s been waiting all day for new brake pads. Flip to SportsCenter, and they’re replaying the Rice elevator video. Ray punches his wife — twice — then steps over her like a sidewalk puddle. That’s crazy shit. Now I’m annoyed. 70 piss tests passed, one failed. And by an amount so small just being in the same time zone as Wiz Khalifa would’ve topped it. Gotta go help Steve H. — no, the other, other one, the one with the bad toupee. He got his arm stuck in the vending machine again.
1:41–2:15: Another workout to let off some steam: Use two car lifts in the shop as a Stairmaster, go across the street to the driving range and run down a bunch of 300-yard drives before they hit the ground. Dig an underground tunnel back to the dealership to work out the forceps.
2:15–3:20: Last customer of the day — a 60-something dude with like four teeth rocking a Steelers shirt. No clue who I am. No clue why a giant black man in football pads is selling him a car. Needs a F250 for his rock farm. “Funny, 250’s what I dropped on you dickheads in Week 12 last season,” I start off with, just to tickle his buying bone. He walks out — another near miss. Gonna be tough to make the Salesman of the Month board at this rate.
3:20–4:01: Floor Manager Steve — don’t know his last name — asks me to swap out the Fusion in the showroom with a newer model that just showed up on the lot. No clue that the customer entrance actually doubles as bay doors, just drive straight through the windows instead. I’ll probably hear about this one.
4:01–4:35: Second reprimand of the day, 17th in the past two weeks. General Manager Steve — different Steve — says after careful consideration, they’re letting me go. Like, for good. I’m fired. Again. Must’ve been the whole zero sales thing, and the millions in property damage caused by my workouts, I’m guessing. That right there’s some bullshit.
4:40: Walking back to my car, phone rings. It’s my agent, tells me to flip on SportsCenter. Goodell quit. Took some job running a company that makes nuclear weapons or some shit — think it’s called Skynet. I’m gonna get reinstated! Hell to the yes.
4:43 to 5:00: Run back into the dealership, grab every last box of Danishes from the storage room, gonna take ‘em down to the local food pantry.
5:05 p.m.: Drive home, only a bit slower this time. Between 90 and 95. Feels good to be back. I don’t know how people sell cars, man. Seems like a tough-ass business.
