The Bland Consistently Effective Receiver You Knew is Dead. Behold the Flyish Funktastity of Mar Har.

Oh, I can state categorically that I do not fain the arrival of this Media Day, where the frothing, sound-byting hordes will descend upon me and my batterymates, microphones in hand, reeking of huge expense accounts and Funyuns. They will strafe Tony Dungy and Peyton Manning with questions and admiration, at least until some canny league official plies them with food. To me, they will be pitiless in their indifference. I fear I shall be not unlike Al Gore at the Oscars: dull and pathetically desirous of attention. Sure, these "reporters" will pay me lip service, a diligent few may go as far as to write a few empty profiles, but they don't really care.

Marvin Harrison present day

Who am I? Surely you ask only to infuriate me further. For I am only the greatest receiver of my time, that is all. Bearer of the single-season reception record, if you are the sort that follows that kind of thing. Yet somehow I escape the fascination afforded other stalwarts of my position. The archetype for prolific workmanlike receiver was already cast by Jerry Rice, now I am the only silent carrier of the legacy. Respected but not revered, because I don't dance like Chad Johnson, own a non-rotary phone like Joe Horn, self-destruct like Terrell Owens or make kimchi for the press like Hines Ward.

Marvin Harrison circa 2017

I do not have time to learn such fancified endzone swervery. I've been otherwise occupied in my non-football pursuits of late in endeavering to help sort out that erstwhile ill-mannered ruffian Ronald Dietz, whom you hard-hearted enthusiasts of the gridiron know so derisively as the Littlest Ronnie. His is a mind full of promise and boundless wit. And a disconcerting number of rhymes for bitch.

I take him to play bingo at the American Legion Hall and when feeling frisky, allow him to listen to some Dion. Like me, he has learned to treasure the Longaberger baskets. If the prize for winning this Super Bowl were somehow a gilded Longaberger basket, I feel I would be more emotionally invested in this contest. As it stands, the chance to take him to Disney World should do. That is a wholesome place.

As an unintended consequence of my teachings of Mr. Dietz, he has showed me much of the street culture which he tirelessly attempts to emulate. This, he says, is key to achieving the marquee status of which I am so in want.

He has taken to giving me the sobriquet of Mar Har, which doubles as a clever abbreviation of my Christian name and my surname, as well as being an arcane reference to one of the entertainments he enjoys on the television. I have no use for mass media, other than Gasoline Alley, but being the focus of it, I admit, intrigues me. He then tells me of the exploits of the quarterback of the team I am to soon face and I become faint. No such person exists outside of a sanitarium, I believe. But he instructs me that these are things acts I should perform if I wish to be a "star." Heavens.

Mar Har design sketch

I should have become a black head coach.