No more ping pong anecdotes about NFL locker rooms

While pickleball has grabbed most of the headlines lately, its little older cousin table tennis has also been turning heads. Especially during the NFL season and most famously when the Miami Dolphins removed their ping pong table so the team could “focus more closely on upcoming opponents”. At least that’s what coach Mike McDaniel told the press on Oct. 12. Tyreek Hill overturned it a day later when he told everyone that they had just been replaced with a better quality table.

It was a humorous footnote to the Dolphins’ season, and I wouldn’t bring it up except that there was another NFL story related to table tennis this week. The New York Giants also have a ping pong table in their locker room, and it inspired an entire column NJ.com By Steve Politi It looks like table tennis is at the heart of the Giants’ improvement this season.

Brian Daboll put two pro-grade tables in the locker room after he was hired to improve the team’s chemistry spoiler alert, it worked and they’ve been the center of activity at Giants headquarters ever since. The players held a March Madness-style tournament during training camp, and you rarely see an empty table when the room is open to the media.

The real question is why didn’t the Giants already have a ping pong table? Because it’s not unusual for a professional sports locker room to have one. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find a locker room story that doesn’t at least include a passing mention of people playing table tennis (or ping pong or ping pong or ping pong).

The giants were not alone, because both Jacksonville Jaguars and Carolina Panthers saw an increase in team cohesion thanks to the ping pong tables this season. Jacksonville went 9-8 and has reached the divisional round of the playoffs, while Carolina went 7-10 and missed the playoffs. There is also a 2018 article from The Buffalo News titled “Pingpong at the Bills dojo.'” (Subscription required) The Bills went 6-10 that season, so draw your own conclusions.

Of course, Tom Brady was such a competitive ping pong player that he once threw a paddle at his new teammate after a loss. Through Sports Illustrated:

Apparently, No. 12 saw himself as a pretty good ping pong player. But Danny Amendola was fantastic. So after Amendola signed with the Patriots in 2013, they talked it over and then decided to play. Amendola won, and won rather handily. As the story goes, Amendola made the final point and barely turned around before he heard this whistle pass his ear. Bradys paddle came hot and missed him. Amendola, I heard, looked up expecting to see Brady laughing. Instead, he got a death wish. And Amendolawhod became a trusted target for the Bradys, and the Super Bowl hero learned a good lesson from Brady that day.

The Patriots lost the Super Bowl that season, but would win the next. No word on Brady’s ping pong record in 2014.

In addition to team building, ping pong – or the lack of it – also provides a background for a sense of seriousness. Bengals took the ping pong tables out of the dressing room in early December, but they were apparently behind schedule so the team couldn’t play after the Damar Hamlin incident. His quick recovery also brought the players back to the table. Through The Athletic:

I could kind of put myself out there again,” Boyd said. I still didn’t really try to be distracted and not participate in the ping-pong, and it was just a little slow until I finally got to hear the news.

You know something’s up when Boyd isn’t on the ping pong table tearing up his palms and talking trash.

Cincy loved ping pong mentioned again in an article last week before his Wild Card win. So who knows why the tables were pulled with four wins in a seven game winning streak.

Finally, we have the commanders in Washington. They got ping pong tables during the locker room renovation a few years ago. In the middle of an 8-7-1 season a a local radio host lent ping pong tables as an example of why players can be too complacent. Still, they stayed in the dressing room until Ron Rivera arrived in 2020 and removed them. Washington is 0-1 in the postseason in the ping-pong-less Rivera era, much like the ping-pong-positive late 2010s.

The only thing that remains consistent in these stories is that people seem to like table tennis. If you put people in a room with a table, a ball and paddles, they will probably play. Does that mean they do their actual jobs better or worse? No? Should the next team building a new stadium make the home locker room big enough to accommodate a pickleball court in the middle? Hell and yes.

The point is, there is nothing but match point. This is an absolute filler. It provides a base color for a piece about a dressing room. It’s an analog version of stories about men playing video games. (Hey, remember when the Boston Red Sox won the World Series, banned Fortnite next season and did you miss the playoffs?) Don’t rely on ping pong for team building and content.