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Should We Care About Jalen Hurts Not Attending A.J. Brown’s Wedding?
By Matt Schultz
Published:
A.J. Brown – who is somehow still an Eagle – got married over the weekend, and (maybe) notably, Jalen Hurts was not at the wedding:
My knee-jerk reaction to this is…. I do not care. Any way you slice the situation, it does not pique my interest:
What if Jalen was invited but didn’t show?
Don’t care. The wedding was in Laguna Beach. Jalen lives in South Jersey. That’s a pretty big schlep. Think of all the work it takes to fly somewhere. Jalen would’ve had to pack a bunch of his little round hats. Get a special hard suitcase so the round hats don’t get crushed. Sounds annoying. Also, flying is scary right now. That’s a concern for me, personally. Every other week there’s a bad plane story. Planes slamming into each other. Air traffic control towers only having like one guy in them, running on three hours of sleep. Turbulence. Etc. Whattaya gonna do.
What if AJ didn’t even invite Jalen?
Don’t care. Inviting people to a wedding is kind of tricky. I’m currently engaged and am learning firsthand that figuring out who’s invited and who’s not is tougher than you’d think – and work friends is the toughest choice of all. If you invite one work friend, it opens up a whole can of worms about which other ones have to be invited. And you don’t want too many work friends there. Then you risk your work friends all talking amongst themselves and saying, “Can you believe we were all invited to this? Little weird, right? Maybe Schultz doesn’t have that many real, non-work friends… Is that possible? We’re not his best friends, are we? I barely know the guy… I didn’t even know he was engaged, and now here we are at his wedding… Think we’ve chilled like twice, but in a huge group… I’ve never been to his house… I don’t even know where he lives… Feel kind of bad for him now… Poor guy…” Can’t have that. So if AJ didn’t invite Jalen, I get it. No hard feelings. Whattaya gonna do.
What does it mean about their friendship?
Don’t care. What am I gonna do, care about their friendship? I don’t know those guys. They’re strangers. I can’t care about strangers’ friendships. I got my own stuff going on. I’m busy. Been a pretty busy month.
All in all, I was content with my opinion on the matter. Then I read the TMZ article about the wedding, and this part caught my eye:
“Jalen’s absence is interesting on a number of levels. He’s known A.J. since high school and is the godfather to A.J.’s daughter, Jersee. Jalen tried to recruit A.J. to Alabama to play together in college, and pushed hard for the Eagles to acquire him a trade. But after 4 years together in Philly, there are rumors of a rift.”
…
Jalen wasn’t the only Eagles teammate who wasn’t there … it looks like no current Eagles were … though we did spot former Eagles player Darius Slay.
Some Eagles were there:
Jalen being the godfather of AJ’s daughter is interesting. I did not know that. Taking that into consideration, Jalen not being at the wedding may be more noteworthy than I initially thought… Perhaps there is real beef between these two… Maybe these are two lifelong best friends whose relationship has crumbled before our eyes, never to be rebuilt again… Maybe there is more to this story than we know… Hurt… Betrayal… Broken trust… Etc… I thought long and hard about this possibility…
And still don’t really care. Whattaya gonna do! Keep it moving, fellas. AJ will probably be on a new team soon anyway. I’m moving on. Got stuff to do. Been a pretty busy month.
Matt Schultz is a comedy and sports writer from Philadelphia. He’s written extensively for ClickHole, The Onion, and Conan O’Brien’s Team Coco. His work has been featured in Vulture, Deadspin, The A.V. Club, Paste Magazine, and other publications. Much of his sports journalism can be found on college basketball websites that don’t exist anymore (PhilaHoops Heads rise up…)