PureDWTS Conspiracy Theory – A Case of Schrödinger’s Gronk…?
In a blaze of clarity, I opted to take half the day off in order to blog the cast announcement this morning and handle the subsequent traffic at Pure. I’m glad I did, because it gave me time to ruminate after the flurry of the GMA announcement died down – and I realized some stuff just didn’t add up. Namely, why get rid of the troupe completely, then bring 14 pros in to couple 12 celebs? It makes little to no sense. Then, slowly, I started to remember stuff from the past 24 hours, and I formulated what I (and Heidi, and Vogue, and @justinweible, all of whom were gracious enough to listen to me ramble) think is a pretty sound (and potentially exciting) theory. Ladies and gents, I give you “Schrödinger’s Gronk”.
First, background: Rob Gronkowski of the New England Patriots retired back in March of this year, after a season full of injuries culminating in a Super Bowl win. Gronk took a beating – I don’t blame him if he retired for the sake of his health. But did he TRULY retire…? A lot of “insiders” say no – they think he’ll announce he’s coming back to the Patriots before long, and Justin had a good theory that he may have retired in order to get out of the NFL preseason and training camp, only to rejoin the Patriots once the preseason is over. I casually threw him (and his gf, a model and dancer) out as a good casting possibility for season 28, as he had expressed interest in doing DWTS numerous times in the past but had given the excuse that he didn’t want to get injured in the off-season. Nobody seemed to think much of it until yesterday, when suddenly numerous outlets were reporting Gronk & Camille as being part of the cast. I assumed that they had simply gone swimming in our previous rumor/prediction posts and comments sections (as some outlets have been wont to do, in order to get hits in the absence of any real rumors), and they were just regurgitating what we were saying…but now I’m not so sure those rumors were completely unfounded. Stay with me…
This morning, we saw 14 pros announced as being part of this season, but only 12 celebrities were announced on GMA. Insert “monkey confusedly punching buttons on a calculator” gif here 😉 This doesn’t make sense, especially when you take into account that the troupe was disbanded – why bring on two extra pros if you’re getting rid of all your “extra” dancers? My answer: you don’t…unless you’re possibly waiting on two additional celebs to maybe join the cast 😉
Miner pointed out that Gronk is holding a mysterious press conference next Tuesday, Aug. 27, to announce “the next chapter” in his career. Some have interpreted that as being an announcement that he’s returning to the NFL…others think he’s writing another book. Me? I’m thinking it was intentionally left open-ended, because even Gronk wasn’t sure at scheduling time what he was going to announce. Stay with me, I promise this starts to make sense soon…
As Justin pointed out to me, the NFL deadline for teams to finalize their active rosters is ten days from now – Aug. 31. The Patriots’ last preseason game is Aug. 29. I’m guessing that Gronk retired to give himself time to heal and get out of having to participate in the pre-season/training camp, and was possibly planning on returning to the Patriots after the preseason, ideally well-rested and healed up and ready to go full throttle. HOWEVER – injuries are unpredictable, and Gronk being Gronk, he likely wanted to hedge his bets a bit…enter DWTS. If there was no possible way his injury would allow him to play in the regular season, what’s the next best thing to do if you’re Gronk? Answer: the reality TV show you’ve talked about wanting to do for several years, but never had the chance. And given the relatively dismal lineup we saw this morning, I’d guess DWTS was ready to play ball with Gronk (pun intended). He’s a big get (and his gf is just a bonus – good dancer, famous in her own right, and they can exploit the couple angle), so they may have agreed to a conditional deal with Gronk & Camille: if Gronk decides not to return to the NFL, he’ll do DWTS; but if he does do the show, you have to wait until the week he makes his decision about the NFL in order to make the announcement. I’m thinking Gronk knew for awhile that he was going to make some sort of announcement on Aug. 27; he just didn’t know whether it would be “I’m returning to the NFL” or “I’m doing DWTS!” until recently. Or maybe he’s known for awhile, but Patriot fans are in such a fervor over his possible return that waiting until the last possible week to make the announcement is a shrewd PR move. I can’t find the link now, but the NFL shop released a shirt not long ago that had the names of some of the main Pats players (Brady, Edelman, etc.) with “…Gronk?” at the bottom. Money is being made on the hope that he’s gonna return to the Patriots – so I think it makes sense to wait as long as possible before possibly bursting their bubble. As Justin pointed out, he’s still contractually obligated to the Patriots – so who knows, this could be coming from upper management at the Patriots organization.
Now, all this is not to say that he and Camille are definitely doing the show – you’ll notice the title of this post, Schrödinger’s Gronk, is a nod to the famous Schrödinger’s cat, a thought experiment in which a cat in a box is considered both alive and dead due to a subatomic event that may or may not occur. Don’t worry about the cat too much – just know that until we see the outcome of his press conference on Tuesday, we’ve got a case of Schrödinger’s Gronk: he’s both on this season and not on this season.
But I do think there’s a couple things working in favor of Gronk doing DWTS – there was the sudden surge in reports just yesterday that he and Camille were going to be on the show, as if someone had heard some fresh, recent intel; and then Camille posted this on IG last night – look at the comments…
“Written in the stars” sounds like Camille knowing that something she has wanted to do for awhile is going to happen – perhaps Gronk has made a decision? 😉
Regardless of whether we see Gronk & Camille or not, DWTS doesn’t have to make many changes: if they don’t do the show, the two extra pros (whoever that may be) can function similarly to the extra pros on Strictly, who fulfill the same roles as a troupe (filling in if another pro is sick/injured, helping out with group dances and bumpers, etc.). If they do get Gronk & Camille, I think the cast just got less dismal, more current, and a lot more interesting…and all the pros announced this morning get a partner 🙂
Discuss.
