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Jeremy Shockey, the Great White Hype, is not unlike the city where he works. Big. Loud. Vibrant. Swaggering. Excessive. Arrogant. Obnoxious. He is the middle finger New York copyrighted and the theater it supports. Watch him standing after another eight-yard catch, football held triumphantly aloft in one arm, and he even looks like that other large New York symbol, the famed Statue of Look-at-Me.

The result? Shockey gets stardom before he has actually, you know, earned it. And in a way he never could if he were exactly the same player in Cardinals colors. There is no mathematical formula to calibrate such things, but the media machine's New York-centric bias ensures that Shockey's exposure compared to that of NFL players with equal skill somehow gets Times Squared.

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