Debate: Is Jerry Maguire Week a Good Idea?

By Glenn & Jake 

Jerry Maguire week was born out of a joke and is the perfect example of how a joke can ruin you life.

Glenn: do you ever thoughtcatalog.com
Jake: haha i haven't. i'll look at it now.
is this a jerry maguire fan site? [Note: there was a picture of Tom Cruise as Jerry Maguire on the front page.]
Glenn: I wish!!
Jake: let's do a jerry maguire week on OYIT
i'll write an article about how renee zellwegger is the sexiest woman on earth
Glenn: haha
no one would read that
Jake: not even rz?

And thus, Jerry Maguire was unceremoniously born. Although I created it, I am 100% against its existence. Glenn, however, will not let it die. In this debate, we will try to figure out who is correct. If anybody will even bother reading any of the articles from Jerry Maguire week, or if we are just wasting our invaluable time.

Glenn: We haven't had a theme week on OYIT since the anniversary of the Challenger explosion. During that time we grappled with the memory of disaster and how to laugh in its face. Jerry Maguire was not a disaster but affected our lives more than the Challenger ever could, even if it went to space correctly and then came back. This is a movie that almost changed the face of cinema by launching Renée Zellweger's career, Cuba Gooding Jr's Oscar win and Facebook. Literally millions of people around the country were screaming "Show me the money!" and not just on the coasts but even in the Midwest, Mormon West, Great Plains and former slave-holding states of the Confederacy. Another catch phrase was "You had me at hello" but truth be told this was much more than a slogan to market on t-shirts. This was what movie audiences said to the film Jerry Maguire and what I hope our readers will say to us this week.

Jake: Jerry Maguire week is a terrible idea. Jerry Maguire is a movie from 1996 and I doubt anybody who reads this website even likes it very much. I do not like it. It is nothing more than a romantic comedy with a sports backdrop to trick men into watching it with their girlfriends, wives or gay lovers. "Show me the money!" is a catchphrase that is as grating as anything Austin Powers ever said, and thankfully, unlike those of Austin Powers, this catchphrase died a long time ago. Cuba Gooding Jr. recieved an undeserved Oscar, and you need to look no further than his entire filmography besides Jerry Maguire to come to that realization. Omar Gooding was more deserving of an Oscar win for his work on Wild 'n' Crazy Kids and Hanging with Mr. Cooper. This is going to be the week that chases off the 30 people that still make the time to read this website, although we put a lot of work into it. The people who don't read OYIT anymore are as dead as Jerry Maguire is to me.

Glenn: It sounds like you're bringing a lot of your emotional baggage into this debate, which as you know is against the rules. We are here to debate whether or not we should be having Jerry Maguire week, not whether your parents should have stayed married. I'll admit that Cuba Gooding Jr's performance in Snow Dogs was beneath his Oscar, but so was Jodie Foster's in the second Big Momma's House film. Should we take her Oscar away? Or Mel Gibson's, for being an incorrigible bigoted conservative? That is another debate. Think of how many people google "show me the money" every day, whether ironically or with the sincerely of Tom Cruise's speech to Renée Zellweger. Now think of what website they will be visiting: us. We lose too many "searchers" to IMDb and Wikipedia as it is, so why not chart a course that will direct people back to OYIT? Now we can and are.

Jake: Your point makes about as much sense as taking Bobby Fischer to a dinner for the Jewish Defence League. We will not be skimming any searchers away from IMDB or Wikipedia. Since when are you even worried about getting search hits? We did a debate about the "Ground Zero Mosque" and you entitled it instead with Park 51, a term for which nobody is searching. If we wanted search hits, we could have had "Lady Gaga Week" or "Liam Neeson's #1 Movie in America Week." "Show me the money!" is more outdated than your CD collection, which happens to feature many albums from the year this film was released, 1996. You are hoping that the readers or our site are as hopelessly naustalgic as you are, and I doubt that more than 75% of them are. I sincerely doubt there are millions of people searching for "Show me the money!" Maybe 15 a day.

Glenn: Your attempts to insult me by evoking the albums of 1996 [such as (What's the Story) Morning Glory?] are as transparent as mainstream conservatives bigotry towards Muslims during the Park 51 controversy. I didn't want to call it "ground zero mosque" because there are lines this website will not sink below. "Lady Gaga Week" would be beneath us, but Jerry Maguire is not. Enough time has passed since the movie was released that if we are to devote such time and attention to it, it is purely from love and a desire to bring in new readers. I actually checked Google's analytics in the United States and they claim that 14,357 people searched for "Show me the money!" yesterday - and that was on President's Day! Think about how high it will be on the anniversary of the movie's release or when Tom Cruise turns into pure energy.

Jake: I refuse to spend any extra time thinking about Jerry Maguire. Even having this debate has me filled with more rage than when Glenn finds out a Soul Asylum concert is sold out while trying to purchase tickets. Jerry Maguire is an okay movie, features a grating, overused catchphrase and undeservedly won an Oscar. If this is the criteria to get your own week on OYIT, then we might as well board up the windows, lock the doors, put a belt around our necks and masturbate furiously until all of the oxygen has left out lungs. Then we can go to Heaven and watch Jerry Maguire and listen to the albums of Soul Asylum on repeat. The End.

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