Just before the signing, the official always appears to be whispering instructions to the player, as though this tiny ritual, repeated now for years, demands explanation.
And then it's off to one of Survivor's most boring and pretentious rituals, the Fallen-Player Torch Walk (I prefer Torchwood. John Barrowman, call me), where they "remember" each eliminated player, as though they all died in battle.
Some would argue that Kaepernick is just a football player and that he should just be a football player, as though being an athlete bars you from having an opinion or moral convictions.
"I feel," he said, in a flat voice sounding like a slowed-down old record -player, "as though I died a few weeks ago but my body hasn't found out yet".
It took him four shots to get out, and it felt to many viewers, and perhaps many players, as though that wall were somehow Tiger Woods, a resolute, uncanny obstacle in the path of every professional golfer.
Instead, through candor and comprehensiveness, Jackson writes a convincing revisionist take, in which he emerges as an excellent coach: inventive with the game, savvy with the gamesmanship and, yes, brilliant with his sensational players (as though that skill were nothing; as though Millard Fillmore would have been as great a president as Lincoln had the Civil War happened on his watch).
Peterborough, relaxed and playing with that composure sometimes seen in doomed teams, could have scored two or three more before Kevin Nolan, the one Newcastle player looking as though he had already appeared in the Premier League, turned the ball past Joe Lewis in first-half stoppage time following José Enrique's run to the byline and low centre.
In Project Eden, the reliance on mechanical puzzles in a three-dimensional world that conforms to the laws of physics makes the player feel as though he is using the tools at his disposal to explore a real place and overcome real obstacles.
As a player, though, he has demonstrated a capacity to evolve.
For the players here, though, as in much of the world, table tennis is a serious sport.
In the years since, Notre Dame has never quite reached the Magic Johnson/Duke apex of college basketball, and it has never had a player as electric as Rivers (though the awesome Chris Thomas came close).
