Baby Gronk, internet stardom and the Sports Dad nightmare writ large

I f early retirement is the ultimate flex in the age of late capitalism, then Baby Gronk had us all beat. The American football phenom, who has been lighting up more than a corner of the internet with his made-to-meme skills and antics, announced last week that he was hanging up his helmet at the age of 10. Baby Gronk shared that he would be focusing not on grade school or a paper route but … his love for video games. To be fair, the purported “rizz king” of the pre-pubescent sports world is probably not the one who actually said any of the above.

Baby Gronk, an unarguably skilled athlete, whose real name is Madden San Miguel and who lives in the Dallas area, is the son of Jake San Miguel, a digital marketer who makes no secret of his thirst for internet fame. A modern-day Mama Rose of the football field, San Miguel Sr – who manages his son’s social media accounts, schedule and persona – has exhibited no qualms inserting himself into the Baby Gronk narrative. A recent post on his son’s Instagram account opened with a video of the diamond-necklace sporting, preternaturally large boy staring down the camera, superimposed with “BABY GRONK’S DAD TO BLAME.” San Miguel Sr shared, in the next post on Baby Gronk’s Instagram account, that his son was coming out of retirement. “NO LESS THAN 150,000.” (Whether he meant additional followers or dollars was unspecified.)

Only two years ago, Baby Gronk, nicknamed for former NFL star Rob Gronkowski, was a shockingly large third grader and the subject of a human interest story in Sports Illustrated, headlined: “Meet ‘Baby Gronk’: The 8-Year-Old Football Celebrity and Cowboys Friend.” The piece called the then-4ft 9in, 88lbs aspiring NFL player’s shtick “wildly entertaining,” and