With New Year's Day just around the corner, I'm reminded of the subject of this post . . . I think football is a stupid sport.
Okay, that was the statement that will illicit cries of outrage, questions probing into my masculinity, and accusations of traitorous behavior toward the good ol' U.S.A. To explain it in further detail, I guess I'm not questioning the sport itself as much as I am the reason why people enjoy it so much. Let me say first that I enjoy any sport or activity where a certain type of athleticism is involved. The type of athleticism that I refer to is the kind where the participant displays a high level of coordination, one that is almost graceful. Like the type where a burst of speed allows someone to dribble a basketball around a person (who doesn't have to contend with bouncing a ball while moving) and zip toward a basket before the defender's reaction time allows it to be stopped. Or the type of graceful motion where a person dives after a ball that has nearly flown/bounced past, snares it in a glove, makes an underhanded throw off-balance that flies straight as an arrow to another player just in the nick of time to "make the play." You can find that type of coordination in many sports. You can even find it in football where the running back zig-zags past a line of men waiting to tackle him senseless and rip the testicles from his body or the wide receiver who makes a one-handed diving catch while making sure his feet remain in the playing field.
But those events in football, while fantastic to see, are rare and aren't representative of the average action that occurs on the field. The average action involves players hitting each other as forcefully as possible. If bones break, ligaments snap, and blood flows from wounds . . . all the better. And fans eat that up. Just like a hockey game where the majority of the fans just want to see two guys beat each other senseless because they've lost their composure and temper. Football . . . boxing with pads and a pigskin. Hockey . . . boxing with ice skates and sticks that can be wielded like instruments of martial arts.
Football is a sport where size is tantamount. Skill and athleticism are usually the tools that take a team from being good to great, but a team with skill and athleticism but no size isn't going anywhere except to a nearby hospital. Look at the average player in the NFL. My God, they are machines seemingly bred to eat the very turf they play on. Obviously, this is all a matter of perception, but "sport" to me is one where, for the most part, size can be overlooked and what really counts is what the player knows how to do with his body. Unforunately, professional sports are getting further and further away from this, but nowhere is it more obvious than in football. Why would I cheer on the 6'7", 350-pound right tackle for flattening the 5'11", 180-pound quarter back on a pass play gone bad? Was there ever any question that he was the stronger player with the bigger advantage? No athleticism involved, just brute strength that nature gave the one player. You wanna see athleticism, let's put both of them on the parallel bars and see who's more athletic overall.
It's a macho sport. Rock-em, sock-em robots on a 100-yard field. The "language" of football even mirrors that of war-time mentality:
The quarterback is referred to as the general on-field who facilitates the aggressive movement of his men toward a goal by coordinating running attacks and strategic placement of long bombs. Their success is determined by their forward movement into enemy territory regardless of field conditions and weather-related obstacles and their successful entry into the goal of their end field.
Compare that to the language of baseball, and you'll see why this nation's fascination with the in-your-face mentality of "let's kick some ass" has made football become one of the most popular sports.
In baseball, we "play ball." And we only play ball when it's not raining. "Ewwww . . . it's raining now, time to stop playing." And if you hit me with the ball while I'm waiting for you to see if you can get the ball past me, I get a "free pass" down to the first base. If I make a mistake on-field, it's just called an "error" and we go on with the game - "Ooopsy, my mistake. Tee-hee." The object of the game when I'm running is for me to see if I can run all the way "home."
With such differences and nuances in the language that make baseball seem like a game for wimps (or as Ah-nold Schwarzenpecker likes to say, "girly-men"), is it any wonder that Americans are less and less interested in baseball and more interested in the rougher sports where some actual carnage can take place?
If you haven't figured it out by now, a lot of this is done tongue-in-cheek even though I do fail to appreciate the fascination with all the college bowls, Superbowl Sunday, and football in general.
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