It is with no small measure of self-reproach and a gnawing sense of having failed my country, my family and my God, that I stand before America and confess, with great shame in my heart...
I Am Not Ready for Some Football.
There. It's out. I've said it. Let the Healing Begin.
11 comments:
Watching an old Gene Hackman movie last night and there was a line:
"Religion is fine if you don't have football."
Man, I'm with you on this one, Neddie. I live in Patriots country and I can't even get excited.
It might help if each of the professional sports did not have seasons that seem to last 13 months.
I used to like football, but a series of rule changes have deprived it of all subtlety. The league decided to pander to more superficial fans and increase sacks and passing at the expense of other aspects of the game.
football?
who gives a shit?
i'm with you.
Football? You didn't enjoy the Chelsea - DC United friendly? It was great.
George Carlin's description of the American game has never been improved on:
"Violence, punctuated by committee meetings."
I used to feel like you, Neddie. Sports, especially pro sports, were not a part of my chilhood. I was completely alienated from the harmless, ubiquitous small talk about sports with which strangers regularly engage one another. Once I finished college and had nothing to do on Sunday, however, I had a football epiphany. Ever since, heaven help me, I've appreciated the spectatcle. Yes, it's meaningless, but therein lies it's fucntion. Now, I'm in Bangkok and though I yearn for the NFL, it is available only to those with expat executive salaries, which I don't have. I'm so ready for some football.
Axie:
I shared your post-college foo'ball epiphany, and I usually greet the season with a bit more enthusiasm, particularly when my Beloved Dog-ass Redskins look like world-beaters (for about 12 minutes).
It's just that this year, at this time in history, football is Just Wrong.
Myself, I've been away from football for some time, but I must say that has changed. All football, all the time around here this fall, as 14 and 8-year olds are both playing anew. My will was broken and we are now the rueful owners of a game cube, the sole saving grace of which is the $5 copy of NCAA 2003 grabbed from the bin by the door. Even though dated (and constrained by what I understand is an inferior gaming platform), a better teaching aid than this bloody video game was not to be found anywhere near the Loyalsock Lancers in 1972...
maybe everthing bad *is* good for you.
>> a better teaching aid
>> than this bloody video game
>> was not to be found anywhere
>> near the Loyalsock Lancers in
>> 1972...
HAHAHAHA!!!!
If we'd used the tabletop games of 1972 as a teaching aid for the youth of the day, they'd have expected the field to start vibrating madly on "Hike!" and all 22 players to mill around aimlessly crashing into each other like zombies while the ballcarrier either sped for the nearest sideline or spun in circles like a demented dervish. I recall that the QB had something the Mattel Corporation wanted me to believe was "Realistic Passing Action!" which meant that his throwing arm was a tiny rubber-band-powered trebuchet that sort of skittered a microscopic football in the general downfield direction.
If you got it within 30 scale yards of a receiver it was a revelation.
There's a whole blog-post -- hell, a whole autobiography -- in the Terrible Sucky Toys of the Sixties and the dreadful disappointment that came when something that looked just so unbelievably COOL on TV turned out to just suck, suck, suck.
A lot of original punk rockers know what I'm talking about.
oh yeah, we still have that in mum's attic, felt football and all, right next to SuperToe and his plastic goalpost.
I should take some of that stuff to the antiques roadshow when I retire - maybe the Avalon Hill battle games were geeky enough to be rare in the not-too-distant future.
And as long as I'm reeling in the years, remember Bop the Beetle? Somewhere in the carousel slide trays, stored near the aforementioned amusements, is a picture of a couple of full colonels with the Army Aviation Materiel Command, circa 1967, pie-eyed in our family room on New Year's Eve, flailing the bejeesus out of those plastic beetles...
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