OK. I realize that you are both more intelligent and more cultured than I am for watching PBS or reading Proust instead of watching the Stupor Bowl today. I also know about the downsides of the football enterprise -- the concussions, the crybaby billionaire owners who extort tax breaks and other goodies from their communities, the glorification of violence, and so on. I know football exemplifies damn near everything that the intelligentsia hates about the USA -- the profligate waste of money and resources, the implicit and explicit belligerence, the loud, flashy, banal halftime shows, the rah-rah patriotism...the whole package. I get it. I do. But I dont watch football for any of that. I dont even watch it for the violence. I watch to see crisply executed plays, where eleven people perform eleven simultaneous feats of speed, strength and coordination that literally no one reading this post could manage...and it all *works*. I watch for the flashes of pure athleticism, when despite a perfect play, one guy comes out of nowhere and shuts everything down. I watch for the occasional bursts of pure chaos, when a split-second response to the bounce of a ball makes the difference between victory and defeat. I watch for the strategy and the second-guessing -- down four, fourth and two on the 50-yard-line with three minutes left in the game against a team with a methodical, run-first offense that never turns the ball over...and you punt?!? I watch to be part of a community. I know that no matter where I am, when Im watching my Wolverines or my Lions, Im sharing the experience with thousands of other fans, who really are -- with all due respect to Kurt Vonnegut -- my people. I understand that none of this moves you any more than knitting or opera or fanfic or novels about the lives of people who could live next door to me or TV shows about lawyers move me. But please, tolerate us (and the media saturation) for one more day. The shouting will be over by tomorrow and you wont hear from most of us again until September or so. I mean, youll still have to put up with baseball fans between now and then, but hey, you cant blame me for that. And fear not -- Im DVRing Downton and Sherlock, too.
Posted on: Sun, 02 Feb 2014 16:36:37 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015