The Trouble With Football

     It seems kinda like every single post of Facebook has been about football the last couple days. Now, I know that's not exactly true; but there have been a lot of people talking about the bowls this week. Everybody was reasonably polite during the OU-Alabama game in the Sugar Bowl, and then lost it during the OSU-Missouri Cotton Bowl.

     I halfheartedly listened to the Sugar Bowl on the radio, and even (gasp!) sort-of-cheered for the Sooners. Although actually I kind of wanted both teams to lose, but since that's not possible...anyway, it was surprising.
     Bennett and Elizabeth were giving play-by-play accounts on Twitter, those were fun to watch. I was cheering for both teams, Caleb and Courtney started yelling at me for doing that, said it was against some rule. It is, really, disobeying the Edict of Unquestioning Loyalty to a Sports Team, but that kind of grows weaker as time goes by. And I know a lot of Missouri people who are Tiger fans, I've explored over the Mizzou campus, and it has the best journalism school in the country. Those are all good reasons to like them, right? On the other hand, I've grown up an OSU fan, and Dad went there for a bit, and you just can't go with the flow of crimson...so there's that, too. Watched the fourth quarter, that was a wild finish. A great one, and at the same time awful. Both teams had great seasons; and it was a terrific play at the end, it was just one of those times when one team has to lose, y'know? So I was glad for the Tigers and those I knew cheering for 'em, and at the same time wondering how on earth the Cowboys could possibly lose the two biggest games of the year back-to-back on plays like those.
     There were lots of Facebook posts I saw full of emotion after both games, either exulting in OU's victory or OSU's loss, or howling about officiating and how they were robbed by those blind zebras. And snippy comments back and forth in those other fans' direction. It's just a game, you know? Sometimes you'll win, other times you won't. That uncertainty and drive is what keeps you going, that hope of coming out on top. There's no reason to blow up afterwards...The world won't end either way the scoreboard turns out. If your team wins, I'll try to not complain too much, if you'll do the same.

     The NHL's Winter Classic was Wednesday, watched all of that very attentively. It's the closest thing hockey has to a Super Bowl, and they do an amazing job with it. Held in Michigan Stadium this year, the spectacle of hockey outdoors, with over a hundred thousand people watching live, and snow falling....and then going into a shootout finish as darkness was closing in....wow. Just....wow. And two of the Original Six teams in Detroit and Toronto, who just happen to be fighting for playoff position in the Eastern Conference, even better.

     I just can't really watch football very much anymore. Well, that's not quite true. I can watch it, but I get bored easily now. And it really takes something to make me enjoy it. (This is horrifying and incomprehensible to five-year-old Wesley, or ten-year-old Wesley, or fourteen-year-old Wesley.) But everything just seems so cynical, everything is driven by money, college and pro both, and things like history and rivalries and geography have been thrown by the wayside. Athletes are jerks and ESPN lobbies for certain teams and players while completing ignoring the fact that there are other media outlets in existence, it's disgusting. I mean, the Cotton Bowl was almost completely ignored in coverage this week on their website because it's on Fox, when that's the best bowl this season.
     And guys like Johnny Manziel, Tom Brady, Cam Newton.... The rule changes designed to in theory promote safety are destroying the game; and besides that, it's just...really violent. It's always been like that; but sometime you start to wonder, "Why am I entertaining myself by watching guys destroy their bodies for their employers to make inconceivable amounts of profit, when those employers will just find new employees next week to replace the current workforce when they wear out?" The last time I really paid attention to the NFL was the 2011 season after the lockout, where Tim Tebow took over Denver and everybody in America went crazy in one direction or other in response. And I wasn't even really paying close attention to the league as a whole at that time, was busy with senior-year stuff and other things. The NFL, everything's so, like...sexualized, with the cheerleaders and sometimes-racy commercials and halftime shows and stuff, that can't be healthy, spiritually, can it? College is a joke; basically seems like if not quite slavery, then Chinese-export manufacturing. If thousands of young adults are going to sacrifice four years of their lives for their universities and everyone else to profit, shouldn't they be paid? And the "Rah-rah, go RiverHawks! So proud I go to school here!" that's expected if you force yourself to watch the misery of NSU games...
     We haven't done the Thanksgiving betting pool on the Cowboys game for the last two years, nobody really cares enough to make an effort to bring it back. I've spent the last couple Super Bowls rooting for the commercials to win, chatting with Amanda and playing Scrabble with the Galdamezes.
     I don't know. Maybe it's just that sports should be an escape from life, and don't function too well as a life in themselves.

     I can watch and enjoy high school sports, though. In any sport, those players are playing for their towns, for their schools; parents and little siblings and people from church. Maybe there's a college scholarship out there, but probably not. Life's going to go on after the season, there will be other sports to follow. It's a key part of the rhythm of small-town life.