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January 08, 2006
Football Season
Half the country is currently obsessed with watching men in tights and shoulderpads run five feet and then get jumped on by 10 other men in tights and shoulderpads. On TV. Why?? It seems like the most silly and frustrating thing to watch. Every once in a while the ball gets thrown, but half the time it's not even caught. It's painfull, too. I just watched a play where a bunch of players got up and walked away but one guy looked dead. He was just lying there on the field, completely immobile, but no one looked concerned because, in football, this is normal. I've heard horror stories about players writhing in agony because of a broken limb. To support all of this carnage, entire teams of medical staff stand on the sidelines, ready to provide hospital-grade treatment. I've always found it odd to see a player standing on the sidelines hooked up to an IV (this is not unusual). Doesn't that seem a little strange? Like maybe he should be in the hospital, and not getting ready to go back into a game that resembles human bumper cars?
Did I mention that these games also take place in the middle of winter, when it's freezing cold? And thousands of fans volunteer to sit in the cold for hours to watch them?
And the coaching staff acts like the executive staff of a major bank. It's all corporate on on the sidelines. Manager types run around with headsets and clipboards and have entourages of support staff. During non-game-days, they work in office complexes and communicate with email and use complicated software. Some of them wear suits. Given the outfits of the players and the pointlessness of the game, I think they're all taking themselves way too seriously.
There's lots of technology, too -- football seems to be way ahead of baseball in this regard. Referees get to watch replays on little TVs and I think some of the football players have wired helmets. Even the TV networks broadcasting the games are more advanced -- they broadcast in high definition (my brother Nick and Derek were glued to Nick's new HD TV screen yesterday) and have yellow lines superimposed on the field to indicate something or other about the next "down". It all seems slightly distasteful, like they're trying to compensate for the silliness of the game with expensive widgets and fancy TV graphics.
Derek and my brother and father are all normal enough, but come football season they get mesmerized by the sport. Now that the Giants are in the playoffs, they're unavailable for four hours at a time while the games are on. If anything interesting happens and they're all watching the game together in New Jersey, there's this erruption of stomping and clapping and yelling -- and since they're all over six feet tall and rather wound up, the noise can be a little scary. I've done my part in trying to get enthusiastic about football, but I can rarely get engaged enough to figure out which team is the Giants (I sit there in front of the TV, dozing off, and get scared out of my mind when some football-obsessed family member starts making noise about some great play). So I'm going to take my new camera to the park today and leave Derek to his Giants game and hope they lose (sorry, guys) so I can see more of him in the coming weeks.
Posted by csageday at January 8, 2006 02:22 PM