The Super Bowl---Football as an Enigmatic Slippery Precarious Unpredictable Sport

Football as an Enigmatic Slippery Precarious Unpredictable Sport

Note: ( Above Musing follows this note)

Author Notes about this Blog

This blog was set up originally simply as a file deposit for musings which I sent out to friends. Somehow a lot of people managed to find the URL, and that is ok.  Since the blogs were not originally meant for general distribution most have not been carefully edited.  I may go back now and do the proper editing. I have recently published a book titled: The Meaning of Life.  Anyone interested can find it listed in Amazon.com under the author name Reid S. James. There is a description of the content along with the listing. It was published in late October 2013. Any income from the book will be donated to various 501 category charities. Given the nature of the book, to do otherwise would be hypocritical. Given the original intent of this URL I have never provided an opportunity for any response to these musings. I think I will leave it that way as I don't have the time for a lot of responding to comments by others. These musings are written as food for thought, and do not purport to be anything other than what the blog implies: personal musings. Were I to personally know many of you who visit this URL I sense we would have a lot of engaging conversations. There are too many now for that to be practical.

Football as an Enigmatic Slippery Precarious Unpredictable Sport

I reckon most followers of football realize you can't shut down, on good team, both the running game and the passing game. There just aren't enough defensive players to cover everybody. We also know you can't double team everybody. We also know that there will be an opening somewhere on most every play.  We also know no one reads defenses better than Payton Manning, although Aaron Rodgers is right there too. 

Nevertheless, we kind of also know nothing is sure in football. That is why we sit on the edge of our seats during a game. Of course nothing stops any of us from pretending we do know, what we really don't know, about football outcomes. The 'experts', at least the ones on TV, make it perfectly clear to all of us that for certain the game will go down in certain ways based on their perception of the better players/coaches. They often make their certainties more clear by shouting and talking over some expert who differs. Well, it's all theatre and that is why football is the most popular American sport. 

If football were a reasonably predictable game then it would not be a rarity for two #1 seeded teams to be in the Super Bowl. But this year the two #1 seeded teams made it to the Superbowl and one with a quarterback most claim might be the best ever. Sometimes, I have spurts of common sense, (my mother never thought so) and so in a football pool I predicted the total pts in the Super Bowl would be around 50. Well, my spurt of common sense was close---EXCEPT I really didn't figure the 50 pts would be almost all from the team without the maybe best ever quarterback. 

Instead, what I witnessed was an amazingly near perfect defense and offense by Seattle. No matter what Payton tried, Seattle was all over the play. Was Bellicheck spying for them? Well, maybe God, for just this one time, really did favor some team and ensure everything went their way. Seattle must have had one hell of a prayer circle before the game.  Or maybe, or at least more likely, Seattle really does have a perfect defensive setup. It certainly was declared so by almost everyone who watched the game. The trouble is, both teams lost 3 games during the season so it was by no means a perfect defense is some games. Up until the last two games of the season opposing teams had scored roughly 20 or more pts against Seattle and sometimes 40+ pts (DAllas).  Denver, on the other hand, had scored more than 25 pts in every game except one. Plus, while Seattle rarely loses at home it has lost games away. 

After the game, the experts were assuring their audience that this was CERTAINLY the beginning of a dynasty, a team which will win all the marbles for years and years given their youth. That makes sense, of course, especially since free agents will target Seattle as the best team to get signed on.  And so will the best assistant coaches be available on call. The same sort of predictions abounded with the same degree of certainty with the 1985 Bears Super Bowl win.
But how many more Super Bowls did they win? None.  

So, today I say to myself, wasn't it also a certainty that Denver would score a lot of pts and certainly Denver would not score 43pts well before the end of the game? And wasn't it a certainty that Payton Manning, the best defense reader in the game, would find ways to shred any defense?  

Or Maybe, since football  is an enigmatic slippery precarious unpredictable sport, we really have little idea what will come down the pike next year. This past year Seattle won 9 games by a touchdown or less. And they lost three games. 

I pondered all this, and tried to reach my own logical conclusion.  And it is a firm, well reasoned out conclusion:  I want my teams to win and the players/coaches I like best to do well, and football is an Enigmatic Slippery Precarious Unpredictable Sport, and one which I would never bet any money on regarding outcomes.  Football is like a movie in that the some of the best games are the ones whose outcome was unpredictable. We know who writes a script for a movie, for football it appears the Wheel of Fortune in firmly in control of the script.