I Saw It Coming
Some obvious things we conveniently pretend we don’t see, or what we do see, we see as temporary, or we are too deeply involved in our attachment to let go. Sadly, with time, much of what we value so much gets sullied, out of reach, or disappears for varied and emotionally wrenching reasons. Like it or not, this sequence is a part of our lives. We learn to accept it, live with it, replace it as best we can, and move on. Otherwise we pay the heavy price for hanging on to an aspect of our life that simply cannot, any longer, be to us what it once was.
In the midst of preparing a lifestyle plan for my next ten years, if there is a next ten years, I listed the things I like to do, those things which I don’t like to do, and those things which I can no longer physically or mentally do very well. Many sports I let go in the past because my actually playing them at all became a fact of age. Some sports like baseball, are fun to play but too slow to watch. Some sports, like soccer, are too low scoring for someone like myself with little patience. A sport like hockey I have little history with personally, so hard to become any serious fan. Football I was never physically built to play, but it was a good sport to watch, with a perfect pace, complexity, and varied skills. This is why football is currently the most watched sport in the U.S.
For reasons not correctable or simply not corrected, closely following football is no longer something which is remotely a satisfying experience for me. What has personally tipped the issue is the injury rate and seriousness. All the other faults inherent in the sport I resigned myself to, but it is not even the regular season yet and it seems every day a new player, often a key player, goes down with a season ending injury or a many month rehab. Medically we know exactly what long term effects many players will face, including life span, mental problems, and mobility problems. If I were built to play football, I would not play. If a parent, I would not allow my kids to play. As a physiologist I am well aware the human body is not built to sustain constant blows by players who are faster, bigger, better trained, better fed, and far stronger than in the past. There is just so much protection that can be given against these kind of herculean blows. We all are amazed how dogs, in a relatively short period of time, have been bred to exhibit certain innate characteristics. Athletes, for ages, have always been better athletes physically from one generation to the next. Records really are meant to be broken. Today, in football, it is not just records which are being broken right and left, but bodies themselves. As almost always, enough finally becomes enough. We have passed that point in football. The price of playing most positions in football have simply crossed any reasonable line.
Even if I cared less about the injuries, what is the sense of getting all emotionally worked up for a team just to watch the players fall by the wayside with every game? It is rare today for any team to end up the season with a roster that remotely resembles the team which gathered in training camp. All the vigorous debate as to which franchise has assembled the best teams means less and less. Who will be left on the team physically able to play means every bit as much.
Then add the spectacle of 32 wealthy owners in total control of the NFL for their own financial gain, with virtually no regulation by government, no limit on how much they can use a monopoly to exploit the players, the fans, the cities in which they play, the taxpayers in general, or provide justice in behavior cases. Many of these owners never even earned their wealth, they just inherited it. Some earned their wealth by means not exactly admirable. Some are just clowns of the first degree. Others are used car salesmen of the worst kind, and some are kindly knowledgeable ethical gentleman, but rarely. After all you can’t be an owner just by having the money to purchase a franchise, you have to be voted in. Anyone this cabal of characters would admit into their private club is automatically suspect. Why are their images never sullied unless they do something really bad like murder someone? No media sportscaster would ever dream of singing anything but praise of an owner sitting in their skybox waving to the camera. Every one of these TV outlets depend on the huge revenue from football and no network would ever get another contract to broadcast the games if they criticized any owners. They can smear a President of our Country any which way, but they would never dream of trashing the owner of an NFL football team. These owner characters are even essentially protected from bad press by any of the major media outlets.
When football owners and the Player’s Union are at the bargaining table it is a very unusual sort of negotiation. The only thing that counts is what percentage of the huge profits will go to the owners and what percentage of the huge profits will go to the players. The bottom line for cost does not exist, and neither does the limit. It is interesting that we live at an age now where, if workers still have decent pensions or salaries or health benefits and so on, many politicians want to strip them of any right to bargain for these things in order for the government to save money. No one in Congress ever questions why football owners and players can have no limit to their salaries, or why cities need pay for stadiums, or why the NFL can pit one city against another to see where the team plays, or why when football players misbehave, the misbehavior is often tried in a ‘court’ by the Commissioner of Football who is appointed by the owners. And why are football contracts only binding to the player and not management? And on and on it goes. A legalized mafia. Of course the financial greed will implode the whole charade at some point, when is the only question. “When” is the kind of question we have to ask about a lot of major problems coming at us.
If one ever listens to those endless hours of football call-in post game and pre game shows, or listens to the media commentators argue so loudly and forcefully who will win the game, you would think those who project the winner the most often would be able to do so with a bit more than 60% of the time. Even without crippling injuries, there are so many uncontrollable variables which occur during a football game that if the teams are somewhat close, it will be most likely these variables which will determine the outcome of the game. By what line of logic does it make sense for anyone to get so worked up by who will win the game? What uncontrollable factors occur when, and how often, will seal the outcome in most cases. Oh well, it will iron itself out over a best of seven series. Except in football, for obvious reasons, there is only that one game, there can be no best of seven.
There are 32 teams in the NFL. No matter what team you root for, only one team can win the Super Bowl. That means, for 31 out of 32 teams, there is going to be a painful ‘Waterloo’ sooner or later.
At social events, sports is often the most hotly debated of conversations and women today are much more apt to be into it than earlier times. Since facts are not the points of contention, but opinions, the emotions behind the opinions are a sight to behold. Not really a pleasant sight either. As we all know there are more horses asses than horses; in sport debates we notice this right away, and of course we are so grateful, with our own astute opinions, that we are not one of them. I know I am grateful (smile).
My dad got it right. He watched sports, but not with baited breath for any team. He never seemed to highly anticipate any game, turned the game on only if he happened to feel like it or someone else wanted to watch that game. If it got past his bed time he would simply turn the game off, he never seemed angry about whatever was happening, never talked much about a game after it was over, never engaged in any pre game predicting or useless analyzing of what was going to happen. He liked to watch baseball the best, I think because it was on most every day and gave him something to watch which was less filled with rapid endless tension compared to sports like football and basketball. If anyone wanted to watch something else he didn’t care. He was that way with food too. If there was an extra pork chop he would always feign no interest. Only if no one else took it, he might then take it. If I forgot to take the garbage out for garbage collection he would never say a word about it. He didn’t have to, my mother would. The point I learned from his is to just roll with the punches of aging, amuse oneself, and just get out of the way. Otherwise there will be endless things to fuss about.
To care about a football game outside of entertainment for the moment takes a lot of time and thought. I am done with that. Maybe I will watch a game sometimes, just for amusement, a break from any serious thinking about anything. Whichever team wins means absolutely nothing to my life or well being. I wish any of my remaining favorite players and coaches well, but I am not going to adopt any new favorites. As my father might say “The Hell with it”. Somebody will win and somebody will lose, the wheel of fortune will keep spinning around, and where she will stop nobody knows. It will take an effort, but from now on, I am not going to pretend that I am a somebody who does know. The days of peeling myself off the ceiling over some totally unpredictable sudden turn of events in a football game are over for me. That is exactly often the outcome, and the entertainment will be watching those who think a game will not end that way peel themselves off the ceiling. Dumb ‘mother———er’s’ Did they really think all the uncontrollable factors would be inoperable for the game? Besides, I miss T.O. out there at the end of the game in the huddle telling the quarterback “Just gimme the ball, I can make a big play, gimme the ball.” As Steve Young said “Say what you want about T.O. but when the game is on, and you need a critical play, there is no one better to have on your team than T.O.” Willpower, which was his forte, often outmaneuvered the wheel of fortune, left the the little pointer suspended on the tip of the spoke, unable to flip to the next intended groove.
The longer we live, the more good-byes. Goodbye football.
