Why the NFL is Theatre More So Than Physical Excellence
Only fools would seriously bet on football unless it is an odds based contest, where it becomes a numbers game, not one of picking the team who will win. When the experts, and there are plenty of them who are actually very knowledgeable about football, start picking who will win games, the winner out of all of them will be in the 60 percentile range. Imagine where that puts the rest of us.
Let’s just use the wk 13 games as illustration.
Packer’s were favored to win by 3. Well, they won thanks to a nearly impossible Hail Mary Pass maybe on the basis of a blown face mask call. Probably the odds makers didn’t consider this in their contemplation of a winner.
Chicago was favored to win by 8.5. Well, Chicago lost at home no less. What were the experts missing when they predicted it would be a blow out? Probably were missing nothing except how unpredictable football is. When I see snippets of a pre game (it should really be pre-week) analysts vigorously and emotionally presenting their case of who is going to win, they ought to preface it with their same vigorous past predictions which were wrong almost as often as not. After about a month of this I would be afraid to have an opinion which is wrong so much of the time.
Carolina was predicted to beat N.O. and they did but it took like 41 points to do so.
New England was favored by 10.5 puts, another blow out with a team (Philly) who loses a lot. Well not this day, Philly beat New England with an offensive explosion.
If NFL football is so unpredictable, how come so many people are addicted to it? Let’s face it, it is good theatre precisely because there are literally hundreds of different ways to win or lose a football game. Nobody wastes any time or money spending all week yakking about how a new movie might come out. If it is a good movie then it will be filled with all sorts of subplots and exciting events en- route to a conclusion. Football is like that too except for some reason so many people think they can really predict what will happen en-route to some players hopping up and down at the end and others crestfallen and dazed.
How anyone could coach football and retain their sanity is beyond me. I wonder what the average lifespan is of football coaches who have coached more than a couple of years? It would take a pretty rugged central nervous system to handle such endless surprises. We have all known individuals who scream bloody murder throughout an entire football game. Once upon a time I was near or at that level, but finally I have come to the point where I can watch a football game purely as theatre, much like I might watch a movie. Much the same can be said for all of life: it is theatre, we need accept it as such, and don’t bet on anything. At least a football game is over after 3-4 hours, two hours with TIVO.
I read a book during football games with the sound so low I am only aroused when the announcers start screaming. Besides, with instant replay, it is hard to miss anything. If the book is something that requires intense concentration, then the football game prevents me from falling asleep, stirs me up mentally enough to help me understand better anything complicated in writing. Carolina has the best record so I guess they must be the favorite to win the Superbowl. Well, there are 12 teams that make the playoffs and most any of them are good enough to win 4 games in a row and that would make them Super Bowl champions. There probably is a mathematical equation to properly judge who will win. You start with physical talent at the varied positions and then add hundreds of uncontrollable factors and poof, we have the winner. The trouble is, we have no idea which of the uncontrollable factors will come into play, so I guess there really is no mathematical equation after all.
That’s kind of strange, for all the incessant babble leading up to the football game it would certainly seem an awful lot of people have the clearest vision of who will win and why. While no one has any clear idea of who will win, after the game, these experts will tell us exactly why one team was better than the other. Huh? If uncontrollable factors control the outcome, how does that make one team better than the other? Well, one could argue, over time the team with the best physical talent would win the most games. True, so we will make each one game contest in the playoffs a best of seven series. Except, if they play that many games, since injuries are one of the biggest uncontrollable factors, this can drastically reduce any teams physical talent. That is to say physical talent is not a constant in football at all. Football is a very complicated game. So maybe, to eliminate physical injuries, each team could be represented game time by a computer game plan. Then we can all watch animated figures on TV carry out the respective game plans to see who wins.
I don’t think T.O. would like that idea. “What? Football without me? You shut up and don’t speak to me again unless I speak to you first. Time for me to love me some me.”
