Football as theatre. What makes a game one of the better ones in history?
“The Green Bay Packers and Arizona Cardinals played what could go down as one of the better NFL playoff games in recent memory.” So stated one internet media columnist.
This got me wondering. What does he mean by better? And the answer explains why younger fans get a lot more excited about football games than older fans, with some notable exceptions. Football is the most popular fan sport by far. And they only play sixteen games a season not counting the playoffs.
Football is a very complicated sport requiring a variety of skills and a variety of totally different positions. It has a nice pace to it and by it’s nature fans tend to develop very strong opinions during the game as to what should be done. The term ‘better’ above has little to do with football competency per se. I don’t recall all the scoring during the game but I do remember one pass was a ‘hail mary’ pass, another touchdown was scored by the ball being deflected away from the intended receiver and some guy yards away finds the ball coming down in his hands. Another play included a receiver catching a long pass in down in the red zone, an amazing catch, but there was a penalty way back down the field on someone so the catch was negated. The receiver—the best one the team had—-was injured in the play and removed from the game.
I mention the stuff above, not that stuff like this is unusual in football (it is not), but endless ‘surprises’—things that cannot be coached against, happen throughout a football game: bad calls, missed calls, player injuries, bad weather. Plus, the best team is expected to fumble less, miss tackles less, drop the ball less, create penalties less, block well, etc. However, how damaging any of the latter are depends on exactly at what point in the game the error happens. Some mistakes are harmless, others mistakes lose the game. But this unpredictable-ness is exactly what makes football so exciting. Pro football games are so unpredictable that those ‘experts’, who predict which teams will win each week, are only right about 65% of the time.
In other words the media writer means the game was one of the most exciting games to watch, not that flawless football was being executed during the game. Of course this is ok, I mean who would want to watch a football game if the most talented team always wins? For many people, a three hour football game is going to be the most exciting three hours of their week, with the gas peddle floored for a full range of emotions. It is a way to get such charged emotions with no personal risk. Our lives will be the same after, as it was before the game. It’s the same reason we like a good movie or exhilarating rides at an amusement park. With football it is a three hour “Wee…..Oh no!……Yes, yes!…..Oh, for Christ’s sake!……unbelievable!…….etc.” We don’t watch the game because we know who will win based on the talent (at least with teams remotely close in talent) but precisely because we really don’t know who will win (especially in the playoffs). There is such a hodgepodge of factors percolating the entire game that more often than not it comes crashing down the last 5 minutes of a game with enough pauses in the action for us to work up a maximum emotional state. Then, just like on a roller coast we take the plunge and just like that, somebody wins and somebody loses while not a thing changes about the reality of our lives.
But a funny thing happens as most people get older. At an older age we have been on the rollercoaster enough. We seek milder forms of excitement; in fact contentment is more important than jacked up excitement. We begin to watch the game more as pure theatre instead of committed insistence as to who will win or any stubborn claim about who is the better team. We play the lottery (not I), not because it is a rational thing to do, but purely because a miracle has to descend on someone or a handful of someones. In general, most older people begin to resent having their emotions driven to extremes, especially in matters of no real importance to them. We begin to realize we have zero control of all the unpredictable things that can happen in a football game. To some extent, resentment sets in that our emotional state is being manipulated and yanked around for three hours. We tend to mellow out when older, become less and less directly involved in our environment, of whatever nature it might be. When a crowd is together watching a game, it is the younger crowd that makes the most noise, takes the game the most seriously, ready to be pushed to an amazing high or a crushing defeat. I probably was one of the worst fans to the point of being obnoxious: “Reid, would you like mashed potatoes or a sweet potato?” “Shut up mother, I am trying to watch the game”.Then later, “Why can’t you keep quiet during the game? I can’t focus on all the nonsense you try to talk about.” I never listen to the pregame babble or the call in radio shows that go on for hours before and after a game. It really is inane. It really is over the top. The same ‘expert’ who was so sure who would win the game before the game started, will pick the wrong team, and then, after the game, come back and just as forcefully and adamantly explain why the game was won by the very team which he earlier said would, for sure, lose. That’s quite a feat, to be the expert, win or lose.
So when a media expert claims a certain game was one of the better games in history we can be sure that really means there were more unexpected plays, more disputed plays, more unbelievable plays, more ups and downs throughout the game, etc. Some of the better movies we watch are better because we didn’t ‘expect’ so many things to happen that did, or the movie to end as it did, or our feelings played with so effectively.
In the end, when the game is over, absolutely nothing of any meaning happened. Our lives haven’t changed, reality returns. It is back, too often, to the ‘rat race’ and lives, too often, of quiet desperation. Life, for most, is not so unbearable as to be suicidal, but it is stressful and we really do have to struggle to get a respectable amount of contentment in our lives. Real life, in many respects, is just like football—essentially unpredictable. We mostly continue to watch football and we continue to live our lives. It is really hard to predict when, in life, we may score a touchdown. The excited joy doesn’t last all that long and tomorrow in life, it will be another contest, another effort, another slew of unpredictable hurdles or events, and so it goes until, as with all theatre, the curtain comes down.
