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Let me begin by saying that I'm an "old fart" who probably shouldn't be believed or trusted because I've been taking up space and polluting air on this planet for close to 55 years and, at this point, I've forgotten more than I can remember.
But, I do remember playing a game called football when I was growing up. It was a great game: played in the fall and early winter on a grassy or muddy field in all kinds of weather conditions from crisp, clear sunny days to freezing cold dark snowy evenings, just the same way as it was played by our heros in college and in the professional leagues played it. It was a rough, sometimes nasty game, but everybody knew what the rules were: what was a touchdown, what was a catch, what was a fumble, what was out-of-bounds, what was in-bounds, what was off-sides, and holding and clipping ("a block in the back" was unheard of in those days!), etc. For all of the bruises and injuries, for all of the hard, sometimes brutal and even illegal hits, it was a beautiful game.
And, I loved it. Because of the competition. And, the comraderie. Because it was about the game, the contest of two teams of individuals sacrificing everything including possibly life and limb to work together to determine which one would come out on top after 60 minutes of going head-to-head and toe-to-toe.
It was a beautiful game. To play and to watch. Because of the passion. It wasn't about the bucks, even on the professional level (professional football players had to work in the off-season to support their families, so if you really wanted to make money, you got a real, full-time job). It was about the love of the game....
After more than 45 years of following, playing, watching and loving the game, I did something I had never done before: I turned off my television set on Sunday night with a little more than 5 minutes remaining in the biggest professional football game of the season, disgusted. Why? Because that wasn't the game I had grown up loving. That wasn't the game at all. It was "an event". It was entertainment for the masses cloaked in the guise of a football game. But, it wasn't the kind of football game I had learned to love so much.
The game was being played in Detroit on February 5th. Pitchers and catchers report to spring training in just two weeks. The basketball and hockey seasons are already half over. And, although it had snowed all day and the night before in Detroit, there wasn't a speck of snow or ice or mud or, God forbid, grass on the field and it was a balmy 72 degrees in the stadium throughout the game. The legions of celebrity guests and corporate sponsors of the NFL, along with the legitimate fans of both teams, who had shelled out thousands of dollars to attend the game, did not have to worry about getting frost-bitten on this cold winter's night because the NFL's TV partners had paid to telecast the game in prime time.
Now, don't get me wrong--I love Aretha Franklin, Aaron Neville and the Rolling Stones. Despite my failing memory I can still remember the lyrics of many of their songs. But, was this supposed to be a football game or an "oldies" rock concert sanitized so as not to offend the most prudish of the prude who don't mind their children watching violence, but believe that the bodies God created are too dirty to be seen? Or, wasn't the game--a clash between two of the best teams in the one and only professional outdoor (?) football league--enough to capture and hold the attention of this crowd of "fans"? Apparently not! Or, at least not enough of them and the world-wide television audience to make the corporate sponsors and advertisers of the league and its TV networks feel that they were getting their money's worth....
For seven and a half hours straight before the game and countless hours in the two weeks leading up to the game, every aspect of both teams, their games and their players and coaches had been analyzed, dissected, rehashed and regurgitated in the American sports media. The nation had been told who not only the good players were, but who the good guys and what the "feel-good stories" were supposed to be. While Seattle had, arguably to be sure, the best individual player--the league's MVP after all--on both teams, in Shaun Alexander, we were regaled with hours of stories about America's New Golden Boy, Ben Roethlisberger, and, lest anyone feel any bias in that, the heart-warming tale of Jerome Bettis returning to his childhood home in his quest to win a championship in his last game before retiring. How sweet. How entertaining.... How could you not recognize what the people handing out all of this drivel wanted the outcome of the game to be?
Ah, but there's the game. It's such a great game and, once the game starts, anything can happen. After all, hasn't the NFL made it a point to make certain that "on any given Sunday...."?
Finally, the kickoff. On plastic grass. Inside of a domed, climate-controlled stadium fitted with dozens of cameras trained on the field (and the audience, don't forget the audience--how can there be a game without the camera showing the audience....oh, yeah, and the scantily clad cheerleaders, no "wardrobe malfunction" there, huh?).
Ooops. What's wrong? Seattle has come out to play. "Golden Boy" Ben can't hit the side of a barn and hometown hero Jerome is getting stuffed at the line of scrimmage. Oh, no. Seattle is moving the ball with ease on the Big Bad Steelers' defense. They're going to score a touchdown. That's not in the script! Drop a flag, negate that touchdown play. Make 'em kick a field goal. Three-nothing isn't too bad a deficit. "Golden Boy" Ben will get it together soon enough to be able to overcome that. Cut to commercial--Ah, there's our boy, Ben, wrapping his fingers around the Lombardi Trophy. Get used to it America, we need a fresh face for our ad campaigns--that Brady kid's starting to go stale on us. Uh-oh, Seattle's stopped our boys again. It's a big punt return--quick, drop a penalty flag! We can't have them starting at mid-field the way they've been moving the ball! "Bad-Ass" Bill Cowher's defense isn't getting any pressure on that kid Hasselbeck, quick throw another penalty flag. I can't believe that guy got the first down, move the ball back a yard while nobody's looking--maybe the cameras will miss it...Come, Big Ben, you can do it! And, if you can't just don't let the camera see where the ball is. Atta boy! Now we can go to the big "Halftime Extravaganza". By the time it is over nobody will remember who did what in the first half anyway....
At halftime there isn't even a debate amongst the former players who are being paid to analyze the game: the key play of the first half is the Seattle TD that was negated by the penalty call on Jackson. The call stunk. So did the holding call on the punt return. And the placement of the ball on the 3rd down pass to Strong. Even the paid shills for the league aren't willing to lie enough to say that the refs are impacting the game. More pictures of "Big Ben" and hometown hero Jerome. Those are your heroes, America, don't you get it!!!
And, don't forget to pay attention to our cute, new commercials! You won't want to miss a one, they'll be the talk of the water-fountain crew at work tomorrow and discussed on all of the entertainment shows this week. They're so entertaining! You want to be entertained, now, don't you? You don't want to be left out. (Forget the fact that we want you to watch them because our market research tells us that it will want you to go out and buy our product--uh, you can afford our product, can't you, if not, we can arrange financing from our corporate partners at at a rate you can just barely afford!)
No, I don't get it. I don't want to get it. And, I don't give a damn about your commercials or your halftime show or your BS! I want to see these two teams play the game that I love. I want to see them go head-to-head, toe-to-toe like the Giants and Colts in 1958; like the Bills and Chargers in 1964 and 1965. I don't want an explanation of whether it's "a catch and a fumble" or "incomplete". I don't want to hear John Madden and Al Michaels try to explain away a phantom pass interference penalty when I see 5 other plays where the same kind of contact is allowed as "incidental contact". It's either a foul or it's not! With three dozen cameras trained on the field, don't tell me that you can't show me whether the guy held or not and then dance around the fact that the ref called a phantom, momentum-changing penalty.
Oh, wow, Pittsburgh has made a couple of plays. And the refs have called another phantom penalty (if this was holding, why wasn't that play holding as well?) to keep Seattle from taking the lead (God forbid!) until they finally make a big mistake. Ah, now we have the story-line we want: Big Ben overcomes a bad start to lead his team to victory--Middle America will love that; Bettis goes out on top in a story-book ending--a triumphant lesson for urban black folks; Polamanu leads the new Steel Curtain--the Asians and Polynesians and older fans will love that one; and we get a two-fer in Randle-El and Ward--see you don't have to play QB to be a star, son, you can still do it if you switch positions....
Michaels and Madden are in full shill mode now. By the time this game is over they'll have everyone thinking that the Steelers won 70-0 and are the greatest team since, well, pick a year. No sense talking about those bad calls by the refs now. Can't gloss over them, but it was a great game and the penalties didn't really influence the outcome anyhow. Just make sure that the rest of the analysts back in the studio stick to the same line of BS.
Yeah, but, you know, I played this game. I played football when it was football. And, I know that those calls in the first half changed the way the two teams played afterwards. I know that it is a different game if it is 10-0 or 13-0 Seattle. I also know that it's a different game at 17-14 Seattle, too. I know that just as much as I know that it would be a different game if it were being played outside, in the snow or in the rain, or if it had been played in December and not now in February.
And, now I have a choice: am I going to listen to a bunch of guys that I used to admire try to convince me to believe what they are telling me--what the NFL and their corporate sponsors want me to believe--or am I going to believe my "lying eyes" that are telling me that I'm being "had"?
Well, I made my choice and, with a little over 5 minutes left in the game, knowing that the outcome had already been determined and would not be allowed to change, I reached over and turned off my television set. As the image on the screen flickered to darkness, I realized that what I had been watching wasn't football--it wasn't the game I had played and learned to love--it was corporate-sponsored entertainment designed to sedate my frustrations by giving them a vicarious, carefully controlled, violent outlet while convincing me to be separated from my money.
By being so blatant in their mishandling of this game, the referees exposed what the NFL, the players and their corporate sponsors have done to the game that I love: it's not about the game any more, it's just entertainment. And, we suckers who keep thinking that it's a game and that it's about the game--because we love the game--are just that, suckers. Now, that's not going to make me stop loving the game. Or, loving the Buffalo Bills and hoping that someday they will be allowed to win a Super Bowl. But it is certainly going to make me view things with a far more jaundiced eye and a far tighter fist around my wallet.
But, I do remember playing a game called football when I was growing up. It was a great game: played in the fall and early winter on a grassy or muddy field in all kinds of weather conditions from crisp, clear sunny days to freezing cold dark snowy evenings, just the same way as it was played by our heros in college and in the professional leagues played it. It was a rough, sometimes nasty game, but everybody knew what the rules were: what was a touchdown, what was a catch, what was a fumble, what was out-of-bounds, what was in-bounds, what was off-sides, and holding and clipping ("a block in the back" was unheard of in those days!), etc. For all of the bruises and injuries, for all of the hard, sometimes brutal and even illegal hits, it was a beautiful game.
And, I loved it. Because of the competition. And, the comraderie. Because it was about the game, the contest of two teams of individuals sacrificing everything including possibly life and limb to work together to determine which one would come out on top after 60 minutes of going head-to-head and toe-to-toe.
It was a beautiful game. To play and to watch. Because of the passion. It wasn't about the bucks, even on the professional level (professional football players had to work in the off-season to support their families, so if you really wanted to make money, you got a real, full-time job). It was about the love of the game....
After more than 45 years of following, playing, watching and loving the game, I did something I had never done before: I turned off my television set on Sunday night with a little more than 5 minutes remaining in the biggest professional football game of the season, disgusted. Why? Because that wasn't the game I had grown up loving. That wasn't the game at all. It was "an event". It was entertainment for the masses cloaked in the guise of a football game. But, it wasn't the kind of football game I had learned to love so much.
The game was being played in Detroit on February 5th. Pitchers and catchers report to spring training in just two weeks. The basketball and hockey seasons are already half over. And, although it had snowed all day and the night before in Detroit, there wasn't a speck of snow or ice or mud or, God forbid, grass on the field and it was a balmy 72 degrees in the stadium throughout the game. The legions of celebrity guests and corporate sponsors of the NFL, along with the legitimate fans of both teams, who had shelled out thousands of dollars to attend the game, did not have to worry about getting frost-bitten on this cold winter's night because the NFL's TV partners had paid to telecast the game in prime time.
Now, don't get me wrong--I love Aretha Franklin, Aaron Neville and the Rolling Stones. Despite my failing memory I can still remember the lyrics of many of their songs. But, was this supposed to be a football game or an "oldies" rock concert sanitized so as not to offend the most prudish of the prude who don't mind their children watching violence, but believe that the bodies God created are too dirty to be seen? Or, wasn't the game--a clash between two of the best teams in the one and only professional outdoor (?) football league--enough to capture and hold the attention of this crowd of "fans"? Apparently not! Or, at least not enough of them and the world-wide television audience to make the corporate sponsors and advertisers of the league and its TV networks feel that they were getting their money's worth....
For seven and a half hours straight before the game and countless hours in the two weeks leading up to the game, every aspect of both teams, their games and their players and coaches had been analyzed, dissected, rehashed and regurgitated in the American sports media. The nation had been told who not only the good players were, but who the good guys and what the "feel-good stories" were supposed to be. While Seattle had, arguably to be sure, the best individual player--the league's MVP after all--on both teams, in Shaun Alexander, we were regaled with hours of stories about America's New Golden Boy, Ben Roethlisberger, and, lest anyone feel any bias in that, the heart-warming tale of Jerome Bettis returning to his childhood home in his quest to win a championship in his last game before retiring. How sweet. How entertaining.... How could you not recognize what the people handing out all of this drivel wanted the outcome of the game to be?
Ah, but there's the game. It's such a great game and, once the game starts, anything can happen. After all, hasn't the NFL made it a point to make certain that "on any given Sunday...."?
Finally, the kickoff. On plastic grass. Inside of a domed, climate-controlled stadium fitted with dozens of cameras trained on the field (and the audience, don't forget the audience--how can there be a game without the camera showing the audience....oh, yeah, and the scantily clad cheerleaders, no "wardrobe malfunction" there, huh?).
Ooops. What's wrong? Seattle has come out to play. "Golden Boy" Ben can't hit the side of a barn and hometown hero Jerome is getting stuffed at the line of scrimmage. Oh, no. Seattle is moving the ball with ease on the Big Bad Steelers' defense. They're going to score a touchdown. That's not in the script! Drop a flag, negate that touchdown play. Make 'em kick a field goal. Three-nothing isn't too bad a deficit. "Golden Boy" Ben will get it together soon enough to be able to overcome that. Cut to commercial--Ah, there's our boy, Ben, wrapping his fingers around the Lombardi Trophy. Get used to it America, we need a fresh face for our ad campaigns--that Brady kid's starting to go stale on us. Uh-oh, Seattle's stopped our boys again. It's a big punt return--quick, drop a penalty flag! We can't have them starting at mid-field the way they've been moving the ball! "Bad-Ass" Bill Cowher's defense isn't getting any pressure on that kid Hasselbeck, quick throw another penalty flag. I can't believe that guy got the first down, move the ball back a yard while nobody's looking--maybe the cameras will miss it...Come, Big Ben, you can do it! And, if you can't just don't let the camera see where the ball is. Atta boy! Now we can go to the big "Halftime Extravaganza". By the time it is over nobody will remember who did what in the first half anyway....
At halftime there isn't even a debate amongst the former players who are being paid to analyze the game: the key play of the first half is the Seattle TD that was negated by the penalty call on Jackson. The call stunk. So did the holding call on the punt return. And the placement of the ball on the 3rd down pass to Strong. Even the paid shills for the league aren't willing to lie enough to say that the refs are impacting the game. More pictures of "Big Ben" and hometown hero Jerome. Those are your heroes, America, don't you get it!!!
And, don't forget to pay attention to our cute, new commercials! You won't want to miss a one, they'll be the talk of the water-fountain crew at work tomorrow and discussed on all of the entertainment shows this week. They're so entertaining! You want to be entertained, now, don't you? You don't want to be left out. (Forget the fact that we want you to watch them because our market research tells us that it will want you to go out and buy our product--uh, you can afford our product, can't you, if not, we can arrange financing from our corporate partners at at a rate you can just barely afford!)
No, I don't get it. I don't want to get it. And, I don't give a damn about your commercials or your halftime show or your BS! I want to see these two teams play the game that I love. I want to see them go head-to-head, toe-to-toe like the Giants and Colts in 1958; like the Bills and Chargers in 1964 and 1965. I don't want an explanation of whether it's "a catch and a fumble" or "incomplete". I don't want to hear John Madden and Al Michaels try to explain away a phantom pass interference penalty when I see 5 other plays where the same kind of contact is allowed as "incidental contact". It's either a foul or it's not! With three dozen cameras trained on the field, don't tell me that you can't show me whether the guy held or not and then dance around the fact that the ref called a phantom, momentum-changing penalty.
Oh, wow, Pittsburgh has made a couple of plays. And the refs have called another phantom penalty (if this was holding, why wasn't that play holding as well?) to keep Seattle from taking the lead (God forbid!) until they finally make a big mistake. Ah, now we have the story-line we want: Big Ben overcomes a bad start to lead his team to victory--Middle America will love that; Bettis goes out on top in a story-book ending--a triumphant lesson for urban black folks; Polamanu leads the new Steel Curtain--the Asians and Polynesians and older fans will love that one; and we get a two-fer in Randle-El and Ward--see you don't have to play QB to be a star, son, you can still do it if you switch positions....
Michaels and Madden are in full shill mode now. By the time this game is over they'll have everyone thinking that the Steelers won 70-0 and are the greatest team since, well, pick a year. No sense talking about those bad calls by the refs now. Can't gloss over them, but it was a great game and the penalties didn't really influence the outcome anyhow. Just make sure that the rest of the analysts back in the studio stick to the same line of BS.
Yeah, but, you know, I played this game. I played football when it was football. And, I know that those calls in the first half changed the way the two teams played afterwards. I know that it is a different game if it is 10-0 or 13-0 Seattle. I also know that it's a different game at 17-14 Seattle, too. I know that just as much as I know that it would be a different game if it were being played outside, in the snow or in the rain, or if it had been played in December and not now in February.
And, now I have a choice: am I going to listen to a bunch of guys that I used to admire try to convince me to believe what they are telling me--what the NFL and their corporate sponsors want me to believe--or am I going to believe my "lying eyes" that are telling me that I'm being "had"?
Well, I made my choice and, with a little over 5 minutes left in the game, knowing that the outcome had already been determined and would not be allowed to change, I reached over and turned off my television set. As the image on the screen flickered to darkness, I realized that what I had been watching wasn't football--it wasn't the game I had played and learned to love--it was corporate-sponsored entertainment designed to sedate my frustrations by giving them a vicarious, carefully controlled, violent outlet while convincing me to be separated from my money.
By being so blatant in their mishandling of this game, the referees exposed what the NFL, the players and their corporate sponsors have done to the game that I love: it's not about the game any more, it's just entertainment. And, we suckers who keep thinking that it's a game and that it's about the game--because we love the game--are just that, suckers. Now, that's not going to make me stop loving the game. Or, loving the Buffalo Bills and hoping that someday they will be allowed to win a Super Bowl. But it is certainly going to make me view things with a far more jaundiced eye and a far tighter fist around my wallet.
, Meister 
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