So I turn on the television the other night, hoping to catch an A’s or Giants game, and what do I see instead? Football.
I checked my calendar. Yep. It’s only August.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. When I went to the drugstore to buy my hearing aid batteries, I noticed they had their Thanksgiving decorations out. I mean, hey. I guess autumn IS on the horizon, right?
And so is Christmas. And the Fourth of July. And the tricentennial.
But back to this football game. It’s an exhibition game. Translation: The starters play for one or two sets of downs, then you get a steady dose of subs trying to make the team. So not only does the game NOT COUNT, it’s being played by a bunch of guys you probably won’t see once the season begins.
Being a guy, I watched it anyway. Hey, a guy will watch any kind of competition, even American Idol.
Some people call football the new American Pastime. Watching this game, I could see why. It’s more American than baseball in so many ways.
First of all is the fast pace. We Americans are known for our short attention span, and football is much faster paced than baseball. Just look at how they’re running around! It’s nothing like baseball. Of course, after all the running around, the guy has usually moved the ball forward about an inch and a half.
Sometimes you can’t even see the ball carrier. The teams collide and the whole mess just sort of vaguely moves around, like a drunken rhinoceros, and keels over. Then everybody gets up and does it again. Exciting!
The pace of commercial breaks is faster too. Every time a team turns over the ball, you get more commercials. Whenever there’s a timeout, more commercials. At the two-minute warning, more commercials. The pace was so fast I could hardly catch my breath!
And don’t forget the injury pace. Every other play or so, some brute who can bench-press a mobile home is lying there holding his knee, or ankle, or some other body part because some other brute ran into him. (Of course, the injury is often a fake, one team trying to break the other team’s momentum by slowing things down.) While the team doctor examines him, guess what happens? More commercials.
The penalty pace is faster in football, too. Every other play, someone has done something they ought not to have done. Holding, illegal blocking, delay of game, and on and on. I don’t know about you, but I love watching a bunch of referees throwing flags, standing around talking about it, then explaining to everybody what happened, then moving everything back to where it was before all that exciting running around began.
Sometimes the referee will call a penalty on someone, but that’s not the end of it. The coach can challenge the call. Imagine that—an official who isn’t even official. His call can be disputed. Guess what this results in? That’s right—more downtime while we wait for the ref to review the play again and again. Now, folks, that’s exciting television!
What I really like about football is when a guy breaks out for a big play, and everybody celebrates for ten minutes, but then the referee comes along and says, in effect, “Hold on there, fellas, it didn’t count.” Why? Another penalty. So that exciting play is negated—it never really happened. Everything you just saw, all that poetry in motion, doesn’t count!
Speaking of celebrations, it’s wonderful when they celebrate for five minutes because they scored. I just love seeing a bunch of weightlifters hugging each other and prancing around. What, they’ve never scored a touchdown before? On the other hand, it’s easy to understand. They’re happy something finally happened. Hell, when somebody scored, I felt like dancing around the living room myself.
Hey, don’t forget about halftime. You know, the fifteen minutes during the game when the players are in the locker room TAKING IT EASY. Exciting! More commercials, some talking by the commentators, more commercials, more talking, more commercials, more talking. Wow! In baseball, all you’d be seeing in the middle of the game is THE GAME.
Some people want to institute a clock in baseball to speed the game up. Well, let’s look at what happens with the clock in football.
First of all, it keeps getting reset. Time that passed didn’t really pass and has to pass again.
It keeps stopping, too. It stops for incomplete passes. It stops for first downs. It stops when a runner runs out of bounds.
And teams “work” the clock. They stand around between plays trying to run out the clock on the other team.
This clock, which is supposed to keep the game clipping along, in actuality slows it down. But don’t tell the guy dressed in body paint, drunk and screaming his head off since five o’clock this morning. He knows the real deal. Football is better than baseball because—well, just look! Look at how guys are running around hitting each other!
But the best thing about the clock is that it actually decides the winner—often before the game is over. If the score is close, and the leading team regains possession of the ball, they will just milk the clock for the last five minutes. Here’s the climax of your exciting, fast-paced game: a bunch of guys standing around between plays, using every last second of the clock, to keep the other team from getting the ball back. This is FAIR?
Now I ask you a question: Can there be a more exciting climax to any sporting event than the kneel-down?
Yes, I think I’ve convinced myself. Give me football over baseball any day. I mean, who needs a game where both teams get a fair shake, where every man gets his chance? What’s so American about that? The ticking clock—now that’s American. The violence. That’s American. And the commercials. If that’s not American, then I don’t know what is!
