Your curmudgeon is given to understand that there's a football game on TV tomorrow, one that he neither cares about nor intends to watch. There hasn't been a Super Bowl since the old NFL merged with the AFL. Since then, they're all in the same league and it's just a league championship.
In short, all tomorrow means is that we don't have to listen to anyone talks about football for.. oh... maybe two or three months.
If PawPaw were the super-duper silly-games commissioner, the following rules would be in effect. Football would run from September 2 to January 1. Basketball would run from January 2 till April 1. Baseball would run from April 2 to September 1. Soccer would be banished from American shores. Other silly games could be played during the months not already scheduled.
I call them silly games because I don't believe that they're sports. Sports are endeavors where there is serious risk of bodily harm. Many people attribute a quote to Hemingway that "There are only three sports - bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games." Some don't believe he said it. I don't care. The point is that a sporting endeavor should have some element of risk beyond the merely coincidental.
All the rest are silly games.
I'm afraid I must politely disagree, PawPaw.
ReplyDeleteA sport is essentially an organized challenge, nothing more. It can be a challenge of one person against elements of danger, such as in mountaineering, or it may be a challenge of teams against each other, played by an intricate set of rules, as in football (either American or the global version).
It's all about challenge. If you go out for a brisk walk, you are engaging in sport, because you are challenging yourself to maintain that pace.
The Super Bowl may be Super in some minds, but like the World Series which doesn't involve the rest of the world's baseball leagues (on any day, the Cubans can give any of our MLB teams a good game, same with the Japanese), we put too much stock in our own pros' prowess without proving it. The NFL Europe league's best is probably good enough to beat most of the NFL USA's teams at some point in the
season.
If PawPaw were the super-duper silly-games commissioner, the following rules would be in effect...... Soccer would be banished from American shores.
ReplyDeleteBite your tongue!! While I enjoy football(college much more than pro), I like to see the occasional futbol(soccer)game also, especially since my 15 yr old daughter plays for PHS girls team(even if they aren't that good....parent thing, you know).
Soccer really needs to be watched in person, not on TV, and you need to be a bit elevated also(like PHS's stadium). Once you understand the game better, you realise that unlike American football, more happens around the entire field, just within 5-10 yds of the line of scrimmage.
Something else: we've discovered that soccer is generally better for kids with ADD than baseball, because there is more action and movement.
But, YMMV.
Termite