Football Is Absurdly Epic

I'll try not to lament the demise of my beloved Bears too much. I almost can't help it, though, because I can't stand Lovie Smith or his constant quizzical facial expression. No--you're not getting a treat, Lovie, so wipe off the blank hang-dog look. It looks like he's too dumb to feel anything beside carnal pain, which I wish someone would give him unremittingly. But I'll not dwell, other than to say that the Bears need a coach, finally, that is competent. I used to attack quarterbacks and running backs for their seeming ineptitude, but I think now that the problem lies with the coach. Jay Cutler may not be Tom Brady, and Matt Forte not Walter Payton, but they cannot be as disposable as they look in games. Formerly unremarkable Cedric Benson's 188 rushing yards confirmed this today, as the hapless Bears lost to a very beatable Cincinnati Bengals team, who they made look like Super Bowl contenders. I digress, though...

Many people shrug off football as yet another display of machismo and nothing more. They would have a point, but there's no way in hell they could play a game. Neither could I, for that matter. That's what I love about the NFL. I know I could never play in a game. I could step onto baseball field, and most likely could vanish into the periphery. This sentiment goes beyond the obvious MS restrictions. I could hardly play a boring game of European "futbol," aka soccer, and there's no way I could move in shoulder pads, ao clearly I couldn't play football. Even if I wanted to, though, I would have to be a freakish example of anatomy and resiliency. Since I'm not an evolutionary or eugenic marvel (far from it), I could never play professional football, and I'm fine with this. I never have the thought, "I wish I were in this game," or "What I would do is...," because I could never survive a single play in an NFL game.

Nothing else gives you the feeling of pure spectacle like an NFL game. Even the promotional music and that of the programming itself sound like everything belongs in the Roman Coliseum. I cringe when I hear Faith Hill sing the intro for Sunday Night Football, but I love the upright horns that nearly make me stand before a commercial break. Honestly, who okays the intros for this programming? That Faith Hill song is so bad that even wallpaper curls when it plays, and Bocephus's "Are You Ready For Some Football?" on Monday Night Football, before it went to ESPN, induces only feelings of laughter and mild nausea. The brass blasts that signal the end (or maybe the beginning) of a commercial break cut through anything and everything, though, as if to signal the entrance of an emperor.

The idea of 80,000 people, give or take, gathering for a sporting event may seem crazy, especially in this age of HD. I actually prefer to watch a football game on television, but I understand the gratification of physically being present in a stadium. If you watch the crowd, its cheers look like they emanate from an alien civilization. This is more of a phenomenon that's visible during a college game, but I am confident that you can skip this. You don't need to feel the displaced air from thousands of waving tentacles to know that they are there.

Nevertheless, people gather to watch these huge gladiators run into each other. They do a lot more than that, of course, but I'm playing devil's advocate.

I'd pay handsomely to see someone who criticizes football's brutality get on a field, with pads, and wait to get knocked down. You'd have to be insane to endure what these players walk into, voluntarily, each week. This is true, but you also need a little finesse to make it look good. A very tiny number of people can do this for an entire season, and even less for multiple seasons.

This is the reason Brett Favre's decision to shirk retirement only makes me shrug and shake my head in confused admiration. He doesn't have anything else left to accomplish, but still he won't disappear in the entrance tunnel.

As a Bears fan, his indefatigability puzzles me, but I can't turn this into derision. He may be most famous as the leader of the Bears' chief rival, the Green Bay Packers, and now is at the helm of division leader the Minnesota Vikings. He brings it, though, and oddly refuses to fade away.

I wish Lovie Smith would not do the same, however.

R