Beware (Celebrate) the Underdog

From the beginning, this year’s football season disappointed me. I simply could not find a team or player I wanted to root for. The good Baptist in me kept telling me to get on the Baylor bandwagon and they impressed me in the games I watched - but given Baylor’s history, caution dominated. The thrilling end to the Alabama/Auburn game Thanksgiving weekend gave me some hope that the conference championship games would redeem the season.

The season’s final weekend left me smiling.

Two things that can be said for underdogs is that they are still dogs and they have fight.

In the conferences that have a championship game, both teams competing are there for a reason. Some conferences have disparity between the divisions, but teams rise to the top because they have demonstrated the greatest skill over the season.  That does not go away when they face a team perceived to be stronger. Almost universally, the underdog proved they deserved to be in the game.

And dang my dominating caution. After the earlier Oklahoma / Oklahoma State game eliminated the possibility of a tie for conference champion, I watched what turned into the Big 12 championship game with some Longhorn faithful. Despite our alma mater falling in the game, we all agreed that Baylor deserved the win - and Baylor as a program deserved it after the decades of mediocrity at best.

The competitiveness of the games reenergized what was becoming a lagging interest in sports. The underdogs, several times victorious, returned the excitement to sport. If the projections for the bowl games hold true, then bowl season promises to be as competitive as this weekend. The beginning did not meet my expectations, but if it ends the way the last weeks have been, then I will be happy - thanks to the underdogs.

Disenchanted

Out of habit I continue to tune my television to sports channels on a regular basis - actually much of the time the television is on now that I live alone again. The last few months have had me questioning why because I have found none of the pleasure I normally gain from watching sports. I

am usually pretty easy to please as long as it is a sport in which I have some interest, but lately I just get frustrated at much of what I see in the games.

Football in particular has been almost unbearable to watch. My favorite teams performance has been lackluster to say the least. They are good, but not quite winning good. The one winning team only does so because most of the teams they have played sucked worse than they do. This season has not offered much to see on the field.

When the Kansas City Chiefs are 9-0 (equaling the number of games won in the lasts 2 seasons combined), you know there is something wrong in the NFL.

The indecipherable and unplayable new rules in the NFL for “player safety” fit perfectly with the ineptitude some teams (like the Chiefs) have shown in the past years. Stung by lawsuits lost for ignoring the extent head injuries have harmed current and former players, the league instituted rules to minimize the risk of head injury to the players coming up with a version of big-boy flag football. The truth is that when 300lb bodies slam into one another at full force, even without head-to-head contact, brain injuries occur. The new rules have caused so many players reticence about making typical moves that the game is not nearly as entertaining.

Coupled with the watered down game is a watered down roster of players. No player at the college or professional level has captured my interest. I can barely name a player on any team outside of Texas - not even on the suddenly glorious Kansas City Chiefs. Never before have I felt so apathetic about all the major teams and players.

My curmudgeonly spirit dominates this season. Maybe next season my fan spirit will return.

Not the Season I Wanted

Today marked the third week of the NFL season. Since the clock ticked to 0:00 the Superbowl, I have anticipated the return of professional college and professional professional football. Four weeks into the college season and three weeks into NFL play and all I can say about any of it is “meh.”

Granted the first week of the NFL season was a wash due to a raging case of food poisoning that kept me from watching any games, so I have only had two weeks to judge, still none of the games I have watched have sustained my interest or found a way to get me engaged in rooting for (or against) any team.

The teams I normally follow and know best have not played remotely close to the level of potential they have. No performance of any of the other teams  have caught my attention. Frankly, I have been bored with the games at both levels. I have not been able to identify what it is different about the game - or what is different about me.

Most of the season remains and I maintain hope that it will become more captivating for me. It better. What is there to replace it? Hockey?

Looks like I will be stuck with even mediocre football.

Sanitizing the Game

         During the time the NFL officials (they are not all referees – there is only one referee in each game – every official has a specific assignment) were locked out due to a contract dispute, I grew increasingly worried each week due to the increasingly blatant major violations going uncalled in the games. The safety of every player on the field was at risk with each call that was not made.

         Scientific discoveries in the last decade, spurred more by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan than professional football, have cast light on the permanent damage head injuries such as concussions have on those who experience them. Historically the “minor” head injuries, such as concussions have been considered healed as soon as the symptoms disappeared. We now know that is not true.

Football (though hardly the only sport) has long been known as a sport whose participants frequently experienced concussions. Big men traveling at high speeds colliding with one another tended to have that effect on the anatomy. As new information has been discovered, the NFL has been responsive by creating rules and equipment designed to protect the safety of the players. They have attempted to sanitize the game as much as a notoriously violent game can be sanitized.

         What frustrates me are the people seeking to hold the NFL responsible for injuries that occurred prior to the knowledge we have now. They are like the people suing companies for using asbestos in the 1950’s. Knowledge of the harm of the product did not exist at that time. Since the 1970’s, with the widespread use of computers and the exponential growth of knowledge, we find it easy to forget that all we know now has not always been known. In many cases, the means to know did even not exist.

         I am a football fan and applaud the efforts of the NFL to make the game safer for the players. Rules the NFL implements trickle down to college, high school, and pee-wee leagues. However, I do not want new rules to be seen as an admission to prior knowledge. While ample internal documents exist that confirm the cigarette industry knew the harm smoking did to smokers while they continued to market smoking as healthy, to date, no internal documents indicate that the NFL knew the lifetime impact a head injury could have on a player.

         I am proud to live in a world that is making such amazing progress regarding human health. I cannot, however, support any of the litigants who sue over the “should have known” argument. As an educator, it would take me minutes to construct a test anyone would fail, but should have passed because the knowledge society has gained since they left school changed what they were taught.

         We live in extraordinary times (compared to other eras in history) regarding the acquisition of knowledge. There have been bursts of knowledge in historical periods, but nothing that remotely compares to the exponential growth we see today. We need as much common sense in the application of knowledge as we see acquisition of knowledge. Knowledge and understanding are worthless without a viable application of that knowledge. If we cannot use it, archive it. Do not litigate it.

         One reason I am a fan of professional (and college) football is the hand-to-hand combat between the warriors on the field. I enjoy the strategy in the game and variance in performance between players from week to week. No one can have their “best game ever” every week. Even the underdog sometimes wins; that is why we play the games. We have replaced gladiator-style battles with rule-bound sports: it meets a societal need. All of humanity has a degree of competition even as our talents fall in different areas.

         I applaud leading football organizations for adapting the rules to protect the players and the integrity of the game as new knowledge has become available. As much as we want everything to be made right in the world, we cannot retroactively correct historical wrongs; with new knowledge we can, and should, prevent future wrongs. Unfortunately knowledge is fluid and justice based on that knowledge is equally fluid. Instead of attacking organizations/institutions that adapt to the knowledge available to them, celebrate them for the responsive work they are doing. Justice and fairness are not the same and only the most naïve pretend they are.

Tradition: UT-vs-A&M (and TCU)

         For decades, a highlight of the football season in Texas is the Thanksgiving week matchup of the University of Texas Longhorn and the Texas A&M Aggies. Almost everyone in Texas takes a side in the game. For 118 years, it was the game that captured the attention of a state.

         When A&M moved to the SEC, the annual rivalry went with them.

         Rivalries play such an integral part of the sports. From high school, to college, to professional sports, rivalries provide a focus of the season – even a bad season. No matter how lop-sided the odds going into the game, fans pin hopes for the entire season on the one game. The winning side, not only the team, gets a full year of bragging rights to utter domination (no matter how close the score). Any winning margin is utter domination.

         The Texas-vs-A&M rivalry was so great, legend had the winning team getting a trip to the Chicken Ranch. Only Marvin Zindler (and a few hundred former football players) know the truth.

         Beyond bragging rights and non-NCAA sanctioned rewards, rivalries build communities like few other events other than disasters. Unlike disasters, the rivalry comes on a regular basis and only brings woe to the losing foe. With the UT and A&M rivalry, someone else wearing burnt-orange became an instant ally while those in anything else maroon became an instant foe. While some rivalries turn nasty, in most cases the taunting of friend and co-workers (and strangers on the street) who root for the wrong team (any team other than yours) is more jovial than serious.

         You do not REALLY want that to happen to their mother.

         With the flight of A&M to another conference, UT has to replace the Thanksgiving game with relative upstart TCU. TCU has had several very strong seasons, coming close to a national championship game; however, their overall history has not qualified them for big-league football. Though they joined the Big Twelve as a replacement for A&M, they are still not quite there.

         I guess if Baylor can be in the Big Twelve, then TCU can too.

         It will be a few years before the burnt-orange-vs-purple rivalry is as fierce as the burnt-orange-vs-maroon rivalry grew to be. At least in the interim we continue to have the Red River Rivalry between UT and OU. It creates its share of enthusiasm as an interstate rivalry, but never the passion within Texas as the intrastate game held.

         And I have yet to come up with a good anti-frog chant. Beat the frogs sounds more like a down under pest-control technique than a football cheer.

         And any reference to horny-toads just hearkens back to Chicken Ranch days.

         Maybe with enough anything-but-beer during the game all will be fine.

 

Football Confession

         I talk – too much perhaps – about how much I watch sports and enjoy them. But it is time for me to come clean. Time for me to be brutally honest with myself and everyone who knows me.

         I have the television on the games every weekend.

         I barely pay attention to it.

         I listen for unusually loud noise and then I look up for the replay.

         While I do genuinely enjoy sports, I find myself too busy doing something else – cooking, cleaning, reading, writing, Facebooking, and tweeting. I think I have lost the ability to focus on any one thing for an extended period of time. It is not that I do not want to , I just have become so used to doing many things simultaneously that my brain flits from task to task.

         When I try to slow my mind down, I go to sleep. I need to work on correcting this. Just ask my roommate. He wears headphones so he does not have to hear me snoring in my recliner. I do like sports and enjoy seeing athleticism at work on the field. I need to find some way to become better focused at it without sleep overcoming me.

 

Beer Me Not

Ben Franklin is quoted as saying that beer is proof God wants man to be happy. I must be doomed to misery. Try as I might – I cannot develop a taste for beer. Last night I met one of my best friends at a sports bar to watch the UT rout of Ol’ Miss. Given the setting and the activity, I decided to do the culturally normal thing and drink beer. So beer it was.

I knew I could not tolerate any of the darker beers, so I went for a lighter (not light) beer – one so unbeery it comes with an orange slice. The orange helped, but I still did not like it all three times (I felt obligated to keep ordering since I intended to stay at the table the entire game) I ordered it.

One entire game (plus pre-game) and three beers. Yes, I really do not like it. Beer drinkers will know how true that is.

I have several friends who brew their own beers, regularly experimenting with recipes. They know the language of beer fluently. My beer vocabulary consists of two words: bloated and bitter.

It all comes down to taste. I prefer most liquor to beer. I will let my friends find their hoppyness where they may. I’ll find mine with gin. 

Too Gay for Me

I’m a football fan and have been one for years, so the Super Bowl, right after the National Championship college football game, is the biggest night of the year for me – even bigger than the Oscars. So it was with much excitement that I readied myself and went to the annual Super Bowl party some of my good friends throw each year.

Of course, pre-game programming begins about a week before the game itself and runs pretty much non-stop until the game kicks off. There is media day, look at the field day, dress rehearsal for half-time, and every imaginable team “formation announced” from the least mentioned “insert given position here” team, to the good Samaritan team. Plays from the season before are analyzed with awards given for best tackle by a punter to most teeth knocked out by a linebacker. This year, they even covered each official – what calls did he throw the most and least, etc.

After the tons of useless information which held no impact on the game at all was delivered, the “on the field” pre-game show began. All of us gathered around to see what spectacular would welcome the world to the Super Bowl telecast and what grand entrance would be created for the players from each team.

We all sat mouths agape wondering and occasionally voicing a “What the hell?” Bizarre and abstract shapes wandered the playing field. After a time it became clear that some of the longer shapes were supposed to be waves as people dressed like mutant tropical fish went under and around them. Shortly after that dance began, people with giant cloth butterflies went running around - but like the fish, around the waves. Not over some simulated English garden. And then there were people…They were semi doing a mambo or salsa dance, but none were very good at it. They were probably too ashamed of the costumes they were wearing – most harlequins would not be caught in these outfits.

In the middle of this, one of the party guests exclaimed, “This is kind of gay for football.” I whirled around to see who had said it; a couple other people looked at the speaker and at me. The crowd at the party was generally sensitive to the fact that I am gay.

Normally, a comment like that raises my ire and I address the inappropriateness of the comment. Social consciousness will continue to allow insensitive statements until people make stands when they hear them. Social language has changed over the years to recognize and challenge racially inappropriate vocabulary. Language relating to sexual orientation and body style remains fair game for public commentary. Until the offended and their allies start making a stand against inconsiderate comments about sexuality or weight, the comments will continue.

“This is kind of gay for football.” After pausing for a moment to decide what to say, I could see the others also waiting for my comment. From the corner of my vision, I could see tank-topped men dancing in garish board shorts and all I could say was, “Yes. This is way too gay for football!”

Colts-v-Bears

The Super Bowl is set! Now I have two weeks to get ready for the commercials.