I don't have a Halloween costume this year. But I…
the NFL problem
Hunter S. Thompson famously quipped: “In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught.” Is there a truer statement when it comes to the world of big-money sports?
The Sean Payton suspension turned “bountygate” into a (well-deserved) roundhouse kick to the face of the Saints organization instead of, say, a bawdy public hanging. And we’re all well on our way to glossing over the fact that it ever happened, and we’re all comfortably pretending that our team would never do such a thing.
But before the official punishment was meted out, I turned my attention to the steady stream of speculation from fans and sportscasters. Sure, there were the usual sour grapes; the excuses and self-flagellation of Saints fans; and the predictable comparison to the overblown “spygate” scandal. All expected. What I hadn’t expected, however, was that “spygate” was widely considered a more troubling offense than “bountygate”.
Despite the recent attention the league has brought to the seriousness of concussions (attention brought on, in no small part, by the well-publicized suicide of Dave Duerson), the resentment towards a perceived “pussification” (as one erudite NFL fan called it) of the game remains strong.
I don’t know why I was surprised, really. Football is as much strategy as it is Crunch Time. Or at least it used to be.
“This ain’t gonna be no place for women and children now, I tell ya.”
Hard hits, broken bones, seeing double — that’s the game fans love to watch! Remember when coaches used to teach their players to lead with their helmets, and players knew that they weren’t really “in the game” until their ears were ringing, and there was blood on their pants and grass in their grills?
Flying in the face of this Crunch Time nostalgia, Roger Goodell continues his struggle to make the NFL into what casino owners tried to make Las Vegas: less violent, less bloody, more friendly to kids and women. But he’s making the same mistake Las Vegas did.
See, you can’t suppress the visceral, hedonistic, violent, misogynistic, seamy undercurrent that makes both “what stays in Vegas” and gridiron football the favorite semi-legal entertainment of millions of Americans. (And when you throw fantasy football in the mix, the comparison has never been more obvious — or lucrative — but that’s another discussion.) Vegas finally backed away from its family-friendly marketing and embraced its “savagery”. Football is forging ahead into Disneyland.
Because Roger Goddell has decided to avoid going “full savage”, he is not going to accept and glorify the brutality of the game full-bore. It makes me wonder: Is the NFL at all worried that MMA is growing in popularity by leaps and bounds? This is a sport that’s comfortable with their gladiatorial game of hand-to-hand combat. They laud the skill of each contender nearly as much as they embrace every spleen-shattering, brain-bruising hit. And people LOVE it. As long as the NFL continues to try to shield its fans — and its players — from its inherent brutality, could MMA eventually eclipse football in popularity?
I also wonder what the future holds for the game of football, since there’s no going back to Crunch Time. Will there be more pads and armor? More rules that essentially phase out the usefulness of certain positions? Powderpuff? Freeze tag?
Disney Vegas or Old Vegas?
I couldn’t decide on the right joke here.
Is it…
“In a related story, Brinker Group, Int, has announced the closing of all On The Border restaurants after widespread accounts of chip friers suffering first-degree burns on their forearms during normal, obvious business activities ‘Frying chips is too much of a liability’, said a company spokesman.”
Or…
“In a related story, Muhammad Ali has failed a lawsuit against White America, which forced him into revolutionizing the sport of boxing and taking the near-Jungian racial stereotype of the virile, savage African-American and becoming a figure with unabashed cultural importance while embracing the ideas of past racial struggles and forcing racists to acknowledge his accomplishments. Eldrige Cleaver could not be reached for comment.”
There are many, many jokes that can be made about the NFL. 😉