It’s football season, American football that is. You know, the more violent version, because we Americans are a violent people. We love our violence, crime, guns, wars and action movies. Even our left-wing “peaceful” presidents like Bill Clinton and Obama will gleefully bomb thousands of people who never attacked us, including civilians, literally every day. The US has done great good for the world, but the price for that good is that everyone needs to put up with our violent nature, at least until we collapse in a few decades. (Then the world will have to put up with someone like China instead. Oh well.)
Our love of football is a reflection of this.
Football is one of the few areas in my life where I freely admit I’m not very manly. I hate football. It’s fucking boring. It’s a bunch of guys who run on a field for about eight seconds, then pause for about three minutes. Rinse and repeat, for about two hours. How is this fun?
I don’t like basketball either, but at least basketball moves quickly and things are actually happening. The majority of football is just sitting around waiting for people to do shit. I have no interest.
There is one good thing about football – the food. Tailgate food is the best damn food on earth. Jalapeño poppers dipped in ranch dressing. Slabs of meat covered in breading with cheese slathered on top. Last time I went to a Super Bowl party I had cheeseburger with mac and cheese and french fries in the burger. Oh baby! I wanted to make love to it before I ate it. With cuddling too.
I once made a football nacho that was stacked about a foot and a half high with every possible nacho ingredient you can think of. Oh, fuck yeah. Not good for your heart or cholesterol, but fuck it! It’s football!
This is why any time anyone invites me to a football game (in real life or on TV), if I have time in my schedule I usually go, even though I hate football and won’t be watching the game. I go because of the tailgate food. Game day is the day everyone drops their diets and gains 10 pounds eating mass quantities of food that will kill us while watching one of the most violent team sports in existence. It’s a beautiful thing. (If you’re not American, you won’t understand. That’s okay.)
I have thought about how to modify the game of football so that I would actually enjoy it. Since football sucks so much it would require a radical overhaul. Today, I present ‘Caleb Football,’ a much better game:
1. Remove 95% of the rules.
2. The armor the players wear is great, but why not give them weapons too? In Caleb Football, every player (except the ones that need to run fast) could select a large blunt object to use as a weapon against opposing players. Baseball bats, maces, 2x4s, crap like that. If an increase in armor or padding was required for safety reasons, that’s fine too. The gladiatorial aspect would make the game craptacular.
3. New rule: The game cannot be paused for any reason in increments of less than four minutes. Obviously, we’d have to put in exceptions for things like natural disasters, alien invasions, or Bane invading the football stadium, but other than that, once the players play ball, they keep playing for four minutes before anyone can stop the game or call a time out.
4. Any player who goes out of bounds is instantly removed from the game for the remainder of the four-minute interval. He can return to the game in the next interval, but only after a player on the opposing time gets to hit him one time with his weapon of choice. That will teach those damn players to pay attention to the fucking lines on the field. That’s why they’re there, man.
5. Every football would be embedded with a miniature explosive. One player on each team would have a detonator that he could use at any time, once per game. Now obviously, we can’t be killing football players left and right, so the bomb would be just enough to blow up the ball and burn the guy’s hands a little. No major damage would be caused unless the guy was holding the ball up against his head or something (better be careful!). Creative strategies would involve using the ball as an explosive missile against opposing players who were a problem (or hell, even against players within your own team, like that guy who banged your wife last season; it’s the NFL after all). If the ball was detonated during an interval, the game must go on, so the referee would immediately toss another football into an empty part of the field and the players would have to fight for it.
Now that’s a football I would watch. I wouldn’t miss a game. This entire blog would be about it.
Until then, I’ll just keep eating mac and cheese burgers while not watching the game.
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Ergeniz
Posted at 09:03 am, 4th February 2016Not only do I not enjoy football (though I admit I don’t care for sports in general) but from a societal viewpoint the fact these players are paid and venerated so much borders on insanity.
What does football and Basketball contribute to society as a whole that makes the masses give more respect to them than people that do far more essential and useful professions? Electricians, Computer service technicians, Networking technicians, people that keep the power grid going, laborers that build our roads and bridges, fire fighters, garbage men and much more.
All these professions literally keep society going, but these utilities are taken for granted. You never see any of these folks sent respect or paid anywhere near the likes of football players. I understand entertainment is important for people (and I suspect that the elites want that focus to continue, recall the coliseum of Rome designed to distract the masses from the ills in the society at the time) but all this praise heaped upon players that run around throwing balls bodes a lot of unfortunate implications about society.
Its no secret that women shit on people that work essential jobs like this (particularly IT) but readily light up with interest for sports players. Who keeps the lights going at your house? Your car running correctly? Not the clowns throwing around some pigskin.
Tony
Posted at 09:35 am, 4th February 2016Football is awesome. One the one hand you have to be a big, tough, athletic freak to be good. Football players are strong, fast, and violent. On the other hand, football games are also a chess match between players and coaches. So much happens in one of those 5 second plays that you can spend half an hour talking about it. NFL QB’s have to process dozens of pieces of information in a split second or they’ll get killed.
In addition to taking a lot of mental and physical skill, football is intense. Either team can score on any play, and scores are so tough to come by the entire game can turn at any moment.
And then, as you mention, the atmosphere can be really great. Not only tailgating, but being part of a loud and exuberant crowd of tens of thousands of people is great.
Fraser Orr
Posted at 10:53 am, 4th February 2016I agree with Tony. Football is an awesome sport, it oozes masculinity and there is a beautiful combination of physicality mixed with intellectual complexity (in some positions anyway.) Plus it is just one of those bonding things across society.
I totally disagree with Ergeniz. People are not paid based on some measure of intrinsic worth, people are paid as much as other people are willing to pay. People like football and like their team to win so they pay a lot for it. There are far fewer people who can play NFL level football than can pick up garbage or fix your electrical system. And it takes a lot more training, dedication and focus to do so also. Rare skills tend to get paid a lot more.
A while ago I was the CTO of a company that made software and some electronics devices. When you create a consumer electronic device you mostly have to get it certified by various agencies that it doesn’t emit excessive radio interference. Correcting this in a device is a black art and there are only a few labs in the country that do it. They cost something in the order of a few thousand dollars an hour whereas your typical contract EE costs $100-200 an hour. Rare skills cost a lot more.
But honestly that is irrelevant. People can and should be paid however much people are willing to pay.
Having said all that the NFL itself is a horrible organization. A massive rent seeking monopoly that bristles with political correctness and all the stupidity of the modern world. It is a real shame that Vice McMahon’s XFL didn’t make it to offer some real competitive pressure to the NFL.
I also agree with everybody that a day of “guy food” is a glorious thing to celebrate.
Caleb Jones
Posted at 11:42 am, 4th February 2016Entertainment, which is a core societal need and function.
If you’re asking why NFL players get more money and pussy than an IT guy, the answer is scale and capitalism.
The typical IT guy helps maybe a few hundred computers run, at best. The NFL player entertains literally millions of people, thus he’s paid much more. He is indeed higher value by affecting more people, and his pay reflects this.
I still don’t like football though.
Fraser Orr
Posted at 02:21 pm, 4th February 2016Caleb, although your analysis is most likely correct, I think it is a mistake to try to always come up with a deeply rational reason why something costs what it does or why people pay what they do. Pricing is a cumulative emergent property of society and isn’t necessarily based on rational decisions, but on emotions, wants and many intangibles and miscellaneous random crap.
For example, an arty friend of mine was going on about how much she loved this painting that just sold for $43 million dollars. Personally I think a toddler could have done just as good a job, and it would at least have been “cute”. But she loved it and presumably the person who spent $43million loved it too.
My favorite example of that is the pricing of diamonds. Diamonds are a hunk of crystalline carbon, they are not as rare as some other types of precious stones (some emeralds for example are much rarer), and in almost every respect cubic zirconia and moissanite are superior (brilliance, clarity, flawlessness, refractive index, availability of colored versions, etc.) However, diamonds cost at least ten times as much. Why? Diamonds are expensive because they are expensive. Simple as that. The appeal is their expensiveness. The real irony is that synthetic diamond is much less expensive simply because IT IS MORE PERFECT. Which is simply insane from a rational point of view.
Pricing isn’t always logical, but it is a freely entered into bargain between parties and frankly none of @Ergeniz’s business.
Ergeniz
Posted at 03:20 pm, 4th February 2016“Entertainment, which is a core societal need and function”.
Yes, hence my comparison to the Roman Coliseum. The introduction of the games and gladiatorial fights were nothing short of genius.
“The typical IT guy helps maybe a few hundred computers run, at best. The NFL player entertains literally millions of people, thus he’s paid much more. He is indeed higher value by affecting more people, and his pay reflects this”.
I understand that. What I was alluding to is that it seems the increase in emphasizing entertainment seems to coincide with society’s ever increasing problems. It says something about us when we can write off the stats of NFL players but can’t recognize that our own government is taking rights away under our noses. Or perhaps people do notice, but simply don’t care so long as they’re preoccupied with sports. Again, the Roman elite supported the festivities for that very reason.
“Pricing isn’t always logical, but it is a freely entered into bargain between parties and frankly none of @Ergeniz’s business”.
If I were intrude on a personal transaction of you or any other individual, that would be a breach of privacy and hence none of my business. My questioning of society’s fanatic love of football is entirely “my business” to make. You sound no different than feminists, attempting to silence opinions that obviously rub you the wrong way.
Caleb Jones
Posted at 03:56 pm, 4th February 2016Of course. It’s called “capitalism.” Capitalism is irrational and messy.
“Capitalism is the worst economic system, except for every other system ever tried.” ~Winston Churchill
Truth.
Absolutely correct. That’s the sign of a culture in decline, which the Western world is. To be fair, the masses are always idiots in any society (even ones on the rise), but this increases as the culture declines.
My go-to example is the whole thing about gay marriage. Left-wingers and right-wingers scream their heads off about this, even though we’re talking about 3% of the population, and the vast majority of those won’t even get married if it was made legal (which it was). Yet the majority of those screaming lefties and righties have no idea what the Federal Reserve is, which affects 100% of the population all the time.
As usual, human beings do what vents emotions, not what’s effective.
Fraser Orr
Posted at 08:31 pm, 4th February 2016@Ergeniz says
> it seems the increase in emphasizing entertainment seems to coincide with society’s ever increasing problems.
No disrespect sir but I think you again have this absolutely backward. The history of society is the history of digging ourselves out of the dirt into the vast riches we live in today. The plain fact is that most people in America live richer lives than most of the kings of England throughout history. If you doubt this I would say two words “dental anesthetic.”
In fact it is the vastly growing wealth and vastly expanding personal time that has enabled people to fill their time up with meaningless, but enjoyable, crap like football and TV. Government interfering in your personal business is on the rise, debt is on the rise, and these are both really bad things. But in the past twenty years there are also extremely bright lights of liberty, such as the web, and other transformative technologies. We are so used to them we don’t even realize what we have any more. When I was a kid you have two or three places you could get the news, and all of them were extremely biased. Had, for example, the Clinton email scandal arisen when I was a kid you’d never have heard of it.
There are lots of problems in the world but nobody in America is starving to death, and nobody is dying of smallpox, and a case of syphilis is annoying but not a death sentence. These things simply weren’t true as little as seventy years ago. So I can’t buy the conclusion that the world is spiraling down the toilet. Our politicians are horrible, but politicians are always horrible, and technology makes the world a better place every day. So I don’t totally buy Caleb’s argument about America spiraling down the drain. Not saying he isn’t right, I’m just not entirely convinced. Worst case is that we have to relocate to continue to enjoy the benefits of the inexorable enrichment of the world and the human species.
> My questioning of society’s fanatic love of football is entirely “my business” to make. You sound no different than feminists, attempting to silence opinions that obviously rub you the wrong way.
LOL, calling someone “like a feminist” here really is the ultimate insult…. Nope not rubbed the wrong way and of course you are entitled to your opinion but really what skin is it off your nose if lots of people like football? Honestly, I find the idea that “lots of people love football when they should care about politics more” which is what your argument boils down to, is not an argument I’d be comfortable making. Frankly I think football is way more interesting than politics, and I have absolutely no influence over either, but at least I get to eat nachos when the Broncos humiliate them upstart Panthers.
Gluteus_Maximus
Posted at 08:56 pm, 4th February 2016This could be an app. With whole new game mechanics. Distributed under Blackdragon Entertainment. Designed and produced by BD Interactive. Having your own brand of nachos being sold at 7-11. Another higher-end brand of peanuts and chicken wings targeted towards the patrons of fancy dive-bars. Both being advertised inside the game.
I can see it. Though dealing with food would be a pain. So maybe not that.
Caleb Jones
Posted at 10:00 am, 5th February 2016To be clear, I’ve said many times that a technological revolution could save America, and it could happen. But that’s the only thing that can save America, and barring that one thing, America (along with the rest of the West) is indeed circling the drain. Slowly.