Random Tuesday Writings

The Lions won convincingly Sunday. It's kinda making it hard not to believe in them.

College football is now a type of professional football, with all the NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) money going around. Ohio State for example paid around $20 million to its players. I'm not saying that's wrong. But it is causing athletes to jump around from team to team (Marshall couldn't play its bowl game because so many players had left the team for greener pastures) and ripping the game from its roots. So can we be spared the myth of the scholar athlete, the hype about how important 'the game' is to 'the kids playing' at least where the big revenue sports are involved? It's all about the money now, folks. Again, not bad. Yet decidedly different. I, for one, don't know that I like it.

I mean, it really just adds to the hype, the artificiality, of the whole thing. It's turning me even more off of a game which I've been slowly losing interest in for years now. Maybe I do know how I feel after all.

Glad we missed that big winter storm a few days ago. Winters haven't been bad in Detroit recently. Am I tempting fate bringing up the issue?

Well, there's a machine with an oil leak, another 'not saying nothing' as the customer related to me (I had no idea drain snakes might be sentient or self aware), and a third which needs a new motor table adjustment. I suppose I should get to them. 

Lawyerball

I've been good. I haven't went on any kind of anti-football rant for a long time now. But I gotta tell you, fans, y'all ought to change the name of that game to Lawyerball.

I haven't watched much football in recent years. Indeed I'm slowly growing sour on sports in general, yet that is a rant for another day. Don't fret over it, valued readers. You'll be delivered that fascinating screed soon enough.

The past week I've fought a nasty cold, and consequently have spent a lot of time in bed. As such, with it being bowl season and all, I've drifted into several college and professional football games on TV. Lord knows there's enough of them.

It seems to me that the guys in the stripes, and in the replay booth, and at the various home offices of the various leagues, sure make a helluva lot of decisions about what actually happens in the matches.

There's often an insane amount of discussion about whatever just occurred right in front of everyone's faces and by millions through TV and streaming. Is it a catch? The refs have to figure that out. Was that a penalty? The officials have to conference over it. Did the player fumble? Did he break the plane of the goal? Was he outside the tackle box? Was the player's knee, or elbow, or some other common part of the human anatomy, on the ground before the ball became loose? All this requires analysis, emphasis on...the first two syllables, with an important change of inflection. Then there's my very favorite inquiry of all: Did the player make a football move?

Did he make a football move? What kind of a question is that? He's a football player on a football field running a football play in a football game. By definition every move every player makes during the course of the action is a football move. What is a football move? What is not a football move?

One of the reasons I like baseball better than football is that we know what a catch is without explanation. Safe or out? It's one or the other regardless of what of any umpires caucus may assert. If football officials have to tell me what I just saw, I'd rather watch The Twilight Zone. At least Rod Serling admits he's playing mind games.

The Detroit Lions, 2023 Style

All right, I've been good. I've waited four whole days before becoming the wet blanket, the stick in the mud. But all the ballyhoo over a season opening win is quite a bit over the top, friends.

I will freely admit that things do indeed feel different with these Detroit Lions. Coach Campbell is daring and almost too aggressive. I like that. Sort of.

However, I've seen too many games like last Thursday's upset of the Chiefs to be too confident in the Lions just yet. They blasted the New England Patriots not that long ago in what was supposed to be a statement game for Matt Patricia. Nothing came of it.

They blasted Dallas 30 years ago in their only playoff win since 1957. Nothing came of it.

I've seen in my life the Lions lose playoff games by absurd scores like 5-0 and 58-31. I've seen them lose playoff games where a normally reliable kicker (Eddie Murray) missed a field goal which set the Lions in a free fall for a half decade. 

I've seen too many things beyond their control go against them. I'm looking at you, on field officials. You miss as much as a WWE referee. Dumb NFL rules have hurt Detroit too. And one of these days that Campbell aggression will become foolhardy and burn the team. Bad.

In short, one win at the start of the regular season means diddly. To be fair, the coach and players themselves appear to realize that and seem to be acting accordingly. There were no over the top celebrations in the locker room.

That's the right attitude, because that's all there is right now. Again, I feel good about these Lions myself. But I've felt that way before. I can't be too excited about this one game.

We'll talk again after a home playoff win in January. If it comes, because there's still a long way to go.

No, Seriously

I do not take soccer seriously. If you like it, fine. I'll even admit to things I like about it. Only the referee controls the clock, for one. And you have to be in outstanding physical shape to play it. It's also a cheap, easy sport for youngsters and their parents. It even deserves the name football more than the American brand. But I can't take it seriously so long as championships, such as the World Cup currently happening, are decided by what they call penalty kicks.

Basically, they place the ball in front of the goalie and one guy kicks it towards the net. If the goalie guesses right, he stops it. If not, easy goal. This is repeated until one team, after an equal number of tries, scores more than the other.

That's absurd, sports fans. I realize that in a tournament you need a winner. But widen the net. Remove the goalie. Take players off the field every few minutes of overtime to create more room to run, make plays, and score. Get rid of the offsides penalty in extra time. Something. Do something so that the game is decided on the field and not somewhat randomly as it is now.

Until some kind of adjustment is made, I can't take events such as the World Cup seriously. It would be like the World Series decided with a home run hitting contest, or a Super Bowl with a punt, pass, and kick display. Figure out ways to win during the ebb and flow of actual play or forget it. 

The Hatred that is Football

I want to show him the hatred that is football.

-Hank Hill, explaining the reason for taking his son Bobby to his first college football game.

Apparently there was a bit of post game dust up between Michigan and Michigan State players after last Saturday's Big Game in Ann Arbor. As of this writing, it is said that nine State players allegedly attacked two Michigan players after Michigan's 29-7 win. This comes after there were issues between Penn State and U of M in the same general area a week earlier. As both teams playing at the Big House (the nickname for Michigan's football stadium) have to exit the same tunnel to reach their locker rooms, there are calls for the school to change the way teams leave the field.

How about a few calls to train these young men, who by playing football are supposed to be changing into mature older men, to keep themselves in check? I know that's easier said than done, given that football seems hell bent on firing up emotions to the boiling point before and during games. And maybe that's the real problem. We stoke the coals of these guys to think of the other team as some kind of enemy invading their territory yet expect them to immediately chill after the final whistle.

Football isn't alone in this, although it does seem to me the main perpetrator. Overwrought celebrations after nearly ever damn play is bound to teach players egotism, an I'm better than you attitude, rather than sportsmanship.

Those are human beings on the other side of the line, guys. Show some respect. A pat on the helmet or back is enough congratulations as a rule. Running towards the sideline or the end zone looking for cameras to self comment on your awesomeness to the world is simply gauche, even mean spirited. You're being, at best, a jerk when you do that. Displays of your superiority are bound to make the other side seethe; the whole thing feeds on itself. What do we get, then?

Fights on the way to the locker room.

Yes, King of the Hill is comedy, and Hank Hill is a comic character. Yet the best humor often reflects certain truths in life. I believe Hank is onto one of them. His remark does not reflect well on reality.

To be Fair to Football

A good friend of mine, one who's a huge football fan, posted a meme on Saturday which said you can't trust someone who didn't watch at least ten hours of college football that day. Well, I guess I can't be trusted. But for better reasons that than, I assure you.

I am less and less of a football fan every year. Yes, I still watch a few minutes during the course of a season, and I'm happy enough Michigan won Saturday, even against a patsy. I sincerely hope the Detroit Lions turn themselves around in my lifetime. But the game is just too brutal, folks. I've read far too many stories of my own old football heroes from 40 years ago who've ended up dead by suicide or severely incapacitated simply because I wanted to be entertained. Don't give me that tired old 'nobody made them play' nonsense. We did, by promising them fame and fortune. Or at least college scholarships for often silly, useless degrees. That in itself is a whole 'nother screed.

I don't want to go off on football only today, because I really don't want to make too much out of a surely humorous meme. I mean, it was intended to be funny, right? The sharer didn't really mean it, did he? I feel that I have to ask, because I wonder that about strident football fans quite honestly. They seem to take themselves insanely seriously. But in fairness to football, part of my attitude towards it has little (I hope) to do with the actual game. Sports in general are becoming less sportsmanlike and far too, shall we say, in your face.

I was watching the Little League World Series last month and was honestly appalled at the number of twelve year old players doing fancy bat flips after hitting home runs. That used to be a no-no, because it was, correctly, I will argue, interpreted as showing up your opponent. Look at what I did, you losers, it's saying to the other bench. Dare to challenge me, will you? Yet it was simply accepted as part of the game this time around, to the point where the broadcast commentators were praising the acts. ESPN was rerunning them for our, I suppose pleasure. We're apparently expected to be impressed by the disrespect.

I don't like it, and there's too much of it in too many of our sports and games. I see it with my beloved Detroit Tigers, an embarrassingly horrible squad this season, where players hit meek, ground ball singles and then in triumph mime silly messages back to the dugout. They have no right being so impressed with themselves. Yet what have we been told, how are we typically sold on the importance of sports for youth? That it teaches sportsmanship, the idea of learning integrity and respect in how and what we play. It used to be you didn't 'show up' the other team. You played your best and let that speak for you.

Sports are becoming too much about bravado and too little about respect. I do think it's particularly glaring with football, where the degree to which players seem to need to 'fire themselves up' before and during games is downright garish, if not flat out ostentatious. But it's becoming part of our sports in general, and I do not believe it is a good thing.

The right question

Same old Lions?

It just seems the right question for a Monday morning in the fall...and now you get two weeks to think about it.

That wasn't a catch?

All right, it's been awhile since I've allowed myself an anti-football rant. So brace yourself, I have one today.

While I did not watch any games live yesterday (I rarely do anymore, yet that goes for most any sport beyond baseball and golf) I could not help but hear of the non-fumble which went against Ohio State on review during the Fiesta Bowl. So I pulled it up on the computer and, you know what?

That was a catch. How can you play a game, how can you have a sport, how can you claim any integrity for your championships, when you don't know yourself the basic objects of your game?

The guy caught the ball. He had it stripped and the Buckeyes should have had a touchdown. Period. End of report. And please spare me about how it doesn't really matter because OSU missed other opportunities.  A glaring, I don't know that you can call it a mistake when something's so egregious, injustice such as that simply begs all other questions. Yes, they missed other chances. But those do not matter when an appalling lack of judgment and fair play is at hand. Yet even with instant replay and official reviews, these idiocies seem to happen in football far more often than other sports. This isn't the first time this year alone in the NFL or NCAA where stupidity reigned.

And if you think it's all okay because it was OSU who had it stuck to them, you're part of the problem with American football and the rabid, unchecked, relentless egotism the game allows, even encourages. Football needs to take an honest look at itself.

Rant over. Have a pleasant Sunday waiting for the NFL to make its stupid calls.

Rant really over now.

Last night's Lions game

I've said that I don't follow sports as closely as I used to, and I don't. But I do still pay some attention. Yet last night's Lions-Packers game has reaffirmed my decision to pay less attention, particularly, quite frankly, to football.

It's for more reasons than the sheer brutality of the game (and it is too brutal; there are far too many lifelong, debilitating injuries suffered as a result of it). Football officiating, I believe in both the NFL and the college ranks, is simply too much of an influence on the outcome of the games.

I think it's because the rules are too loose. Football officials have far too much leeway in interpreting them, and this leads to far too much individual opinion on what is and is not called. Yes, I know this happens elsewhere: too many baseball umpires have their own strike zones. Yet the strike zone itself is quite clearly defined, and simply needs to be called more exactly across the board. In football, I've been told by a former official that's there's holding on virtually every down. As such, they should only call the egregious examples or ones which directly affect the outcome of a particular play. It leaves too much to interpretation, especially when the action is fast and furious.

I am not one of those who argue that referees and such should not call penalties. I do not accept the argument that they should 'let the players play'. If you're going to have meaningful games you have to have rules. If you have rules they have to be enforced. It's only fair: it's only right. Yet the rules and the people calling them must themselves be fair, must themselves have integrity. Without that I wouldn't want to play. If sports were only about chance, you may as well play roulette or poker rather than a more physical game of any type.

As such, I'm happy that my bedtime now precludes staying up late to watch debacles such as last night's Lions-Packers contest. I'm a happier, healthier man for it, and no thanks to the officials.

Super Bowl 2015

Football combines the two worst things about America: it is violence punctuated by committee meetings

- The Wall Street Journal

Today is Super Bowl Sunday, that day not really a holiday yet feels like it just the same. It should be a fun day, and that's all well and good. But for those of you who think that all the hoopla makes football America's game, here's a bit of medicine for you.

It's not.

There is no denying that football games in general and today's match in particular carry with them a lot more drama than a June baseball game or a November hockey square-off. Yet there's need to jump to conclusions: if there were only 16 to 19 baseball or hockey games per season per team, you would get a tremendous amount more hype for every one of those too. It's the numbers, or, rather, the lack of them, which appear to make football more appealing to the sporting masses than the other games. To borrow an idea from the economists, simple supply and demand tell us that the fewer there is of something the greater the interest.

Look at the facts: for all the talk about all the excitement in each game, there's barely ten minutes of actual play. There again, the point can be made that, as there is a lot less going on than in most games, each play means more. We see that the rare numbers are what manufactures importance rather than actual play.

Still, go ahead, have your party and eat too much and hoist a cold one. But remember that it is the high atmosphere which creates the excitement, and not the game itself.

Is Football aslo a Blood Sport?

A genre of supposed sports which has been growing in recent years involves, basically, guys beating the devil out of each other inside cages. It goes by several names, such as the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) and under the umbrella of mixed martial arts. But however your view them, we can be sure of two things: that they are not true sports, and that they are immoral.

We will go a step further and add prize fight boxing into the mix. No athletic effort in which the primary aim is to hurt a human being is a sport. We have even found ourselves wondering whether American football is, perhaps, immoral, seeing as the only way to stop an offensive player is by sheer physicality. Intending to harm someone, as fighting (and pushing and grabbing too) until someone can continue no further is surely meant to do nothing save cause injury, is always wrong. Calling it a sport in an attempt at legitimacy is nothing less than an insult to our intelligence. We must see these things for what they are: gory rituals of false bravado.

There's no point defending them on the grounds that no one forces these guys to fight or play football. People at one time regularly agreed to duels and we put a stop to that inane practice for the very reason that it was wrong. Agreement between two or more folks on a plan of action cannot make that action moral. What we do must be moral in and of itself to have any decent bearing at all. Besides, we do force them to participate, in a way. We pay them to do it after all.

If we are not careful we will devolve into a nation which likes blood and harm for its own sake. We must remember that sports are intended for recreation, for fans and players alike. If all we want is blood, we may as well live in a slaughterhouse. Yet that would be thought insane.

Events which intend to inflict real physical harm are not sports. We need to rise above our animal lusts and see athletics in their best light: ultimately meaningless contests which allow us a respite from the daily grind. Anything more than that and we simply go beyond their scope.

Time Outs are Evil

Time outs in any timed sport (except for those called by officials) simply lack integrity. No player, team, or manager/coach, indeed anyone with a direct interest in the outcome of the game, should be able to stop the clock merely because it's to their advantage. It is nothing less than unsportsmanlike.

It's entirely just to argue against nonofficial time outs. Part of a timed sport almost by definition is how well one can play during the time allotted. If you run out of time it generally says something about poor clock management, poor decision making, and poor play more than anything else. As such, time outs punish good defense and reward error. How many games, especially football and basketball games, are won by teams who took leads which they should not have had the opportunity to take simply because they could stop the clock merely because it suited them and only them, or prevented another team from running out the clock when they led? Either instance is hardly a fair measure of athletic ability. And neither have integrity.

Isn't that what sports are supposed to be about, integrity, fair play, and sportsmanship? If they aren't, why play them? What could they teach us otherwise except that it's okay to win any way we can, so long as we win?

But let's call time outs what they really are: manufactured excitement. The fans are getting played because the powers that be want more excitement any way they can generate it, to keep interest and make more money. Fans have bought into this hook, line, and sinker, so much so that they don't even realize their allegiances are being toyed with, so much so that they don't even care about whether the rules are sportsmanlike or not. It's become the Roman Colosseum all over again, bread and circuses, and it indicates a serious flaw in our society.

Time out rules are inherently partial because they play solely towards one side at a given, uh, time. But a good rule must be impartial; it should never play only to one side's advantage. Rules ought to be wholly impartial, and not simply in sports but in life in general. They require impartiality so that they may be applied fairly and justly.

Part of it too is that time outs separate acts from their natural consequences. If a team plays poorly for 58 minutes but can stop the clock often late in a game it makes light of their earlier mistakes. Does life give us such chances? Then why ought sports, if part of their intent (as defenders of athletics so often say) is to make us better people? Can they really make us better people if they allow wanton selfishness at critical points during play?

No, they can't. Until we learn that a game holds no lesson for us unless it has the most completely impartial rules possible then that game will only teach us that winning is everything. But when the Great Scorekeeper comes, will he accept that defense?

Football is not chess

A friend of mine has said, several times in fact, that football is chess and baseball is checkers. I laugh at that, because he could not be more wrong. Yet he thinks he's right. I find that attitude cute.

Football is chess. Really? Yet every player except the quarterback has one thing to do every play. Every player except the quarterback has only to block someone in one direction, run one route, block one man in one direction. That's it. That's all he has to do. Well, that is, until the play breaks down, at which point we have only a bunch of people who are running around hoping to be seen by the right person trying desperately to be at the right place at the right time. That ain't skill: that's anarchy, and it only works through dumb luck. How chess like.

Not.

Football players, even the quarterback, who can only act according to what is in front of him (how fortunate!) have one thing to do each and every play. And even that player, the Queen, invites all sorts of derision which we cannot express in polite company. Check down, and when all else fails, RUN FOR YOUR LIFE! That comparison ain't even chess; with chess, you do what you must for the sake of the entire team, for the sake of each player on the field (because, of course, some of the players are gone at any given point in the game} who might, luckily, be open. With football, when everything goes wrong, you run around and hope for the best. Chess, ideally, anyways, is about where everyone is at a given time. So, is football chess?

Absolutely not. Chess is highly organized. Each and every piece can only do what it is assigned to do, and after that, whaaa? Pawns? Move forward one space at time, except on the first move, then at an angle only with an indirect permission: when you might capture someone of the enemy camo. Bishops? Only move diagonally, along the properly colored squares, of course! Knights? Move only at an ell, nothing more, dear fellows. Kings? Despite your high office, you have no real power. You move one space at a time. Queens can do more, and invite all sorts of jeering catcalls, as we have already said, anyway, in this day and age.

Football is chess? I laugh, because such ideals come only from those who do not understand chess. Or football.

Snyder and the Protestors

Governor Rick Snyder appeared yesterday at a Detroit Church to discuss the issues: voter registration laws, how to help Detroit, and the proposed new bridge between the city and Windsor, Ontario, for example. He was greeted by protestors who demanded 'their' money, namely, $224 million dollars they say the State owes the City. Lansing has supposedly withheld the cash due to the city failing in its obligations.

Did any of those people protest the Detroit City Council or the Mayor's Office in the recent past? It is, after all, city leadership, presumably elected by the very same protestors chanting at Snyder, which has gotten Detroit so close to falling under a state appointed emergency manager. But that would be taking responsibility unto themselves, wouldn't it? We can't have that, can we? It's easier to berate a Republican than to admit we screwed up.

Other things on the agenda at the meeting involved the more stringent voter identification proposals before the Governor. One such idea is to demand picture identification for an absentee ballot. What's wrong with that? We require picture ID for so many other things, why not in order to vote?

This is another issue which ties into personal responsibility yet is rarely interpreted as such. If you want to vote, if you really care about your community and want to fully participate in it, how hard is it to get a photo ID? If you aren't competent to do that, how competent will your vote be?

The real issue here is that we have people who want to get people to vote simply in order to support their cause. These folks want it easy for transients to cast a ballot because transients vote more or less as expected: for the causes of those who claim to support the best interests of the transients. Yet the question never asked is, who is truly being taking advantage of, who is really being played, with this game?

Speaking of games, another Detroit Lion has been arrested on a suspected DUI. This makes about six arrests of Lions players in recent memory. It all reflects poorly on the current football mentality of sheer arrogance: we're football players. We can do what we want. Well, politicians have thought that for years, and you see how they're viewed. Why not remember that you're playing a game, nothing more, and are fortunate that a sports crazed allows you to make so much money at it?

Sadly, money corrupts like power. Perhaps politicians and football players may belong in the same cage at that.

Football: not America's Game

Football combines the two worst things about America: it is violence punctuated by committee meetings

- The Wall Street Journal

Today is Super Bowl Sunday, that day not really a holiday yet feels like it just the same. It should be a fun day, and that's all well and good. But for those of you who think that all the hoopla makes football America's game, here's a bit of medicine for you.

It's not.

There is no denying that football games in general and today's match in particular carry with them a lot more drama than a June baseball game or a November hockey square-off. Yet there's need to jump to conclusions: if there were only 16 to 19 baseball or hockey games per season per team, you would get a tremendous amount more hype for every one of those too. It's the numbers, or, rather, the lack of them, which appear to make football more appealing to the sporting masses than the other games. To borrow an idea from the economists, simple supply and demand tell us that the fewer there is of something the greater the interest.

Look at the facts: for all the talk about all the excitement in each game, there's barely ten minutes of actual play. There again, the point can be made that, as there is a lot less going on than in most games, each play means more. We see that the rare numbers are what manufactures importance rather than actual play.

Still, go ahead, have your party and eat too much and hoist a cold one. But remember that it is the high atmosphere which creates the excitement, and not the game itself.