Football and me

My problem with football has always been this: It's boring. It's the same thing over and over again (kind of like baseball, basketball, soccer, tennis, golf..... etc). It's always 20 people running into each other and someone trying to catch a ball. This is exciting... why? I understand the concept of the sport and I even understand a lot of the rules, but in the end, it's repetetive and boring. This can be said about most sports, though; even hockey at times. My other problem with football is that there are only 16 games played in a regular season... and there is a week off (or more) in between every game! Now explain to me why the team who wins the Super Bowl at the end of the whole ordeal is deserving of such an honor? They play 19 games (?) in total. Whoopdy-frick. They get all the time in the world to rest and relax in between every single game. This is not a battle for supremacy, this is a holiday resort in Tahiti.

Sports like hockey, however, is a battle. That's what makes it fun to watch and follow. They play 82 games throughout their regular season, play games in back to back days, rarely get more than a few days off, let alone a week or even two. They work so much harder than football players, too. In football, players much focus their energy and give their all in a short, 30-second burst. Big whoop. Every time a hockey players steps onto the ice, it's an entire shift of pure 110% effort. It's giving your all the entire time you're on the ice. It's hard. It's fast. People are checked through sheets of plexiglass. Football players can hit hard, but wouldn't last a minute in the NHL after getting slammed into the boards by a 6'4, 220lb defensemen while traveling at 10mph on skates.

I suppose all that was just to say... it's rare... VERY rare that I ever even let my TV land on a channel showing another sport.

I watched a football game last night... almost in its entirety. This is a first for me. The only reason I watched it was because it was in hi def and looked quite pretty on my TV, but the point remains, I watched it. It wasn't entirely unentertaining either. I'm not a football fan in the least, but it was not unpleasant to watch a bunch of fat and angry men run around in -2 degree (F) weather. I'm only entertained if someone gets their head taken off by a bone crunching check (hm... no, that's not right. That's hockey. This is football... what do you call those things?.. ah, right. Tackles.) or if someone runs the length of the football field for a touchdown and proceeds to do an endzone dance. While I did the see the former, I did see the latter (to an extent) and was adequately entertained for a few moments. After the effect wore off, I went back to watching the yellow piece of trash that was tumbling across the field (a yellow piece of paper that I thought was a flag at one point). It looked pretty in hi def.

While I may not have directly paid attention to the game itself, I was on the channel and looking at the TV. That's a plus in my book, I think.

So now there's this thing called the Super Bowl. Have I ever watched one? No. I watched the commercials, though. Funny stuff. Do I have any real desire to watch the Super Bowl? No, not really. In light, however, of my recent and not terrible experience with the National Football League, (and provided nothing better is showing on the Discovery Channel, G4 Network, or the Cartoon Network) I might watch a minute or two (but only if it's in hi def). If that time is not awful, I might watch more of it. I give you no promises I'll be paying attention, though. Should a bird fly into view of the camera, I assure you my focus will change to that quite quickly. Birds amuse me. Field goals don't. Still, though, there's that chance I might watch it. This is an exciting and new chapter to my life. The beginning of toleration. That doesn't happen often either. Exciting time, my friends.

I guess the whole point of what I'm trying to say is... hockey's better.