The NFL is America's game. It combines violence, beer, cheerleaders, penis-enlargement commercials, announcers who remind you that football players play football on the football field and Brett Favre.
(Brett Favre!)
Forget baseball and all the Bob Costas poetry that surrounds the game. Forget going to the ol' ballyard with Pops, dropping 90 bucks to park, paying the $10 oxygen fee to breath at the game, another $10 for a tablespoon of Miller UltraLight and watching the quiet game unfold slower than Roots until it ends at 1:25 in the morning. Forget trying to decide which outfielder is on steroids or what stupid error the Angels will make in the field (drop a pop up, over-run the bag, get picked off.) That stuff is for eggheads and gays.
Football is a man's sport.
Freakishly large men run into other freakishly large men at freakishly fast speeds and, like the crowds at the Roman Coliseum, we root for more and more. They're obviously on steroids but we don't care. Guys get paralyzed, concussed and maimed and we sigh for a moment until the next third down play comes up or the Flomax commercial comes on. No game is more commercialized and fused with good ol' crass American materialism and superiority than the NFL. It's the grandest spectacle on earth.
Rush Limbaugh approves of the sport, and he's the manliest man who's ever taken shots at a president's daughter.
So why, after this overblown preamble, are NFL fans some of the pansiest pansies who've ever stalked a message board or called a radio station?
On Sunday, the Patriots took a giant No. 2 on the Titans, like Beecher did to Schillinger in Oz. The carnage became so gruesome that the refs didn't call a clear safety on Vince Young in the fourth quarter, just to spare Tennessee further humiliation. You do this in Little League when you bench your 17-year-old star slugger.
In most sports, with most sane fans, the anger - if there is any anger - would be directed at the losing team for quitting, for stealing an entire game's paycheck. The fans of the winning team would be able to celebrate the win and even have bragging rights for a while.
Not so in the Namby-pamby Fan League. Not with the New England Satanists.
The Sears office erupted into sneers when the Pats piled on touchdown after touchdown. "How could they not just turn it over on purpose to be nice?" they ask. "I hope Tome Brady gets his leg torn off for daring to play in the second quarter," others growl. This is why the nation hates the Patriots. Sometimes they win by big amounts. They don't go 0-16 every year like they want them to. Apparently that is something to be ashamed of.
Maybe it's just irrational Patriot hatred. Actually, that's most of it. They're not quite the Yankees, but they're not well liked around the nation. So no matter what, people will bitch and bitch loudly. That's a given. But shouldn't self-respecting NFL fans know better than to cry like a Pop Warner dad when guys who are paid to play football get crushed?
When A-Rod hits a home run in the 8th inning of a 13-2 game, is he running up the score? When Kobe Bryant scores his 80th point, is he running up the score? When Dwight Eisenhower had the Germans on the run did he think to himself, "Gee, we're winning by a lot here. Let's pull back. Wouldn't want to tick off Skip Bayless?" When the Beatles were at their peak, did they think to themselves, "Wow, we're selling too many albums. Joey Joe Joe Junior Shabadoo's three-piece band in Concordia, Kansas feels sad about this. Let's pull our record off the shelves to be nice?"
The 2007 Patriots dealt with this the entire season, the constant cry-baby antics of jilted, jealous NFL followers who would hand over a testicle to have Toom Brady as their QB or Bill Belichick as their coach but don't have the balls to admit it.
They see Florida crush Charleston Southern and see a great team crushing a weak one - American style. Survival of the fittest. The free market, football style. They see a politician win by millions of votes and see a landslide. (Unless it's a black guy who won. In that case blame Acorn.) They see Wal-Mart putting everyone else out of business and a tear forms in their eyes at the beauty of capitalism. They see the Patriots put on a fpotball clinic Vince Lombardi would love and suddenly dissolve into teething babies.
Hating the Patriots is well and good. I love it. It means they are winning. People don't hate the Clippers or the Browns or the Buccaneers because they rarely win. They hate the Pats because they win and Bill Belichick doesn't French kiss the opposing coach after each game. Fine. Hate away.
Just have some self respect, you whining Internet mice. You're red-blooded football fans. Baseball's for geezers. Basketball's for blacks. Hockey's for drunk Irish guys, Canadians and communists. NASCAR is for rednecks and golf is for dead people. Football is for the alpha-American male whose avatar is a woman's ass.
Recognize greatness when you see it. Is there anything more American than complete domination?
You don't cry when a new McDonald's goes up in China. Don't cry when Brady finds Moss for 50-yard touchdown. Take advantage of your freedom of speech and shut the hell up.
God Bless you and God Bless the United States of America!
(Brett Favre!)
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