A writer is a diagnostician of the world’s ills, an observer of fact, a maker of metaphors. So what is a writer to make of the Superbowl and its surrounding fanfare?
For one, it’s an opportunity to have a big blowout party without tidings of comfort and joy as a side dish, like last’s month’s Christmas Eve gatherings. We can hurl four-letter words at the quarterback without Aunt Edna stabbing us with her crochet needles. We can also look for wardrobe malfunctions at halftime without feeling too much guilt.
Football is also a game about real estate, about war. Each team wants the other’s end zone and will resort to various degrees of violence to possess it. It is an acceptable ritual during which we can exorcize our territorial hostilities without being tried as war criminals. It is vicarious, cathartic.
When I was a kid, baseball was the national pastime, and the World Series was the big ticket. We hid transistor radios in our backpacks so we could listen to the games at recess. We hung on every pitch, every swing of the bat. But the times they are a changin’.
These days, football has usurped the place of baseball, signaling a change in our national psyche. My own theory for this paradigm shift is that sports is a metaphor for sex. We’re impatient. We want results fast, and personal commitment to the outcome is short-lived. The Superbowl is over in one night after sixty minutes of regulation play. Baseball games are long, and the World Series can take up to seven games to complete over a nine-day period.
Draw your own conclusions.
Picture: Public Domain
For one, it’s an opportunity to have a big blowout party without tidings of comfort and joy as a side dish, like last’s month’s Christmas Eve gatherings. We can hurl four-letter words at the quarterback without Aunt Edna stabbing us with her crochet needles. We can also look for wardrobe malfunctions at halftime without feeling too much guilt.
Football is also a game about real estate, about war. Each team wants the other’s end zone and will resort to various degrees of violence to possess it. It is an acceptable ritual during which we can exorcize our territorial hostilities without being tried as war criminals. It is vicarious, cathartic.
When I was a kid, baseball was the national pastime, and the World Series was the big ticket. We hid transistor radios in our backpacks so we could listen to the games at recess. We hung on every pitch, every swing of the bat. But the times they are a changin’.
These days, football has usurped the place of baseball, signaling a change in our national psyche. My own theory for this paradigm shift is that sports is a metaphor for sex. We’re impatient. We want results fast, and personal commitment to the outcome is short-lived. The Superbowl is over in one night after sixty minutes of regulation play. Baseball games are long, and the World Series can take up to seven games to complete over a nine-day period.
Draw your own conclusions.
Picture: Public Domain
5 comments:
When I moved up to Oregon from the Bay Area, I was lost without my Giants on the radio.
I could listen to AM night games broadcast from San Francisco, but only in my truck, and only if I sat in the passenger seat and reached out and grabbed the antenna with my right hand and took off my shoe and sock on my right foot and put my foot in a puddle I would make before the game started by turning on the hose...
Many a nights were spent this way, out in the truck, knocking back a few beers and screaming into the darkness....
Loved every minute of it.
American sport equals baseball to me and it's a shame if that's changing. It has a real history.
We both used 'Edna' and 'crochet' on our Sunday posts! She certainly gets about! Spooky:-)
Scott, baseball has a mythos and ambience to it that football can't match, even though I do watch football. I like your truck-baseball story. Cool.
Lane, Edna and croceht--wow, that really IS spooky. Edna is a stock name I sometimes use, but I can't recall the last time I mentioned crochet. (Twilight Zone music plays LOL)
Football is a game is real estate - beautifully put.
I have a strong sport background and I do some writing too. Yes, I watched the Super Bowl - from Australia!
Hi David! Weclome. Despite my iconoclastic take on things, I still enjoyed the game. I'm from New Orleans, and the Mannings used to roam my neighborhood. Damn, no autographs LOL
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