I don't think I have ever watched an entire NFL football game. I don't like football because you can't see the players' faces, and thus have no sense of their emotions. Why then would you watch it? It's fun to watch chess or boxing or American Idol because you can see the emotions on the stars' faces. Last night I watched football, because the kids wanted to have a Superbowl Party. We loaded up on Doritos and pizza, and turned the game on. My initial impression was that the Steelers looked like Sumo wrestlers on steroids. Their huge guard Chris Kemoeatu (#68), was so big his love handles themselves were sixty pound droplets of fat. He's only 6'3" but he weighs 344 pounds.
We googled him and he's from some Pacific island kingdom named Tonga. Five NFL players hail from that tiny island.
After the game (the Packers won but it was close until the last three minutes) I flicked the channel and caught the last ten minutes of Bill O'Reilly's interview with President Obama. O'Reilly asked Obama if he planned to see the Superbowl (the interview was pre-taped). Obama said yes, and he didn't plan to chit-chat during the game because, as he said, "I know football." He also said the Packers were a faster lighter team, and so he thought they would win.
The game was the classic tactical problem of strength versus speed and maneuverability.
Obama's prediction turned out right. I thought that here (finally) is an area of competence for the president. It would be fun if he turned out to be an NFL play-by-play announcer for ESPN after his stint goofing up American legislation, and causing a crisis among constitutional lawyers with Obamacare, (which looks like it's going to tie up American state and appellate courts for the next two years at least).
I ate five large slices of pizza, and slammed Doritos during the game, and even drank a non-alcoholic beer in order to experience America at its phattest.
I got on the scale this morning and was at 178, four pounds over my average. I was stunned. I still weigh 166 pounds less than Chris Kemoeatu but ...
Here's a video of Chris Kemoeatu in action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2OufAOf3jM
29 comments:
Don't know why they call 'em cheeseheads. After all, cows produce more manure than milk.
Yeah, I'm a Bears fan.
Gosh, Stu, that's very violent threatening innuendo about the Packers!
There is nothing threatening about scatological humor.
That said...
I don't really have anything against the Packers or their fans. I spent a couple of great afternoons at a bar in Wisconsin, drinking beer and watching pre-season Packers football with the cheeseheads, while my daughter attended cheerleading camp. It was a heck of a lot of fun, as it often is when people get together to cheer a good team over a few beers.
And the Packers are an anomaly in our money-ruled world: a small market team that often excels. It just happens that they're in the same division as my team, which is also a very good team right now. So the Bears-Packer's rivalry is going to be a fixture of life in the upper midwest.
But if you want humor with a violent streak, here are a couple that I got last week from a friend:
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THE BLACK AND BLUE DIVISION GENIE
Three guys, a Bear fan, a Packer fan, and a Viking fan are out walking together one day. They come across a lantern and a Genie pops out of it. "I will give you each one wish, that's three wishes total," says the Genie.
The Viking fan says, "I am a farmer, my dad was a farmer, and my son will also farm. I want the land to be forever fertile in Minnesota." With a blink of the Genie's eye, 'Poof' the land in Minnesota was forever fertile for farming.
The Packer fan was amazed, so he said, "I want a wall around Wisconsin, so that no infidels, Bear Fans or Viking Fans can come to our precious state."
Again, with a blink of the Genie's eye, 'Poof' there was a huge wall around Wisconsin.
The Bear fan asks, "I'm very curious, please tell me more about this wall."
The Genie explains, "Well, it's about 150 feet high, 50 feet thick and completely surrounds the state; nothing can get in or out."
The Bear fan says, "Fill it with water."
CHICAGO BEARS FANS AND PRIESTS
We Chicago Bear fans amuse ourselves by scaring every Green Bay fan we see strutting down the street with that obnoxious green & gold "G" on his shirt.
We would swerve our cars as if to hit them, and then swerve back just missing them.
One day, while driving along, I saw a priest. I thought I would do a good deed, so I pulled over and asked the priest, "Where are you going Father?"
"I'm going to give mass at St. Francis Church, about 2 miles down the road,"
Replied the priest.
"Climb in, Father! I'll give you a lift!"
The priest climbed into the rear passenger seat, and we continued down the road. Suddenly, I saw a Green Bay fan walking down the road, with that "G"shirt on and I instinctively swerved as if to hit him. But, as usual, I swerved back into the road just in time. Even though I was certain that I had missed the guy, I still heard a loud "THUD."
Not understanding where the noise came from, I glanced in my mirrors but still didn't see anything. I then remembered the priest, and turned to the priest and said, "Sorry Father, I almost hit that Green Bay fan."
"That’s OK," replied the priest, "I got him with the door."
I was only kidding reminiscent of the Gabby Giffords debacle (she's now so far off the front pages that I doubt if we even know her condition). When she was first it was an enormous shock, but of course the MSM had huge hopes they could pin the donkey on Palin.
I can't understand the love of football. It seems like a very poor game. What does it prove?
With a song competition you get the best singer, with chess you get the best strategist, but with football you just get a bunch of guys giving each other concussions. Not sure I understand.
Cheerleading? Did I write that?! My daughter will kill me. Gymnasics camp. I'll write about football in a minute, but I want to get the correction up first.
Why do people like football?
Football is a game of many dimensions. Power, speed, athleticism, intelligence, deception. There's not just one way to win, and Lions fans can tell you that there are infinitely many way to lose. [I went to high school in suburban Detroit, so I know whereof I speak.]
There are some recurring themes, not aways the easiest for guys of our age, but valid nevertheless. A talented young team comes up, and relies on power and speed to beat the favored veterans. They're scrappy, chippy. As they mature, they become a dominant team, maybe even winning a superbowl or two along the way. As time goes by, they rely more and more on intelligence and deceit, but they're still winners. Then some young team, full of power and speed, and not the least bit intimidated by their reputation, just knocks the snot out of them. And then it's over. Everyone runs straight at them, or passes over them. There's no need for subtlety, no fear of being out-thought. Just go at them, leaving nothing more but a proud ruin, with the self-knowledge that what was is no more, and full of regrets with a deeper commitment on their part, there might have been so much more.
Football is a team sport, but like all team sports, critical plays within the game sometimes depend on specific individuals, how they match up against their specific opponents, and their talent, preparation, dedication, and willingness to sacrifice. It's an outdoor game (mostly), so variations in weather can suddenly make a particular strength irrelevant, or a particular weakness catastrophic. It is a game that has the ability to surprise, to delight. It's a game of many levels, and there's always more to see, more to understand.
Oh, and I knew you were tugging on my leg, but I thought you'd like the joke. As far as I know, it's original. My fellow Bears fans certainly like it :-). In the meantime, I also thought you'd appreciate some of the more traditional Bear-Packers humor. That Priest joke has whiskers.
Another one, while I'm at it.
A Bears fan and Packers fan get into an accident. It's a rural road, and both the car and the pickup truck are wrecks. They're both shaken, but they can reach across the chasm between the Blue and Orange and the Green and Yellow. The Bears Fan offers the Packer's fan a shot of whiskey, "to steady him." The Packers fan greatful imbibes, but then is surprised when the Bears fan puts the bottle away without. "Aren't you going to have a shot?" "After the cops get here."
When I lived in Tonga the Oceania Amateur Boxing Championships was held there in 1994. The winner in each division was guaranteed a spot on their country's Olympic team. Australia and New Zealand had boxers in every weight class thoroughly prepared to compete at the international level. Pacific Islanders from all over Oceania who had managed to scrape up the airfare to Tonga came to have a go at it.
Tonga had a coach who assembled their team. He'd been a serious heavyweight contender in the pro ranks a decade earlier The Tongan heavyweight was Paea Wolfgramm, who weighed in at well over 400 pounds. He fought a ferocious looking 240 pound Maori in the final. Wolfgramm wasn't long on technique at the time. He bounced the Maori off the ropes with his belly and hit him with an uppercut right on the rebound. The Maori cleared the top rope without even touching it. Three guys grabbed him on the way down and pinned him against the ropes to keep him from smashing his head on the concrete floor.
A year or so later Wolfgramm fought in the Olympics and won the silver medal. He beat a Bulgarian, a Cuban and a Nigerian before losing on points in the final to a Ukranian. I barely recognized him. He had trimmed down to 270 and developed some footwork and a respectable left jab. He apparently broke his right hand on the Nigerian and fought Vladimir Klitschko in the final with just his left jab.
American football is uniquely an American sport. I would never defend it, as I would not defend prize fighting. Clearly both sports are far too harmful to those who play them--particularly injuries involving the head. This is all glossed over by the industries which are built around them. I do think the entertainment value of the game has been exaggerated beyond its reasonable limits. College football preceded the professional leagues, which were fairly pathetic in their early years. The enormous payrolls and budgets of professional sports franchises are now absurdly bloated.
National sports leagues serve to focus attention and money on individuals or groups of players. The entire system is driven by greed and vanity, and has little positive influence on society.
If there were no profits to be had from it, it certainly wouldn't command the attention it does, because it wouldn't be promoted. Are urban sports franchises a good thing for communities? On balance, probably not.
How about school athletics? Is football worth perpetuating indefinitely? The problem is that these "sports" really only involved a tiny percentage of the population. Everyone else just sits and watches and gets keyed up on outcomes or betting on them.
Why do people like to watch boxing? Why did Romans enjoy the gladiatorial contests?
I have never much liked the Steelers. They always acted cocky and gruff. But that's what football is about.
You like to see light, agile players like Montana prevail, though. David and Goliath.
There's such disparity between the different positions. Quarterbacks have to be mobile and flexible, but noseguard need to be at least 275 pounds and real meat and gristle.
I like that James Wright line about young Ohio boys "galloping terribly against each others' bodies."
That really says it all.
Craig, what were you doing in Tonga?
My wife ran a training program to upgrade the skills of nurses. I taught English at two different schools and liaised on the golf course with the diplomatic community.
Although I've nothing against American professional football as an entertainment, I do object to the waste, fraud, and corruption wrought on NCAA universities and colleges by a corrupt entertainment industry with no discernible higher-education mission.
I think schools like stu's U of Chicago (after President Hutchins abolished football, it's returned as a Division III competitor) have it right in not offering football scholarships, but allowing some small level of intercollegiate participation.
If schools are determined to give scholarships other than academic ones, then I'd rather see them limited to ones in chess, croquet, Scrabble, and cribbage.
One of my favorite poets, Sir John Suckling, is said to have invented cribbage. I've never played.
There ought to be a serious review of brain damage in sports. Damaged brains would seem to be at odds with the educational mission.
Football and even soccer are known to cause massive brain lesions.
I wish there were more badminton courts available on campuses. Badminton is the world's least dangerous sport.
I do think that the aerobic aspect of intracollegiate sports might be a good thing for our obese society, but I don't see how sitting on a bench and snacking contributes to our overall health.
I do watch professional sports but I am generally on an exercise bike.
People should move a minimum of two hours a day.
Hey stu,
Whaddya call 60 guys at home alone watching the Super Bowl?
THA BEARS
The half-time show at the Superbowl looked like a bunch of punch-drunk boxers on their last legs.
I liked the Who last year, as old as they were, they looked young by comparison with this group of drug-addled thirty-somethings.
Kirby,
There ought to be a serious review of brain damage in sports. Damaged brains would seem to be at odds with the educational mission.
Football and even soccer are known to cause massive brain lesions.
Indeed. Strangely enough, the problem may be easier to fix in football. Brain damage in soccer comes from "heading" the ball. This seems like an essential feature of the game, especially at higher levels where corner-kicks account for a substantial fraction of the scoring in a very low-scoring game.
Brain injury in football typically comes from helmet-to-helmet contact, and in general from using your helmet as a weapon. This is not an essential feature of the game, although it will not be easy to change. Injury is not good, but it does not necessarily lead to brain damage.
Brain damage most often occurs when injuries are superimposed, i.e., when one re-injures a brain already injured.
Various football leagues are trying to address both, reasonably effectively in the second case, less so in the first.
As regards the use of helmets as a weapon, there are now rules in place against spearing (hitting a man on the ground with your helmet), or with any sort of helmet-to-helmet contact between a defensive player and a quarterback. These are not enough: what is really required is either soft-helmets or no-helmets. [Rugby, for example, is very similar to football, but played without helmets. This changes the nature of the game, so that the head can't be used as a weapon. Brain injuries still occur, but much less frequently.] This would be a major change in the game, but I could see it happening.
As regards re-injury, there are now protocols in place at the most competitive levels that require physicians to clear a player who has had a concussion before they can play again. This rule was in place at both the professional and FBS levels this past year, and seems to have been taken very seriously. The basic concept here is to remove the coach's conflict of interest in dealing with talented, injured players.
My intuition is that brain injury is more a feature of the higher levels of the game (where players are bigger, faster, stronger) than lower levels.
Some have talked about using helmets for soccer to cushion the blow of headers, but this would vastly reduce the accuracy, methinks.
It's again only in the professional leagues that one sees significant brain damage among soccer players.
So it may not affect the collegiate levels, but even in high school, when the ball was wet on a muddy day, I often pretended to miss the header in order to avoid a staggering headache, which was the other option.
Personally, I think heading the ball in soccer should be illegal. Damage among the professionals is about ten percent of brain damage, with all members of most professional teams having at least some.
It's not Gabby Giffords level, but who needs any brain damage? If you go to college, to get more knowledge, I see no reason why some sports players should leave instead with brain damage, along with debt, and the other disadvantages of college.
Sports can build eye hand coordination, quickness, and aerobic skill. But we need a total review of the sports that kids should be playing and how they should be played.
This is something that Obama (if he had a brain) could accomplish. He could get all kinds of things done. He and his wife ARE fitness conscious.
This would in turn bring down medical costs, which he claims is his overall quest (not government takeover of the health system).
I think there are all kinds of legacies to be had, and they don't necessarily require 2000 pages of regulation that will wreck the medical industry.
Sports that I think are probably good for aerobics, and generally good include: badminton, wrestling, baseball, running, volleyball. The list could get to be quite long. Sports fitness is a terrific thing. Anything to do with swimming: good. Even walking, for heaven's sake.
Curtis is right: the professionalization of the sports instinct has been a negative for American couch potatoes.
We ought to do something about basketball so that the very tall don't dominate.
We could have a professional league for those under 6 feet tall for instance. We don't need everyone to be a hormonal disaster, which isn't good for anyone anyhow. Under 6' there would be a return to speed and fundamentals.
We don't make lightweights box heavyweights, we don't make 120 pounders wrestle 250 pounders. So there could be height classes in basketball.
Obama knows sports and he could redistrict sports and have himself a fine legacy. I wish he woiuld do something about an area that he understands. He doesn't understand the medical industry or the banking industry and should stay the heck out of those areas.
Tax breaks coiuld be given to people who are in shape.
He could do all kinds of good. Meanwhile, we really need to do a lot more thinking about professional sports.
Football is obviously a disaster when you get men like Christopher K at 344 pounds on the field. He looks TERRIBLE, and is obviously a health risk.
Not saying the sport should be banned, but I've boycotted it withiout result for most of my life. I hate almost everything about football except the ball itself. The ball is incredibly cool since I love how its spirals in the long bomb right into a player's outstretched hands.
That's beautiful.
The rest of the game I could do without.
So maybe if I got to redesign it, I would have a contest with two quarterbacks and the wing I think they call it would go out for a long bomb, and the longest pass would win.
The losers wouild be killed.
Sports can do a lot of good for a community - just look at what happened to LoDo in Denver after the Rockies moved in.
That entire area went from a hellhole to a happening, thriving community over night.
Kirby seems to be asking for a lot of regulation in sports coming from the government.
Commie.
We'll get to watch Sevens Rugby starting with the 2012 Olympics. Each game lasts twenty minutes with seven players on each side and only one timeout, a three minute water break at the ten minute mark. They don't have scrums like they do in Fifteens, where all the big guys converge to determine who gets possession of the ball.
If the playing field is level the Fijians will win. They run like the wind. The only passes allowed are laterals, although you can go downfield by kicking the ball instead of passing it. The receiver doesn't have to catch a kicked ball. He just has to get there before the defender does. A fumble that advances the ball is called a knock on and results in a turnover. It's like watching a punt return that lasts for twenty minutes with no timeouts and no huddles. When a ball carrier gets tackled he's allowed to get up so he can lateral to a teammate.
The quarterback is also the center who snaps the ball to himself. The other six players are all what they call wingers in fifteen a side rugby. We'd call them running backs or wide receivers. The defense has to stay three yards back from the ball until the quarterback touches it. He can run, lateral or kick.
Waisale Serevi in Fiji revolutionized the game. He would kick thirty yard spirals that looked like Montana to Rice on a post pattern. Or he'd run a wishbone, J. C. Watts to Billy Sims, or fake five different laterals and dance to the touch without getting touched. Once in awhile he'd punt the ball to himself thirty yards downfield.
Nobody will want to play the Samoans. They use "gridiron" tackling techniques they learned from their cousins in American Samoa. They figure that if they tackle all seven of their opponents there's nobody left to run, pass or kick the ball.
What an interesting perception, I never associated finding emotions relevant with football unless it's coming form the fans who make the game passionate. I've been a football fan all my life and played team sports throughout my young and young adult life I know the emotion that plays under the face guard, perhaps that's why I just assume. What an interesting reason for not watching the game. My Dad and I were totally bodacious throughout the game, he's a born full blood Wisconsin boy and I don't think they ever lose it. So he being my hero, it's never been hard to be a Packer fan and it's been a pleasure. Partially because they always play hard but also because they have passion which is huge in sports and not always seen. It was great, when my Dad decided he wanted to get ready for the Super Bowl he decided to upgrade the house into HD as well. I work for Dish Network so I offered any advise I could as to what he should go for. He calls Direct TV, I told him that was not really worth the time on the phone but he insisted. He ended up coming back to Dish and getting all 3 HD receivers and his HD programming for free. This is huge to someone who watches sports and wants to feel like they are in the stadium. This was the feeling on Sunday as we watched the Packers push their way into a Championship.
When basketball was in its infancy, around the turn of the last century, my stepfather was a high school star center at 6'3" in 1917, at a time when the average mean height for men in this country was probably five inches shorter than it is today. Lots of protein and milk led to bigger bodies.
He suggested once during the 1950's that they raise the hoop from ten feet to 12--which would thwart the current epidemic of dunking which one sees now. Would the players just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger?
When I was in high school, I could (just barely) dunk the ball. But I wasn't a great player. Our high school--in my junior year--had a great team which went to the regional finals, and nearly every man on the team could dunk.
Pro basketball used to be about strategy and movement and coordination and a balletic dance. Nowadays it's a much more physical game--violent even--and depends to a greater degree on stamina and strength, as much as on raw or learned skill.
The best modern pro stars have all the tools, but have to be tough and ruthless besides. Nearly every approach to the basket results in fouls, whether called or not. That's just crudity, and not fair play.
Concussions are also a big problem in hockey. The poster child for this is probably Eric Lindros, but with the recent serious concussions for Marc Savard and especially Sidney Crosby, it's really come to the forefront.
Mark Messier, in particular, has made this a major project in his retirement. There are lots of interesting statistics available at his site (although the site design is atrocious). In particular, NHL players suffered over 750 concussions in the decade following 1997.
If the major sports leagues are going to take to this seriously, they need to find out what the truly dangerous actions are (to the extent that they don't already know), and have real consequences (i.e., large suspensions, as fines don't really do much) for players who play dangerously. Personally, if I were a player in one of these leagues, I would really push the union to get this done.
An article in this month's National Geographic is about how even minor concussions can cause major brain damage.
On the good side, Gabby Giffords actually asked for toast this morning.
A toast to Gabby Giffords!
When I was in Seattle working as a temporary secretary, the guy on whom my basketball sparring partner is based, who is called Bob Button in the manuscript, was working on an article about football helmets. I helped him edit it. His argument is that spine injuries among football players were often from the helmets flying back and chopping at the spinal column.
I didn't think about hockey, but I would assume that high sticking is the worst thing, but fights with bare fists, especially when blindsided, can't be too good for brain health.
Is it possible to make serious penalties on the professional courts into actual crimes? So that someone who clips a qb will actually do jail time if it is clearly intentional?
This morning the qb Mark Sanchez from the Jets was in the news for sleeping with a 17-year old girl, which is illegal in NY state, and is considered statutory rape.
He was sacked.
This time, not by a backfield, but by his own management.
i would've liked the rough and tumble devilmaycare attitudes of athletes before it became the high blitz american media spectacle complete with beefed up superheroes with helmets
back when johnny blood mcnally drank his way through 8 or 10 seasons and read dante and malthus as a hobby back in the day there were a lot of guys who were in it for the heck of it it was a good time and the livin was easy i don't know somewhere along the line things got mean maybe when the race relations thing finally busted open in the 60z people started wanting to vent that social tension in high octane physical madness'
and then the whole friggin spectacle of it don't get me started
poise under pressure
when the other guys are grunting and pushing and shoving and farting and grunting some more just to make things look good
i think all the teams should play one game a month touch football no tackles touch one game a month where they have to come to terms with their aggression in an orderly fashion
and i think it's time that we forego the names the players now it should be numbers and that's all we will only regard them as numbers
i mean it's all virtual distraction anyway ....NO
we should get to watch the cheerleaders more but it's time they learned ballet and not just strip bar moves
there should be real elegant graceful choreographed dance going on
the marching band phenomenon is something of an understated cultural prize in america
we could use more of that
and the drumcorps
on david letterman last night there was a vince lombardi character sitting in during the top 10 and my father after a few minutes stood in disgust and said
that's not vince lombardi for christ's sake
yoo hoo yeah dad!!! i was impressed because the guy looked quite a lot like a young vince lombardi
i watched the game from a distance while i waited on my parents with hors d'oevre's beer potato soup and a compote souffle'
the screen was a blur for me
and that was just fine
there's a lot of pressure on young athletes to be good upstanding citizens but there's very little by way of social virtue related in the training of high contact high intensity goal on goal sorts of encounters...unless you live in a police state...wait a minute...what did i just type...hey think about it....i'm not saying anything for sure....i'm just sort of thinking off the top of my head....we call it a democracy but in actuality it's a police state...Ok police state light...but nonetheless...maybe that's the only way a democracy can really survive...all those trained athletes need some category for the work they do after the team thing dies out....so train up get 'em trigger sharp....hmnh...
frisbee golf and hackeysack
those are the only team sports i play
as a function of social organization - for instance - how to get millions of people hyped up and focussed on the same thing for 3 or 4 hours and make tons of cash on the whole order....there is a certain social genius to that....who thought of that anyway...how to manage the masses...get them inebriated on something once or twice a week...beer aggrreessiioonn bad food eyepoping visuals horrid noise...hey it works
and the band played on
jh
In the NHL, I don't think that fights are a major cause of injuries, as most fights are mutual things, and being on skates doesn't really lead to a lot of leverage in punching. High-sticking more often causes lacerations, broken noses, or lost teeth than concussions. More dangerous would be charging, cross-checking, and, especially, boarding. That is, it's being surprised by a quickly moving opponent colliding with you, especially if you are knocked into the boards, that is particularly liable to cause concussions.
Kirby - you need to check your sources better.
http://tinyurl.com/sanchezkirby
Sanchez broke no law, and won't be getting sacked by management.
Brett, I think you're right. The story I read said that Sanchez had to clean out his locker, but this might just have been because the season was over, or something, and they wanted to imply he had been sacked.
The age of consent in New York is 17, apparently, and in New Jersey it's 16. The girl is from Connecticut.
Apparently this only happened once, so I think the media story is way out of proportion to any actual illegality.
But I've also seen one site that said that the age of consent in New Jersey is 18, and another said 13, if the partner is no more than four years older.
Sanchez is 24, and she's 17, so that's 7 years difference.
Grady, in terms of hits, I wouldn't have thought that hitting the boards would be significant because they kind of give when the players hit them, or so I thought.
The good thing about global ignorance of the kind that I possess is that everyday I learn something.
the thing about sanchez that he doesn't realize is that now he's married to this girl for the rest of his life..he has to live with the thought of what he did...but maybe it was 4th and goal and he just had to go for it :)
so much for the big mind small mind theory
girls have their own form of football
ouch!
!
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