I'm not in, Doc. Not in on the NFL "why we watch" analysis, anyway The gladitorial element of football is what I've learned to hate about it. It's just not what I want to watch. I suspect I'm part of a silent (near) majority on this front. I want to see superbly talented athletes exhibiting their tremendous gifts, not a "gladiator" standing over a vanquished foe and screaching about his superior manhood. It is what has mostly ruined football.
If it is OK for a Seattle Seahawk to engage in such behavior, then why not college players and then why not high school players and then why not Pee Wees? That is exactly what we now see in the "Games" at each of those levels, BTW. If we are going to make football the behavioral equivalent of actual battle then it should apply to all levels of football. Let's all become real Spartans.
Alas, the game is now lost in the spectacle.
Culturally, we see in football what we wish to see in ourselves, I had a long post about the various decades, from the 1950's on, and the players we most admired in each deacade representing what we wanted to admire in ourselves. It was too long, but for example, in the 50's and early 60's the football heroes were blue collar types, guys who represented an America at work, hammer and tong. Guys like Unitas, Bednarik, Otto Graham, Ollie Matson, Rosie Brown, Art Donovan and Sam Huff punched in to the time clock every day. They were larger than life because they seemed to be something (with more excellence) from our own lives.
By the the time we get to the end of the 60's and 70's we get the cool of the Namaths and Kiick/Csonka/Butch/Sundance's. Alworth, too. Even the Monday Night Football Road Show was tres hip, like we wished we were. Meredith and his MNF comment about a Cleveland WR named Fair Hooker ("Aren't they all?") and the Cosell-Lennon meeting epitomized a generation (mine) who thought they were twice as cool (or more) than they actually were.
Well, on and on I went in that vein, through the 80's and 90's and 00's.....you get the idea.
In the 10's perhaps we see ourselves as something I don't quite like.
Butkis and Mean Joe Greene wanted to separate your arm from your body, then hand you your arm and later have several beers with you, after the game. Jack Tatum wanted to separate your head from your body then gloat over what he had done.
I fear that too much of the game and too many of it's players is-are Tatums and not Greenes. We should celebrate the Gentleman Giants of the sport, the modern-day Rosie Greers and Alan Pages.
Jim Brown, one of the biggest (not largest) men to ever play the game and one of the two or three greatest RB's to ever put on pads would have never conceived of a crotch-grab as some declaration of his manhood. He scored 126 touchdowns in his career. I'm willing to bet that in (nearly) everyone of them he simply dropped the ball and jogged back to his team's sideline.
As it should be, in the pros or at the Pee Wee level.
Sigh,
Moe
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