US Football Game

I am not really a fan of US football.  But I do follow the local team sometimes out of habit.  Some teams have good years and bad ones.  The Washington team is "sort of" mine and they have had bad years recently.  

And some teams have established rivalries over the years.

The Dallas Cowboys and the Washington team (formerly Redskins, now Commanders) have that sort of rivalry.  In the last regular season game yesterday, they matched up.  The Commanders had nothing to lose and the Cowboys had everything to gain by winning and the game seemed pointless for the Commanders.

I expected a massive loss for the Washington team.  But you sometimes forget pride as a motivator.  It is sometimes easy to think of athletes as just "paid professionals" just earning (ridiculous) salaries.  But they get where they are mostly by drive and willpower and competitiveness.  

And as much as some get traded around from team to team, they do seem to bond among each other wherever they are.  Teams that are a group succeed.  Those that are just a collection of individuals don't.  And that applies the men's teams and women's teams (I love women's college basketball).

So, yesterday, with nothing to gain, the Washington Commanders beat the crap out of the Dallas Cowboys.

Hurray!  😂😅😆😊

Baseball Season Starts Soon

I love baseball.  I understand it better than most other sports.  And I just finished re-watching Kens Burn's 'Baseball' PBS production. 

It "nicer" than most sports.  Many people have decsribed it, but to MY mind, none better than George Carlin.  I won't post the whole statement here, but it's HERE.

I'll paste SOME of it though: 

"Baseball has no time limit: we don't know when it's gonna end - might have extra innings.
Football is rigidly timed, and it will end even if we've got to go to sudden death."

"In football the object is for the quarterback, also known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy's defensive line.
In baseball the object is to go home! And to be safe! - I hope I'll be safe at home!"

"
Baseball is a nineteenth-century pastoral game.
Football is a twentieth-century technological struggle.

Baseball is played on a diamond, in a park.The baseball park!
Football is played on a gridiron, in a stadium, sometimes called Soldier Field or War Memorial Stadium."

And I'll add some gleanings from the Ken Burn's production...

Baseball is the only game where the Defense has the ball.

The is no clock in baseball.  The batter comes to the plate, the pitcher steps off the mound.  The pitcher returns to the plate and the batter steps out to wipe his eyes or adjust his grip on the bat.  The umpire sweeps the dirt off the home plate.  The pitcher begins his delivery, the batter swings.  Or doesn't.  Theoretically, a game could last forever.  And some seem to.

A batter who only hits the ball safely 1/3 of the time is a hero!

Batters "hit safely" and if they round the bags they come "home".  In football (American), they battle their way into the END zone leaving fallen players scattered around on the field.

In baseball, if you hit a home run, you get to trot around the bases at a leisurely slow speed, assured that the fans and teamates know it was YOU who did that.  In football, no one ever really knows who did what to cause a play to work.

And while where is some contact in baseball, it is not routine.  In football, basketball, hockey, boxing, and wrestling, players are pounding each other, throwing elbows, slamming each other with equipment, etc. 

Baseball players have most of their original teeth.  In other sports, teeth are just temporary things.

I can't wait for baseball season to start again!

Football Playoff Game

My local team is the Washington Redskins (and no, I don't like their name).  I'm not a great football fan in general.  But when the local team has people who play their best and are doing well, I follow their progress. 

Sometimes there are great players and great coaches.  sometimes there are average players and average players.  Sometimes both are awful.

Its been some years since I liked both the coaches and players of the Washington Redskins (PLEASE CHANGE THE TEAM NAME, IT'S EMBARRASSING).  This year, there were both good coaches and players.  The coaches and TWO rookies brought the team from 3-6 to 10-6, and got us into the playoffs. 

I'm not a die-hard "homie".  I can easily imagine a successful team I did not respect. Cheating coaches, hockey-style "injure-the-opponents" players, etc.

But this year looked good.  TWO good rookie quarterbacks, a good rookie running backs, A good balance of defense/offense, a good balance of passes and runs, a great kicker...  Clean imaginative play, hard-running, honest stuff, new ideas from coaches...  I watched today's playoff game against the very talented Seattle Seahawks.  Washington scored touchdowns on the first 2 possessions.  I thought it would be a wonderful game.

I had my doubts about the wisdom of playing the #1 quarterback with a knee injury because a big part of his style was running the ball himself.    The #2 quarterback had proven himself in 2 late season games.  And then the further injury I was expecting...

I am disgusted!  My concern about the quarterback was justified.  You could see he could hardly run at all from the start. 

I'm not disgusted because my team lost.  It's the playoffs and there are no bad teams playing; someone has to lose each one.  And when you get to one-game eliminations, its not even the "best" team that survives to the end.

What disgusts me is that the Washington coaches risked the future of one of the possible hall-of-fame quarterbacks as a rookie for one game.  And I'll offer an analogy.  The Washington Nationals baseball team have a potential hall-of-famer pitcher.  They could have just used him up going for the World Series this past season.  Instead, they used him carefully and stopped when they thought he had pitched enough.  It cost them in the playoffs this year, but they knew they will have greater years ahead.  And they will.

The Washington Redskins (PLEASE CHANGE THE NAME, IT'S EMBARRASSING) coaches rolled the dice and played their star injured quarterback almost the whole game, risking his future when they had a proven backup ready to go.

If they were afraid of putting in the #2 quarterback, well I never complain about protecting an injured player...

And THAT'S why I'm disgusted by the game...

Football

I don't care much for football, per se.  I don't really think violent contact should be a part of skilled sports.  OK, boxing, wrestling, you have to contact or there isn't the sport at all.  If you like that the game is to beat the opponent unconscious, boxing is well-designed for that purpose.  But I don't consider that "sport".

"Sports" started to go wrong for me when pro basketball changed from a skilled shooting game to a "flying elbows cage fight" gradually in the 70s and 80s.  Football was no better; at least it STARTED with the idea of violence tackles and such.  So I watched College basketball for a while, until the violence was taught there.  I don't watch any of those these days.  I expect to see a video clip of some Middle School basketball coach exhorting his players to "throw those elbows around" and"trip that guy" any day now.

I played high school soccer in the mid 60s.  Like baseball, it isn't inherently a contact sport.  Yes, injuries can happen.  Mine was when an opponent and I reached the ball at the same time to kick it.  I got there just first.  HIS attempted kick landed in the top of my ankle.  It separated the joint.  My forward momentum made me land on that foot and popped the joint back into place.  I couldn't run for a month.  But at least it wasn't an intentional part of the game.  And I've never had any problems with the ankle since.

Speaking of high school soccer, when I joined the team, it was the first year it had been offered.  I played tennis, golf, and was on the long distance running team.  Most of us had general athletic backgrounds.  But the funny part was all the football players who got cut from the varsity team.  They thought they would just take over.  Not a single one made the soccer team. 

We wore them out fast.  They couldn't keep up with the constant play.  No huddles, no bench time, no alternating between offense and defense, hardly any padding, no helmets, no lackeys to run out and squirt water in their mouths.  After 2 weeks, they didn't get "cut" from the team, they just QUIT!

But I digress...

I watch football sometimes when my local team (The Washington Redskins) plays, when they are playing well.  I'm no diehard fan.  But when the local team is exciting, I may as well watch a good team.  Unfortunately, it has been years since they were any good.  But leads me to mention why I started writing this post.  The Superbowl game this year was pretty good (and not overly violent).  I checked in on it a few times and watched the last 5 minutes.

I decided I was rooting for the Giants to win the game. 

Why?  Because "we" beat them both games this year.  LOLOLOL!