Category Archives: NFL

Deflating The Gate, Once And For All

by

0

With the story about the New England Patriots having under-inflated footballs for one game finally, mercifully appearing to die, and the Patriots taking on the Indianapolis Colts (who started the whole mess in the first place)  tonight, I decided to offer my final thoughts on the issue.

Two things to get out of the way up front. First, the nickname for the story is beyond stupid and will not be justified by way of writing it here. People are aware that the Richard Nixon Watergate Scandal was names as such because Watergate was the name of the hotel it occurred in, right?

Second, Tom Brady swore under oath that he did not give any kind of instructions to under-inflate the game balls, so if he’s lying that could lead to a prison sentence for perjury. You’d have to be an idiot to think that a millionaire with a seemingly idyllic family life, no history of criminal activity, and four SuperBowl championship rings would risk going to jail just to avoid being suspended for four regular season football games.

The part that really pisses me off about the way this whole story blew up is that real crimes committed by NFL players are forgotten by the public at large a month or two after they end, because the NFL wants these stories to go away as quickly as possible. Greg Hardy beats the hell out of his girlfriend, Michael Vick murders dogs for profit and pleasure,  and Ray Rice is caught on camera knocking out his fiance and dragging her unconscious body out of the elevator like a cave man. These are genuinely  horrifying actions perpetrated by employees of the NFL that, quite frankly put, should have led to these men being banned from the NFL for life and some sort of appropriate prison sentence.

However, since neither of those things happened, Commissioner Roger Goodell would like to direct your attention elsewhere as soon as humanly possible. “Here’s something that’s technically against the rules,” he’s saying “But nobody actually got hurt or worse, so let’s all watch how I deal with it.” And then he blew it anyway by overplaying his hand.

“Seems like someone tinkered with game day equipment, so here’s a fine,” should have been the resolution. He got the fine, but then his impotency complex over not properly dealing with the real scumbags led him to push things way too far.

There have been so many Performance Enhancement Drug suspensions DUI’s, and other crimes that I stopped trying to keep track years ago. Why the NFL would allow violent criminals and drunk drivers to ever have another chance to make millions of dollars representing the NFL on national TV every week, but choose to go after one of their model employees, is beyond me.

Bottom line, the amount of air in footballs should be decided by each team individually. This is not like P.E.D’s, which are actually illegal for recreational use and create long term medical problems for users. With P.E.D use, the issue is that it leads to clean players saying: “If these guys are getting an advantage by pumping steroids into their bodies, therefore risking their future health, then I need to as well in order to keep up. How is that fair?” Which is a fair assessment, because it’s not fair at all. Which is why P.E.D use carries a justified fine and a suspension.

You know what carries no medical drawbacks whatsoever? Air. There is absolutely no reason why teams shouldn’t be allowed to decide how much air is pumped into their footballs. This quarterback is more comfortable with more air, that QB is more comfortable with less air. Okay, let’s just have them do that then.

Again, we’re talking about their own team’s footballs – they are not touching the other team’s footballs. In soccer and basketball, both teams use the same ball, so it’s understandable why there would be such regulations. Every football team brings its own bag of balls to every game, with the other team rarely touching those balls. So it’s pointless to say this amount of air is okay, that amount of air is not. I’ll even go far enough to predict that in two or three years this rule will be changed, or eliminated altogether.

So, let’s lay this story to rest the way that Tom Brady and The Patriots have been laying their opponents to rest so far this year (under unnecessarily intense scrutiny, I might add). R.I.P to the under-inflated footballs during one single game story, and I look forward to be proven a prophet when this moronic and pointless rule is killed in the near future.

Why I Watch The NFL

by

0

After exploring the darker side of the NFL in my previous post, I wanted to round back and actually answer the original question that I was asked: “Why do you enjoy watching football?”

The first reason is because I believe that watching football is like watching a supersized game of Chess. I’m sure there are strategies to be found when watching MLB or NBA games, but nothing as intricate as in the NFL.

Each team has eleven players on the field at a given time, and each of those players has a job to do according to the play that was drawn up by the coaching staff. A team will substitute in different players until they get the grouping of skills required to execute the play.

But it’s not just executing, either. It’s disguising what you’re doing. In many ways the best NFL coaches are like illusionists, even though they do need the right players who can help them pull off the illusion. To simplify things: Bill Belichick is David Copperfield and Tom Brady is his lovely assistant.

Alright, that’s a little bit reductive on the player side, because before the ball is even snapped, there is gamesmanship going on between the people on the field. Guys are moving or shifting, the QB is altering the play at the line of scrimmage according to what he sees the defense doing, the defense is trying to adjust to the QB’s adjustments, and every single player has to make sure they know what those changes mean or else the play will go nowhere. Teams will come out with the exact same formation, and then run a completely different type of play out of it. Or, maybe it’ll be the same play, and they’re betting on the other team thinking they’re going to run something different.

Of course there’s also the fun of watching top flight athletes doing things that no one else can do. The stopping on a dime and changing direction on a receiver route or a long run play. The leaping, one-handed catches and interceptions. The quarterback zipping a pass into the smallest space imaginable, or mere centimeters over or around a defender’s outstretched fingertips. The guys getting popped out of their sneakers by a defender, then bouncing back up as if to say “Is that all you’ve got?”

Then there’s the less flashy aspects, such as coaches trying to take a much or as little time off the clock as benefits them the most. They can utilize, or not utilize, their timeouts in ways other than if their player need a breather. Maybe they want to see what formation the other team comes out in, and then call a timeout once then have an idea about what their opponent is trying to run. Maybe the other team looks discombobulated, but doesn’t want to use their timeout while still hoping that the opposing coaches use theirs. It’s like a three hour round of Game of Thrones every week.

The benefit of having breaks between snaps is that the commentators (at least the good ones) can those break things down for the viewers either during the play or after its conclusion. Don’t get me wrong, I could do with a lot less commercial breaks during the span of a game, but at least it gives the analysts more time to revisit a play and give the viewer even more info on the intricacies of it. I may differ from many other fans, as I actually am very interested in the nuts and bolts of the plays.

The other reason why I enjoy watching football is the same reasons why people enjoy going to see their favorite band in concert: A bit of wish fulfillment: “If these people can live their dream, then maybe I can too.” And a bit of it is how watching these guys play a game that I always enjoyed playing.

Going outside in the fresh, crisp autumn air and tossing a ball around with friends or family for a little while triggers good memories for a lot of people. And that’s what keeps me coming back, year after year.

 

How Can You Watch The NFL?

by

0

With football season upon us, I was recently asked “Why do you watch football? What do you get out of it?”

My immediate response was something akin to “Same reason I watch anything on TV: because I enjoy it.”

But the question did get me thinking more about it. I can give you actual reasons why I like the TV shows or movies I like. Be it characters, action, storyline twists, etc. So I started trying to narrow down the reasons why I enjoy watching football. Then I narrowed it down further, since I don’t really care about college football, to why do I watch the NFL.

Oddly enough, the first thing I thought of was “How can I watch the NFL?  Especially when taking the league as a whole.”

The NFL is an organization that celebrates violence, and glorifies the men who are best at inflicting it. This mindset has led to an ongoing concussion issue carrying over from the days when there weren’t many rules other than Touchdowns = 6 points. The NFL has thrown some money at this issue, a lot by most standards, but not nearly enough to help all of the players who are suffering from brain injuries sustained in their playing days.

Even more disturbing is how the culture of violence that has permeated the lives of current players, and how the NFL has dealt with it. Mike Vick, Ray Rice, Greg Hardy, Rae Carruth, and Lawrence Phillips and Aaron Hernandez are the few (of many) examples that I can think of off the top of my head.

Vick walked out of prison and into another hundred million dollar contract. LOTS of THINGS I’d like to see happen to anyone involved in dog fighting, but getting a massive contract to play in the NFL is not among them. Rice got suspended for two games, TWO games, for knocking out his girlfriend and then dragging her limp body out of an elevator. Only when the actual video tape was made public did Commission Roger Goodell issue something even approaching an appropriate ruling.

Greg Hardy also beat on his girlfriend, and then threw her onto a bed full of guns. He got suspended for ten games, which is better than two games, but then that got knocked down to just four games. Carruth is a convicted murderer, Phillips is serving a few decades for assault and attempted murder, and Hernandez likely won’t be playing football anywhere but a prison yard for the rest of his life.

The truth is that any NFL player involved in violent crimes off the field should be banned from ever again putting on an NFL uniform. But that won’t happen, because these players are multi-millionaires and the NFL is a multi-billion dollar enterprise. In fact, many of the perpetrators never get convicted because they are subject to the same impotent rules of the U.S. Justice System as anyone with enough fame and/or money. But the NFL is not a branch of the U.S. government so, whether or not these player actually serve time in prison, they league could still ban them for life.

They never will, though. And so I can’t justify how I watch the NFL on a moral or ethical level. But those were never really the reasons I enjoy watching football anyway. It doesn’t seem appropriate to get into those reasons here, so I’ll get into them in my next blog post.