I was a little frightened about
last night’s Seahawks/Packers Monday Night Football game, because I wasn’t sure
I was going to make it through the inevitable three and a half hours of
constant verbal blow jobs from Al Michaels and Boomer Esiason in regards to my
arch nemesis…Brett Favre. Why weren’t
people kneeling in front of Elway like this?
Or Marino? Montana? I’ve never witnessed such blatant ass
kissing in my whole life. I couldn’t
believe it when I watched the post game highlights after week one of football
this year, and the analysts said, “Brett Favre is the early favorite for
MVP.” EARLY FAVORITE? He’s played ONE GAME this year! He could get a hold of some good Vicadin and
a Milwaukee’s Best tomorrow, and then who will you vote for? If I know the idiots in Wisconsin, they’d
still vote for Brett. Idiots.
In an effort to explain my love of
football, which goes far beyond the actual play…I decided to use last night’s
game as an example of everything good and bad about the NFL.
Having grown up in a family of
staunch Bears fans (staunch to the point that my father is directed by his
doctor to take his blood pressure during games), I have been a lover of
football since my early teenage years.
I had the 45 single AND the video of the Superbowl Shuffle and a
Refrigerator Perry jersey. As my love
of the Bears grew, so did my hatred of the Green Bay Packers…and that’s my
first point.
1.
Rivalries. If you don’t like football, don’t expect to
just jump in and be like me. You can’t
expect to get excited and swear and actually deliver mock roundhouse kicks to
your television. This won’t happen
until you pick a team and stick with it.
Loving a team teaches you how to hate.
To hate Wisconsin, to hate bratwurst…to hate mother f-ing Lambeau Field
and their stupid ass patrons, sitting on benches, wasting their miserable,
inbred, alcoholic lives through vicarious thrills of dirty football and
inexplicable luck that they try to pass off as talent. Picking a football team is like joining a
family. And you won’t enjoy the family
until you know all the stories behind it.
It’s safe to say that every single NFC Central fan who isn’t a dumbass
cheesehead hates Brett Favre…and that’s how it has to be.
Last
night’s game should have been a Green Bay victory…on paper. The Packers had a better record, the
Seahawks are a notoriously bad team in years past…Brett Favre, Antonio Freeman,
Desmond Howard, Dorsey Levens…all of these “good football players” should have
over shadowed the younger, Superbowl-less Seahawks. But they didn’t. Brett
Favre (snicker) turned the ball over (snicker, snort) SIX TIMES LAST NIGHT
(bursting with laughter). He didn’t
even get a combined 200 yards! His team
couldn’t manage to score even TEN POINTS.
For all intents and purposes…The GREEN BAY PACKERS SUCKED last night,
and to further make my day, Brett Favre left the game: bleeding, on the verge of
tears, his face covered in a towel to avoid the dumbfounded stares of his blind
followers, and, most importantly…A LOSER.
So here we are at point number two.
2.
Expect The
Unexpected. On any
given Sunday (or Monday), the football game you are watching might very well
become a piece of history. Someone may
break a record, someone may suffer a career ending injury, someone may say
‘fuck’ in front of the parabolic microphone.
These are things that can’t be PLANNED.
I’ll never forget one of last year’s Monday night games when they came
back from commercial and Al Michael’s clearly said, “shit” and finished eating
a sandwich before he realized he was on the air. That doesn’t happen on Masterpiece Theatre folks. It can’t.
Three weeks ago Mike Ditka gave his fans the finger. Last Sunday, Ricky Williams (the be all end
all of football draft picks this year) ran for 179 yards with 40 carries. UNHEARD OF!
Football is like live theatre, dramatic, organic and the eternal
possibility of someone screwing up immensely.
But it’s
not all on the field folks. A lot of
the fun is up there in the booth…yes, the COMMENTATORS. The REPORTERS…the PLAY BY PLAY man. How quickly these people forget that they’re
basically just speaking to fill time between plays. They are not rocket scientists.
Hell, they couldn’t even be nutritional
scientists. The majority of them are old players that took so many shots to the head that
they had to retire.
3.
Football
Commentary. Al Michaels is my
favorite, and not only because of his stellar performance in the movie Baseketball, but because he’s a TAD
smarter than anyone else out there, and shows it…by MAKING UP WORDS. Two weeks ago, he informed all of us that
there is indeed “a vaguery in ball spotting”.
I’ve looked in three dictionaries and have yet to see this word
listed. Football commentators suffer a
lot under my scrutiny, mainly because they like to CONSISTENTLY root against
the Bears, and then scramble to make bold statements like “These guys have just
got to settle down and play football,” as opposed to the other team who is all
riled up to play Jai Alai. In my
opinion, unless you’ve actually played the position that you’re finding fault
in, shut the hell up until someone feeds you the info. As much as I rail against them, the
commentators and analysts add a great Mystery
Science Theatre Three Thousand element to football, providing endless
fodder for my friends and I to dwell on.
My personal favorite? Jim
Brown’s announcement last week that it was National Breast Awareness Week. Breast Awareness, folks…check out someone’s
tits TODAY.
Please note that I refrained from
listing the raw sex appeal of players like Ricky Williams, Ed McCaffrey and
Mike Alstott because I didn’t want to sound too girly…but ladies…these men are
dreamy…count on it. To sum up, football
is more than a violent, gruesome display of testosterone. It’s hilarious, spontaneous entertainment
for man and woman alike.
Oh, and PACKERS SUCK. WOO HOO!
© 1999 Absurd Pamphlet Press