i AM a football fan, i ALWAYS HAVE BEEN a football fan and WILL ALWAYS BE a football fan.
even so, there is absolutely NO GOOD GODDAMNED REASON that i ought to be watching the patriots play whoever in the hell they're playing at six thirty five in the evening tonight. i wanted to watch the simpsons but what did i get? a halftime show, a halftime show in a fucking PRESEASON game, a contest in which i get to watch a rookie fifteenth string linebacker miss one tackle after the other.
here's a repost of a blog describing how i feel about pro football...
(August 15, 2005)
MORE HATING ON THE NFL AND ORGANIZED SPECTATOR SPORTS IN GENERAL
why, oh why in the name of Mighty Dog Christ do seventy seven THOUSAND mental midgets let the Neo Facist League shake them down for at least thirty five dollars or so to attend an EXHIBITION football game?
why?
that's your own hard cold cash snatched away from you by the hoary old greed mongers running the pro football racket. money you're paying to sit near the rim of shea stadium, or ford field or maybe even some rickety stone monument from the age of big hats like the field on which the ohio university bobcats in athens play. and since the exhibition season begins in the middle of august, you're probably suffering though the miserable farce of a game being passed off as professional football three hundred rows down in ninety five degree heat.
it's ninety five degrees, the lion's tenth and eleventh string is on the field against the chargers' never-going-to-make-the-team scrubs, and the san diego clings to a 10-3 lead with 3:19 left in the game. all of the scoring was in the first quarter while you were still grappling with the huge drunken thugs blocking the entrance of the stairwell leading to your skyscraper-level seats. both teams have done nothing but trade fumbles, interceptions and punts since then. the guy with the sickening B.O.sitting next to you is drunk, loud and obnoxious, and you're not sure if he is going to try to start a fight with you for no good goddamned reason.
thirty five bucks. at the least.
hell, i don't know, i've never been to a pro football game, nor do i have any intention of ever doing such an foolish thing.
i can picture a hundred or so things which i'd rather be doing on a balmy sunday afternoon here is san francisco than hanging around with a bunch of semi illiterate jocks wildly screaming at twenty-two plastic-clad steroid monsters trying to beat the living horse shit out of each other, under the sanction of law. the months of september, october and most of november are often bring fine, warm weather and clear skies to san francisco, and i don't want to waste days like that in a football stadium worried about whether or not the cross eyed inebriate behind me is going to vomit down on my back.
imagine another man's vomit soaking every stitch you're wearing on a ninety degree day. nice, huh?
nor do i want to sit inside in front of a television taking in this hyper violent madness. don't get me wrong, i loved to watch football of every description during my Formative Years, and remained a fan even into my late thirties. one freezing sunday evening in chillicothe, ohio i slammed my empty popcorn bowl at the television in rage when the niners stopped the bengal's pete johnson only inches from the goal line in 1981, then i moved to san francisco and joined the wild, joyful celebration in north beach after the niners dismantled the dolphins 38-16 for thier second world championship. when the buckeyes won the fiesta bowl in 1996 on a last second drive led by a sophomore quarterback to ease the pain of the michigan loss, (which denied the bucks of a chance at chance at a national title) i screamed and pumped my fist in the air like we'd WON the mythical championship.
we. huh.
that's how deep we let ourselves get sucked into the pockets of the money grubbing slicksters who run organised college and pro sports in america today-football, hockey, baseball and stock car racing. what are "we" doing on the field to help the team win? are "we" ridng shotgun with jimmy stewart, exhorting him to drive his team owner's chevy a little harder?!?
hell no, "we're" not!
it looks like my mind has begun to wander off on a few tangents all at once here. the next logical direction would be to attack the entire premise of Organized Sports in America today, which is simply to Collect Millions of Dollars from Unwitting Rubes and Simps. that's it, folks. americans of every persuasion in every state will pay hundreds and hundreds of millions, perhaps even billions to watch a multi-millionaire slap a curveball along the first base line, or to catch a pass in the corner of the end zone, or even crush a guy's rib cage with his helmet. there's a lot of really smart, greedy men who know this about us sports fans, and those folks are going to squeeze every goddamned dime they can from you. think about the beer companies, the fast food hustlers and the luxury sports car and SUV pimps, and you're and you're talking about a cash rich corporate orgy made in heaven. we'll sell our asses to satan to watch these athletes do what makes them pros, and pay him to buy our bungholes because we don't want to get up off the couch, or out of that cheap plastic ass-bucket seat in the oakland colisium to do it ourselves.
maybe seventy seven thousand somebodys might pay to watch fat middle aged men play a football game in the middle of mcallister street.
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