The Big Push

[degringolade]

 
 Impressionism / Samuel Mutzner/ The Gate of Lama Temple, Peking

I quess that yesterday's game was good.  Not that great, not worthy of the hype, a good game.  I will always watch the game, but seems to me that it is getting kinda tired now.  The hype of the "century" was pleasant, but a lot of the time, all you can do is look back and wonder if we missed something somewhere in the current regime.  The game is good now, technically speaking, it is as good as it has ever been.  The athletes are phenomenon, the training and the discipline is amazing.  

But the game is somehow missing something.  I can't put my finger on it.  Perhaps it is in the nature of the fanbase.  When I talk to folks about the games, I do notice that the complaint is always about some perceived infraction of the "rules", where the entire legitimacy of the game seems to rotate around one or two plays where there were "questionable calls".  

Now, I am a thinking that this is kind of where things go wrong.  Not even in football, but in politics and to a certain degree, the way that most folks live their lives.  The "rules" mean everything, even more than the play itself.  The ref's police the game as well as they can considering both teams are using everything in their repertoire to minimize or negate the rules.  But for some reason, the public sees the game as being played by Sir Lancelot vs Sir Parsival and nobility is the name of the game.  If one breaks the rules or a transgression in a game goes unnoticed, the normal thought is that the whole game is tainted and the outcome suspect.

If this sounds familiar on another stage, I don't think anyone is surprised.  A crisis of legitimacy in a bipolar setting such as games and politics is usually one sided.  One's team has to win, if they don't win, it is obviously a mistake by someone else that didn't allow the win, the refs made a mistake, the other team cheated, the other team is the Raiders and deserves to lose.  You see, we have become a country of opposing teams with no desire to love the game, but to only be at the top.

But, it is still a great game, I will watch it and marvel.  I hope that they find their way back to us.  I will speak more of football in ten months, I think that this year I will start watching again in November.