Our Long National Nightmare Is Over: Our New National Nightmare Begins

Tony the Cornhole out at MNF for the transparent lie that he couldn't hack the air travel. Hell, Tony, if that was all that it was, I'm fairly sure we could have arranged people to come shake the wings of any plane you were on.

Chucky Gruden takes the chair; announces his plan to spend 17 weeks talking about the back-up QB. But that, at least, will have *something* to do with the game you are watching, and should involve less Brett Favre Ball Washing...

The Point

(Feel free to play the video while you read this. And fire up.)



Something I used to do a lot on this here blog (you can, as Yogi says, look it up) is go off on esoteric rants inspired by things that no self-respecting sports fan would read, or at least admit to.

Eventually, I'll tie it all back to sports in some faltering way that would make a pot-smoking undergrad wince, and causes my religious friends to chuckle sadly in the knowledge that they won't have to put up with me in the better next place.

And now that 90% of you have had your eyes glaze over and look for the scroll bar, let's get into it, shall we?

In a recent piece in the London Review of Books, a writer worked over some philosophical constructs in an effort to explain something small and inconsequential; ergo, why the world exists. (He eventually came to the same conclusion that I do in this post, but since you don't read the London Review of Books, you'll just have to suffer with my mangling of it. Ha ha!)

Accepting the belief in a higher power, and hence, the disqualification of the emotionally unsatisfying Random Chance Accident, you get two motivations.

1) Because it had to (determinism, fate, destiny), and

2) Because someone wanted it (free will)

Now, determinism is a relatively simple argument to make, or at least it was when I took intro philosophy in college some 20 (aii!) years ago.

Ergo, that if you simply know enough about the creator and its thought processes, you can predict everything said creator will do.

Let's reduce this from The World and Its Creator to This Blog and Little Ol' Me for a moment, to make things easier to understand. Now, if you punch in all of my vitals into a computer, you would get that I read learned nonsense, run out of things to say about the NFL on Tuesday morning, feel compelled to fill the bloghole, am too far away from the start of the NBA season to go there, and am waiting for the White Sox and Twins to work out the last playoff spot before writing up MLB playoff picks.

You could predict (did?) that I'd write something like this today, and if you knew my reading materials yesterday, might even have guessed the subject matter. I'm a fairly simple piece of meat, and predicting my performance shouldn't be too difficult, provided, of course, that I don't get wind of what you are doing. That would give me the heebie-jeebies, and I'd probably react with a tangent that made no sense to throw the prediction off the path.

Tony Kornheiser eats puppies.

Which, of course, you could also predict, in that Tony Kornheiser really does eat puppies.

But let's escape that rabbit hole of Pot Logic for now, and put determinism on the back burner as, once again, Emotionally Unsatisfying.

Back to option 2, free will. The preferred option for all of us, really, in that it makes us all much more interesting pieces of meat, and for deities alike, since a determinist Creator doesn't seem like any kind of fun at parties. (There are, of course, philosophical arguments against the existence of free will, but they are made by people with scraggly beards who make no money and are no fun in the sack, especially the women. So we're sticking with Free Will.)

So the world -- and this blog, and the eventual crux of this post, which is Your Team Fandom -- exists not from something pre-ordained, or even the long-ago child abuse of a parent who indoctrinated you in the ways of That Laundry.

It exists because you chose it, and continue to choose it, even if you are not aware of the choice. (Just *try* to Geddy Lee out of your head now. I dare you.)

And now, to the thrilling climax... why choose, of all things, to make a world, or root for That Laundry?

It's a mess, complicated, never seems like it will pay off with the goods. Even when it does seem to work out, you know it's just going to break your heart later. The fear of losing is much greater than the joy of winning, after all. And the nonstop praying! It's enough to make you stop watching and go read a philosophy book instead. (OK, maybe not.)

And well, that's it. It's art.

Art is something that lives for its own sake, maddening or not. It can't be explained fully, or even usually very well, but simply experienced. Its motivations are inherently private, and yet shared across consciousness, in a way that makes us all a little more aware that We Are Not Alone. Do it long enough, and it becomes a vice, in that it's mostly a diversion in a life filled with things to divert you.

So, final question time... if sports fandom is, just like life, an art... are you taking joy in your creation? Or are you torturing yourself and others with it?

If the answer is yes, signify your joy or misery by making no sign or comment.

(...)

Thy will be done.

Epic Drop: Top 10 Questions for Tony Kornheiser

The casual reader -- not that we have any casual readers; I know that all of you recite these words in weekly prayer group meetings -- will detect a faint touch of hostility towards Mr. Kornheiser in today's link. You might have to read it a little closely, but on further review, I'm pretty sure it's there.

Now, as a fan of the Eagles, Sixers and A's, I like to think that I can endure a fair amount of annoyance. I'm also the father to two little girls, and while my patience with them is not infinite, it does exist, and there's more of it than there used to be. A lot more.

So why, exactly, does this chancre sore still rankle, 19 hours after the Cowboys edged the Eagles?

I'm really not that upset by the loss; it was disappointing, perhaps, but not world-ending. I have no great goat for the Eagles, other than a continuing worry that the game has passed Brian Dawkins by, and that the game was never even in the same area code as Sean Considine. But that's for another day and post. Right here and now, we're going to continue to examine the toothache that is Kornheiser, and to a lesser but not very much lesser extent, all NFL telecasts.

When I lived in Northern California, I had some nice neighbors who had been on the block for coming up on two decades. We watched their dog and swam in their pool, and they were terrific people. Like nearly everyone else in the Bay Area, they were originally from somewhere else -- in this case, Wisconsin. They were also diehard Packer fans, and used to have season tickets at Lambeau.

You can imagine my surprise when I heard that they were looking to move to... Southern California. Because the Bay Area winters (in which the weather rarely drops below, say, 45, and it never slows at low elevation, and you can enjoy nearly perfect weather for up to 10 months of the year) had gotten too cold for them, Lambeau Past Be Damned.

The point is that with age does not come a thicker skin, or at least, not always. It also comes with the wisdom to realize that you don't have to put up with something you don't like.

Now, I don't know a single person who is really enthused about a set of NFL announcers. Do you? Is there anyone out there who you're really excited to hear call a game, or is it just a matter of which particular moron you get to avoid? Yay, it's the Fox #1 team -- no Tony Siragusa! Yay, it's the Fox #2 team -- no Troy Aikman! Etc. (SNF/MNF, of course, offers no escape, unless you consider double-header telecasts and the Mike and Mike and Mike gigglefest a relief.)

So your options are to figure out a way to simulcast the radio feed (which is looking more and more appetizing, if a little bit Pravda-esque), or pipe in the good Westwood One radio telecasts of Harry Kalas and Marv Albert... and, um, why?

Seriously, NFL, why?

You can telecast the game into Spanish. How about giving us an actual football option -- not some half-assed hybrid of Sports Entertainment, but an actual, focused, not dumbed down for the laypeople feed. I don't care who delivers it. I might even pay extra. I'm begging.

Because the simple fact of the matter is that three-plus hours is an eternity of time to spend with people who you would not piss on if they were on fire. And a league that makes its fans endure that routinely... runs the risk of fans realizing that they have other options. Many, in fact.

For The Love Of God, Talk About The Freaking Game

So there's a minute or so left in the Eagles Redskins game on Monday night. Despite a third quarter intervention from the great, but not particularly relevant, Charles Barkley, I've been down with the efforts of the MNF crew. Ron Jaworski has shown me some stuff I wouldn't have noticed otherwise, Mike Tirico has been matter of fact and OK, and while I still have no real use for Tony Kornheiser, he's miles ahead of where he was last year with Joe Theismann and Mike Patrick, when the announcers actually made me watch fewer games. They're chatting about stuff other than the game, which annoys me, but the game is kind of dull. It happens.

But then Kornheiser starts making my teeth grind -- and he's doing it in a classic, endemic way that has become so ingrained in sports broadcasts practice, I bet most of you reading this didn't even notice.

"Wow, this would be such a great win for the Redskins."

OK, fine, and true -- I know Skins Fans, and they are legitimately excited by their team. For once against the Eagles, their quarterback situation seemed equal or better; if I rooted for that team, I'd be pumped too. Meanwhile, McNabb is starting to find his rhythm and the Eagles offense is looking a little frisky. Anyone want to point out why for me?

Game continues, and now it's starting to creep in more and more... the disease of Announcer Is No Longer At The Game.

"How long until McNabb leaves?"

Um, probably when the clock hits 0:00, unless there's overtime. Same as everyone else, really, unless the ambulance or the aliens come for him. (The later with the probing, he's probably used to, given the fun of dealing with the Philly media. Ever been in a room with Bill Conlin and Howard Eskin? Not even light can escape the douche baggery. But I digress.)

Now, I can understand -- very begrudingly understand -- the need to add Narrative to a game. I get that we all add stories to fact, that we all live in the world of our choosing, and that the race to What's Next is true for all humans.

But, um, THERE'S A MINUTE LEFT IN A ONE POSSESSION GAME, and the Eagles are driving. What you are saying... could be said in the six DAYS until the next week's slate of games. So, for the love of the moment and actually feeling some honest amount of excitement over the outcome of a game and all of the other reasons why people, you know, eat or have sex or drink or go to movies or read or ENJOY LIFE ON THE PLANET... can you please, pretty please, pay attention to the freaking game?

If you took this same approach to the other things in life that you take sensory pleasure from, you'd be an irredeemable twerp, insufferable in the extreme, and seem like you're suffering from some kind of psychological affliction. In broadcast sports -- you're a sharp. A guy in the know. An expert. A noted pundit.

And an insufferable twerp. TALK ABOUT THE FREAKING GAME THAT'S IN FRONT OF YOU!