Posted on August
31, 2018
Guardians Of the Gridiron
Ways to un-ruin football
by
Daniel
Clark
There’s no question that there are sinister – and
primarily political – forces conspiring to destroy the game of football. It’s tempting to think that they’re all part
of an intricate strategy, but it’s more likely a visceral reaction by liberals
everywhere, to a game that violates many of their core beliefs.
For
starters, football is a meritocracy, which makes it part of what liberals call
the “you’re on your own” society, where people are forced to “fend for
themselves.” If you’re good enough, you
stick, and if you’re not, you don’t, and nobody’s going to care how unfair you
feel it is. For the most part, football
is colorblind. Outside of the media,
people don’t tend to care if players at a certain position are predominantly of
one race or another. Football is
unabashedly masculine, to the point that it leaves no ambiguity about the fact
that men and women are different critters.
When football evolved from rugby, it became a uniquely American
game. Unlike baseball or basketball, it
continues to be dominated by Americans to this day. There could hardly be any more for liberals
to hate about football, unless God bobbleheads were
given away at every game.
So there is a War on Football underway, and it has
been fierce and relentless, and partly an inside job. While rule changes unravel the game
physically, an ever-increasing tolerance for unsportsmanlike conduct poisons it
for the fans. Worst of all, an endless
series of irrelevant, anti-American demonstrations dominate conversation about
the sport, tinged with a vague racial divisiveness that has intimidated the
protestors’ teammates and coaches into playing dumb about their
intentions. The ringleader, Colin Kaepernick, is now running Communist indoctrination camps
for children, while likeminded journalists cluck, “What could be more American
than that?”
But what can we fans do? The answer is surprisingly simple. Anything we do to improve the football
experience will counteract the sinister forces that are out to destroy the
game. In
Churchillian terms, our enemies can do their
worst, and we’ll do our best. To that
end, here are some simple, commonsense measures we can take to un-ruin the game
of football.
*
Avoid coercive group activities like “The Wave” – When
you participate in such events, not only are you obstructing the view of the
non-participating, un-dorky people behind you, but you’re giving some pinko the satisfaction of ordering you around. Have you ever bothered to notice the kind of
person who typically tries to start a wave?
It’s always some abrasive loser with delusions of grandeur, who thinks
he’s finally fulfilling his lifelong dream of becoming Richard Trumka. Nearly as
bad as the wave are any organized first down cheers, which are uniformly
obnoxious and embarrassing (This means you,
Baltimore Raven and West Virginia Mountaineer fans). If you’re a real football fan, you expect
first downs. Going through such a
production over every one is phony, and indicates that the participants are
more interested in showing themselves off than rooting for their team.
*
Stop blaming everything on beer – Most bad fan behavior is
premeditated, and should not be permitted the weak excuse of drunkenness. When some boob runs onto the field, odds are
he woke up that morning, dead sober, already planning to do it. If you’re offended by alcohol consumption,
you don’t really want to know how much the other fans around you have been
drinking, but it doesn’t cause them all to morph into horrible people. Those horrible drunken people you encounter
at football games are already horrible before they consume a single drop. They’re already using the excuse of alcohol
to relieve themselves of responsibility, and the rest of us should not help
them do that.
*
If you are accompanied by a baby, stay home – Haven’t
people learned anything from The
Flintstones? It wasn’t a good idea
for Fred and Barney to take Pebbles to the fights, and it’s never, ever a good
idea to take an infant or a toddler to a major sporting event. Your child does not want to be at the game,
and the fact that you do is comparatively unimportant. Staying home, where you’ve undoubtedly got a
fairly large TV screen in your living room, is not the end of the world.
*
Keep your bets to yourself – Go ahead and gamble if
you insist, but the rest of us don’t want to hear about it. The betting line is irrelevant to the game,
whose outcome is decided by which team actually scores more points. If your team wins, and you throw a fit
because they won by fewer than four and a half points, then you’re not a
fan. Furthermore, all gamblers lose in
the long run, which does not tend to make them pleasant people to be around.
*
Don’t treat visitors like vermin – If fans for the visiting
team aren’t looking for trouble, don’t give them any. Believe it or not, you should want people to
come from out of town and feel welcome in your city. There’s nothing wrong with giving them the
business in a good-natured way, but when you make it an unpleasant experience
for opposing fans to come to your stadium, that’s bad for your hometown, and
bad for the game.
*
Let the game be about the players – Maybe your home team isn’t
much of a team, but let the game be about the guys on the field anyway. Even if the scoreboard is posting the
spectators’ tweets and selfies, do not send any tweets or selfies. There’s been an unfortunate trend across all
sports in recent years to try to draw younger fans by making them the center of
attention. If you’re of the right age to
be considered a Millennial, and you can’t stand listening to people squawk
about Millennials all day long, then shut them up by defying expectations, and
taking a pass on the invitation to bask in yourself all game long. If you pay attention to what’s happening on
the field, you’ll see lots of very talented players giving a great effort to
produce results most people aren’t capable of producing. On the other hand, any buffoon can tweet.
*
Please make no mention of you-know-who – This goes for both
the pro-Trumpies and anti-Trumpies,
but seriously, the overwhelming majority of offenders are pro-Trumpies. To be
sure, the anti-Trumpies are far worse people on
average, but they don’t tend to be the ones who lead all conversations back to
the topic of Trump. Pro-Trumpies, conversely, behave as if they’ll explode if they go
three and a half hours without expressing loyalty to their man. Hence, most of us have been exposed to abrupt
transitions in conversation like, “You know what I hate even more than prevent
defense? Fake news! I mean, the guy is just trying to make us win. Who could be opposed to that? You know, Trump has got better approval
ratings than Reagan, Eisenhower and Lincoln, combined!” Enough already. Just because the person sitting next to you
doesn’t want to leave the game does not mean that you may consider him a
captive audience for a political harangue.
As Jimmy Cagney said in One, Two,
Three, all I want outta you is silence, and damn
little of that!
*
Stick to tailgating basics – Beer with fruit? Uncured meats? Brioche buns?
Maybe those are the kind of tailgate refreshments they have at Cirque du
Soleil, but serving them to football fans has got to be a violation of the
Geneva Conventions. It’s a wonder that
people who consume such substances would actually proceed into a football
stadium, but when they do, they probably make sappy remarks like, “Why do they feel
the need to hit each other to make a point?”
Besides, we normal tailgaters don’t know exactly what our meat has been
cured of, but we’re very happy that it has.
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