[21] in Humor
HUMOR: Dave on Football
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Tue Jan 25 01:04:51 1994
From: abennett@MIT.EDU
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Reply-To: drewsome@MIT.EDU
Date: Tue, 25 Jan 94 00:03:41 EST
It is the time of year when we put the holiday season
behind us; a time when we suck in our stomachs, leave the cozy
confines of our homes, go back out into the working world,
purchase some beer, return to our homes, lie down in front of our
TVs and let our stomachs protrude back out.
It's time for the pro football playoffs.
I love to watch football on TV, and I will tell you
exactly why: I have no idea. Perhaps the appeal of this violent
game stems from some basic biological urge that guys have, dating
back millions of years to when primitive spear-carrying men would
go into the forest to hunt game for their families, and their very
survival depended on their ability to operate a remote control.
Whatever the attraction is, a lot of women seem to be
immune to it. I have seen women walk right past a TV set with a
football game on -- and this always amazes me -- not stop to
watch, even if the TV is showing replays of what we call a "good
hit," which is a tackle that causes at least one major internal
organ to actually fly out of a player's body. The average guy
cannot ignore something of this importance. He is going to stop
and watch, even if he's supposed to be doing something else, such
as reporting that his house is on fire. The average guy might not
be able to name the secretary of state, but he can tell you who
made the hit that turned Joe Theisman into a human Gumby -- an
injury so horrible to watch that the TV people basically canceled
the rest of the season so they could show close-up replays of it
in slow motion.
(Just for the record: The player who made this hit is
Lawrence Taylor. The secretary of state is a dweeb.)
Every Thanksgiving, my family attends a gathering at the
home of our friends Gene Weingarten and Arlene Reidy. The women
all gather in one room and talk about careers, relationships,
world events, etc., while the guys, most of whom see each other
only once a year, all gather in front of the TV and stare,
cowlike, at the football game. We even watch the pickup-truck
commercials, despite the fact that most of us are journalists who
rarely haul any payload larger than, say, a bagel. We do not talk,
except to analyze the fine points of the game.
FIRST GUY: Whoa! Look at that! What IS that?
SECOND GUY: I think that's his spleen.
THIRD GUY: No, a spleen that travels that far is going to
rupture. That has to be a kidney.
I don't want you to think that all we guys do at this
gathering is watch football. We also PLAY football, in the back
yard. It's a demanding game. For one thing, each player has
recently consumed his weight in onion dip. For another thing, the
Weingarten-Reidy yard is not a regulation football field: It is a
small hillside covered with thousands of regulation dog doots,
provided courtesy of two large, high-output, retriever-style dogs,
Harry Truman and Clementine, who add to the complexity of the game
by racing around in frantic circles at high speeds, like subatomic
particles in the Superconducting Super Collider, but not as
intelligent.
We play Standard Back-Yard Touch Football Rules, which
require that, on each down, the offensive players must spend a
minimum of five minutes in the huddle, devising a pass play more
complex than the Clinton health plan, calling for curls, hooks,
slants, feints, cutbacks, laterals, running all the way around the
house, diving into the hammock, giving the ball to a small child
and instructing the child to cry if an opposing player comes near,
etc. Once we designed a play that involved spitting on the
defensive backs.
When the ball is snapped, everybody forgets about the play
and concentrates on (a) not falling down, and (b) avoiding the
pass rush, which is a threat to players on both sides inasmuch as
it is provided by Harry Truman, a relentless competitor who will
definitely bite your leg.
The main difference between our games and pro football is
that sometimes we score a touchdown. This virtually never happens
in the NFL. The referees won't allow it. They're jealous of the
players, because the players get to wear sleek athletic uniforms,
whereas the referees have to wear dorky little hats and pants that
make them appear to have enormous butts. They look like they're
smuggling mattresses back there. So if a player scores a
touchdown, the referees immediately call it back and make a
complex announcement over the loudspeakers ("OK, WE HAVE HOLDING
ON NUMBER 84, WHICH IS OFFSET BY AN ILLEGAL PARAMETER ON NUMBER
73, WHICH IS FURTHER COMPOUNDED BY A FAILURE TO DECLARE NON-
ACCRUABLE DIVIDEND INCOME ON THE PART OF NUMBER 143, ALTHOUGH THIS
IS SOMEWHAT MITIGATED BY ...").
My suggestions for making the NFL more exciting are:
1. Allow the refs to wear cool uniforms and participate in
end-zone dances, or
2. Allow the players to tackle the referees. ("OK, WE
HAVE -- WHAM.")
Speaking on behalf of a lot of guys, I urge the owners to
consider these sensible changes. Also, while they're up, they
should get me a beer.
(C) 1994 THE MIAMI HERALD
DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
