We Interrupt This Blog for Football

This Sat. is the NFL draft. If you need any indication of how popular the NFL is, this will help. Pretty much the entire weekend of nothing but people talking about players being drafted for NFL teams. No action except brief highlight clips, just commentary for minutes in between that brief moment of excitement... a player's named being read! ESPN/ESPN2 will be covering it for probably 12 hours or more this weekend. Baseball may be in full swing right now, but the sports world takes a pause for football. I will be with them.

Now the baseball purists out there may turn their noses up at football as an unsophisticated sport played by thugs barely under control. Look past the surface and you will find a game that is more than it seems. To uninterested parties, football may look like nothing more that big brutes crashing into each other, making openings for their smaller compatriots. This is far too simple a description, for football players, play the most complex pro sport there is. They have to learn plays from a playbook the thickness of a phone book, they must recognize a variety of schemes that will decide how they will act on each play, and on each play they must make sure they are in synch with several players around them. Just think of what a typical offense has to deal with when they ready themselves for a pass play:

Is the defense in man to man or zone. Where are the safeties, are they cheating up for run support, possibly safety blitz? Where are the outside linebackers? Are they going to strictly read and react, one blitz, one drop back into pass coverage? Does the running back need to stay in to block? Will the QB and receivers read the coverage correctly if they are running hot routes? Will the safety take help on one of the deep men clearing the way for a short route or will he take the receiver running the 10 yard pattern giving you a shot at the deep corner or post.

This is by no means all of what needs to be understood EACH play. I like this complexity, the intense action. TV is a boon to football since you can better understand the entire action of the game through TV replay. Football is constant, intense action and if you don't pay attention you can miss something important more so than any other pro sport.

Can football be boring? Yep, but when it's boring it beats the shit out of when baseball is boring. Even when the two teams are stumbling like sumos trying to slow dance, you have action. Twenty-two guys in motion, every play. No slow rollers, no pop-ups, someone is going to get their dick knocked loose on every play. In a word, cool. Don't get me wrong, I don't like to see injuries, but I do like to see hard hitting and that is always present. When a football team is on, there are glimpses of speed, power and agility that are exhilirating. This constant action makes for great fun, however it can make for some dicey viewing in person.

George Carlin sums all of this up wonderfully http://www.baseball-almanac.com/humor7.shtml Baseball's leisurely, almost picnic like atmosphere is where the sport is definitely superior. Football is adrenaline for fans of the sport. Having a large cluster of amped, slightly inebriated men around me is just not my idea of fun. Right there is one reason I'm not a big fan of strip clubs. The last time I was at a football game, I had these homeboys by me who were just constantly obnoxious and near spastic. In fact, big homeboy got so excited on a score he tried to high five me, missed my hand and hit me in the forehead. Don't get me started with Raiders fans. The bad Raiders fans act like they are entitled to act like assholes and exercise said right frequently. Even the good one's can be a tad too arrogant. It's just better to keep away from too many football fans.

I avoid all of this by watching from the comfort of my home. There I can swear at the screen, beat the shit out of inanimate objects and offer a ceasless commentary on what I would do better as coach. I bask in the glory of the gazelle-like receivers and the crashing of bodies for hours on end. What can I say, when the teams put out a great effort all of this is worth it and I am a happy camper. Can't ask for more than that.