First and thirty? Declined penalties? End zones?
I just don’t get football.
Recently, I’ve been watching games with my husband who suddenly decided to watch all the NFL play-off games leading up to the Super Bowl, which is odd, because he doesn’t usually watch the NFL, preferring Canadian football.
I’ll just say it: it’s a weird game. It’s a bunch of grown men chasing an ovid-shaped ball, (that can’t even roll, may I add,) around a very large field, and doing it very slowly, all the while dressed in skin-tight leggings and a lot of padding. It’s a game of inches – it takes forever to play a game - and half the time I can’t even spot the ball. Don’t even get me started on the rules.
Then there are the players. There’s one guy that just kicks. That’s it. He sits on the bench for most of the game but because he can kick a pigskin a considerable distance through some posts, he has an important role on the team, for which I suspect he is handsomely compensated.
I think I’ve figured out the role of the quarterback. He decides which play is going to be run, tries not to get hurt - but if he does, plays anyway - and is the rockstar of the team, garnering the most press and airtime. Considering the players on the other team seem intent on killing him, I figure he probably earns his pay cheque. (Although, it is my belief that all pro athletes are overpaid in the United States. You could erase the debt of a small country with what some baseball players are paid).
Some of the players are huge. I don’t mean just a little large, I mean huge. I refer to the offensive linemen as “walls”.
Who in their right mind would attempt to go through a wall, I ask you? It seems to me, that it’s important, aside from being huge, that these large dudes have a lot of hair sticking out from underneath their massive helmets. Talk about a bad hair day.
And I think it has its roots in early Rome. There’s a lot of grunting and posturing after a successful play – so much so that there’s actually a rule against it in certain circumstances. Talk about gladiators.
Not that I’m anti-gladiator. My favourite game is Canada’s national game, lacrosse. I’m a supporter of the Calgary Roughnecks. I have season tickets and a jersey that I had signed by all the players last year. Lacrosse players are also warriors, but none of them have a job that looks, at least on the surface, to mainly involve being a human wall.
Lacrosse involves players with crazy skills. The Roughnecks’ Curtis Dickson is called Superman because he usually scores while flying through the air. How he manages to get the ball into that little net is beyond me. It’s superhuman, for sure.
Goaltender Mike Poulin isn’t having the greatest season so far, but I have faith in my favourite Roughneck. I have a soft spot for all goalies. They are the last defense when an opposing player is streaking down the field towards the net.
They’re often blamed when a game ends in a loss, but I think a good defense would keep the other team away from the goaltender entirely so I don’t buy that.
Maybe that’s why I kind of like the kickers in football. The pressure to score has to be immense. Plus, they’re the only guys who actually touch the ball with their foot - in a game called football.
Football’s just not my game, yet I find myself rooting for the Seattle Seahawks during the play-offs. I’ve no idea why. Probably the same reason my husband rocks a Seahawks ball cap; he likes the colours and the logo. Which I guess means we’ll join all those other people watching the big game on Feb. 1.
Now, can someone explain to me why it’s called the Super Bowl when the trophy isn’t a bowl?
