Dear Football,
When the world is too much with us, as it is now, many of us really need you. We need you like others need religion. We need you the way some people need Dungeons and Dragons. Or a steamy romance novel or hot yoga. We need to clear our heads.
And you are failing us.
You were always a complicated game, not one a bunch of 9-year-olds would invent if left alone in a field with a ball for a day. That would be soccer. Soccer is a simpleton. You are a paradox. A Mensa member who can squat 600 pounds. A brutal game governed by nuanced and intricate rules. Your yard lines are straight, yet you are a labyrinth. Data analysts worship you. And we, sitting in our La-Z-Boys every Sunday, love you for making us feel smarter than guys surrounded by beer cans and salted snacks have a right to feel.
Smart, because we can understand you -- the most strategic and complex of sports -- even if we can’t fully explain you to the uninitiated. But something’s gone awry. For long stretches of every game, you are unwatchable. Like C-SPAN or Court TV.
You force us to watch a millisecond of tape 13 times from five angles. And to listen as Mike Pereira runs through the taxonomy of what constitutes a catch. Again.
Did he control the ball? Did the ground cause the ball to wobble? Did he perform a football move, i.e., tuck the ball, attempt to ward off a defender, take a step forward, etc.? It can take several minutes to reach a verdict. There is a command center in New York City that may have more technology than Mission Control in Houston.
Football, my friend, you have made truth and certainty an end in themselves. Some things are unknowable, like did the ground make the ball bobble? And they become more unknowable as we zoom in closer because the world is spinning on its axis, and at some macro level, no object is at rest. In your quest for truth, you have elevated an unlikely character to hero status, the referee — now called a rules analyst. Rule of thumb: If you need a rules analyst, something is wrong. When a Hall of Fame quarterback like Troy Aikmen has to say, “Let’s bring in Mike . . .” something is deeply wrong.
Football, you are the game we love. We played you in suburban front yards, where the tree was the goal line, the mailbox pole the first down and the driveway the endzone. We played you in urban schoolyards with uneven teams where the oldest kid was the designated quarterback or the youngest kid, the designated blocker. We knew what a catch was.
Jim Sollisch
Jim Sollisch is a creative director at advertising agency Marcus Thomas LLC. (Used with permission)
So, football, here’s a thought: Why not replace the rules analyst and the command center with a team of three 9-year-olds who love football? Put them in the booth. If a play is challenged. let them review it once, and vote. Two out of three settles it. Thirty seconds, and we’ll be back to action. Because, dear football, at your heart you are a stage where physical limits are tested (not patience), where catches like Odell Beckham’s one-handed wonder his rookie season are celebrated, not debated. And, as much as it pains me to write this, where The Immaculate Reception forever lives as an article of faith.
Sollisch is the author of a new essay collection, “How donating a kidney fixed my jump shot.” He writes from Cleveland Heights.
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