No injury time, no second chances: just a minute and change left on the clock bleeding because the rules dictated it and demanded you respond. Every football game dies one second at a time, bounded by a thousand rules, and played out by teams of fragile people working under pressure to be as good as they can possibly be under the circumstances.
Its stricture gives it its drama, its limits force creativity, and its scarcities give it is masochistic cost/benefit payoff. More relevantly, football’s economy gives it emotional resonance. If you’re watching it, you watch it because you see a neatly packaged simulation of life itself–ruled, defined by a beginning and an end, and often chaotic in spite of all the rules–with two satisfying twists.
First, an actual victor is declared, something very rare in life. Second, you know roughly when it’s going to end. Because of this football, for all its violence and terror, will never be as deeply terrifying as life itself. (Even when Terry Dean throws four interceptions in a single game.) Without the clock, without triple zeros set between the bounds of a field precisely 160 feet by 360 feet awaiting you, meaning is debased, and we’re not left staring at the death sentence spelled out in incandescent bulbs on the Florida Field scoreboard 15 years ago wondering what the hell just hit us.
I have also come through the emotional overdose and rehab described by commenter #13:
94 Auburn loss changed me profoundly. I was so sickened by the game that I immediately went to bed and stayed in a darkened room for 2 days. Introspection led to an epiphany that investing my whole emotional self into how the Gators did was a slow train to mental illness. It was because of this epiphany that I was able to weather The Choke at Doak, Tommy Frazier, 96 FSU (the game that didn’t matter), and 97 Tennessee. The tradeoff is that the high’s of the MNC’s are not as sky high as they would have been. But then those great feelings come crashing down eventually anyway. We can’t keep that church camp bible thumping fervor forever.
For me as a UGA fan, the overdose moment was Florida 2008. Even worse than South Carolina 2000 (QC just threw another INT) or the Georgia Tech 1999 (It wasn't a fumble!), or even the first half of Alabama 2009, the 2008 Florida game was an utter failure on a big stage that shattered my beliefs about the Mark Richt coached UGA football program. It could not be pinned on any single player, coach, or referee - it was simply a complete team humiliation. In many ways, I have become thankful for that game. I still enjoy UGA football, and even though the ultimate highs (if an MNC is to happen in my adult life) may not be as sweet, the lows will never again be so low. As great a game it is and will always be, I will never again forget that college football is a game, played by 17-22 year old kids, and anyone over 30 that cries, breaks something, starts a fight, or gets arrested because of a game, should reassess their life priorities.
4 comments:
What if somebody runs on the field and steals a section of the 50 yard line from the university after the 96 FSU-Florida game? And what if they later burn it after the subsequent Sugar Bowl that rendered that game meaningless along with the commemorative score card and t-shirt?
I will say that I have never cried over a sporting game (except out of pain when Tyrone Prothro's shin snapped in half in the UA-UF game), but I do have an irrational hatred for the magical powers of Tim Tebow.
Although I hate to do it, I have to give credit to Colin Cowherd. I listened to him a lot about 5 years ago, and he used to talk about how as responsible adults get older they have to "trim the sports tree". He is correct. There is no pride in being the guy that watches 40 hours of sports year round while his kids are upstairs playing Pokemon (no offense to Pokemon - just dads that get drunk every weekend). In college I watched everything, including hockey, but now it's pretty much down to Seminole football, Braves baseball, and the NFL playoffs, and I rarely watch an entire game anymore.
So I agree with your post. I love sports, am still attached to my teams, and can't stand it when they lose, but I don't burn things and call in sick to work when it happens.
P. S. - I still burn things a lot, just not for football games.
In his attic somewhere, Dr. RosenRosen still has a shattered remote from an uncontrolled emotional outburst following the puntrooskie in the 1988 FSU-Clemson football game. But you know what, if I had it do all over again, I'd still throw the remote after that play becuase, dadgummit, Bobby Bowden found a way to win when the game was on the line. I doff my cap and throw my remote in your general direction, sir.
Hey "Anonymous"
I was there on the 50 yard line in 96 as well. Probably standing shoulder to shoulder with you. I wouldn't know though as my eyes were blurred with pepper spray.
Can you guess who this is? I know who you are.
Hey "Apprentice" hows Landgrab going for you?
Nero's Apprentice has no open games - are you challenging me?
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