Football is dead, Long Live Football - J.R. Moehringer (ESPN Article)

[skinsfan07]

Just read this fantastic piece on ESPN. 120 reasons why football will last forever. Check it out. Discuss.

http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/8286445/jr-moehringer-120-reasons-why-football-last-forever-espn-magazine

1. In a typical regulation football game, the two teams combine to run roughly 120 plays from scrimmage compared with nearly 300 pitches in a typical baseball game. There are no "waste pitches" in football. Every play is meaningful, consequential, suspenseful. Every play is part of a mighty struggle, a drive, and in the end all 120 plays combine to create a narrative, or metanarrative. Baseball, boxing, handball, sooner or later every game gets compared to narrative, but only in football are the plays perfectly linear, drawn up with letters, and only in football is the field itself lined like a sheet of notebook paper. The metanarrative of a single football game then fits within the larger saga of Football, which fits within -- and helps explain -- the masterplot of America.

2. My cousin Jim doesn't think like this. He just loves the Jets. He has season tickets, even though he lives in Chicago. He keeps a green jersey in the trunk of his car, just in case a Jets pep rally breaks out. He once tried to buy Fireman Ed a beer at the Meadowlands. (Ed said no; he needed to stay focused on the game.) If Jim were stranded on a deserted island for 30 years and a rescue boat finally came, after the rescuers had treated his sunburn and poured cool water down his throat he'd ask them: How are the Jets doing?

3. But seven years ago Jim found a soul mate to rival Ed: Colleen. So on a sparkling autumn Sunday, Jim made the ultimate gesture of love. Though the Jets were hosting Jacksonville, he agreed to drive Colleen all the way the hell out to Wapella, Ill., in the middle of the cornfields, to meet her folks.

4. I remember the first time he told me this story. I could just imagine his stoic face as he made super-polite small talk with Colleen's mom, dad, sibs as he looked through old photos, petted the family dog, ate the waffles or scrambled eggs -- all the while darting furtive glances at the TV. The Jets weren't on, of course. In Illinois farm country it was the Bears. But every few minutes the screen flashed the out-of-town scores, and Jim saw that his Jets were locked in a nail-biter. Nursing a one-point lead. Third quarter.

rest at link. Take 30 mins to read it. Awesome read.