I love football.
I think I love it more than poker. I love it more than food. I love it more than hanging out with most of my friends. I love it more than movies. I love it more than art. If you know me at all, these statements mean a LOT.
But when I really think about it, football is very irrational. I'm cheering for a bunch of men that will never care about anything I do. I spend money on clothing and other memorabilia that display an emblem that I will never be universally identified with me. I spend an extraordinary amount of time watching a program where people get paid millions to do something that I do for fun. I spend 2 whole days recovering from the pain of playing a game where people hurt each other trying to get a leather ball from one side of an arbitrary field to the other side of the arbitrary field.
Even as a sport it makes little sense. There are so many rules and regulations to something that looks so simple. You can hit people yet you can get flagged for unnecessary roughness. The rules for college and pro vary greatly and the rules for schoolyard football are a bastardized combination of the two. There are 22 people on a field but only 1 ball. Some people are allowed to throw but some people aren't allowed to catch. You can defend a play by hitting someone, but only within a certain distance of the line of scrimmage. Sometimes if you get the ball to the end zone, its worth 6 points. Other times, its worth 2.
In the past year, some of the most extreme emotions of my life were the result of some football events:
Sadness (http://goo.gl/QKkOp)
Joy (http://goo.gl/9knm2)
Hope (http://goo.gl/qWZCy)
Disappointment (http://goo.gl/nQgys)
I literally shed tears of some of those occasions.
Again, completely irrational.
But so are a lot of things in life.
There's no universal law that says we need to spend an irresponsible amount of money on a wedding. Its essentially a big ass party. We spend thousands on pieces of carbon that we know isn't as rare as companies want us to believe, yet the diamond is the most treasured gem stone in the world. The iPhone isn't necessarily the best phone on the market, yet its the default device that we choose to not only run our lives but is the epitome of "cool".
I'm not exactly sure what I'm trying to get at. Maybe all I'm trying to say is that my desire to see the Jets win a Super Bowl is no more or less rational than a woman's desire to have the perfect wedding. Maybe I'm trying to prove that football is a metaphor for life. Maybe I'm trying to rationalize my love for a meaningless game by de-rationalizing human culture.
At the very least, I want to say this:
Football makes me happy.
and the Jets kick ass.
In Rex I trust
I think I love it more than poker. I love it more than food. I love it more than hanging out with most of my friends. I love it more than movies. I love it more than art. If you know me at all, these statements mean a LOT.
But when I really think about it, football is very irrational. I'm cheering for a bunch of men that will never care about anything I do. I spend money on clothing and other memorabilia that display an emblem that I will never be universally identified with me. I spend an extraordinary amount of time watching a program where people get paid millions to do something that I do for fun. I spend 2 whole days recovering from the pain of playing a game where people hurt each other trying to get a leather ball from one side of an arbitrary field to the other side of the arbitrary field.
Even as a sport it makes little sense. There are so many rules and regulations to something that looks so simple. You can hit people yet you can get flagged for unnecessary roughness. The rules for college and pro vary greatly and the rules for schoolyard football are a bastardized combination of the two. There are 22 people on a field but only 1 ball. Some people are allowed to throw but some people aren't allowed to catch. You can defend a play by hitting someone, but only within a certain distance of the line of scrimmage. Sometimes if you get the ball to the end zone, its worth 6 points. Other times, its worth 2.
In the past year, some of the most extreme emotions of my life were the result of some football events:
Sadness (http://goo.gl/QKkOp)
Joy (http://goo.gl/9knm2)
Hope (http://goo.gl/qWZCy)
Disappointment (http://goo.gl/nQgys)
I literally shed tears of some of those occasions.
Again, completely irrational.
But so are a lot of things in life.
There's no universal law that says we need to spend an irresponsible amount of money on a wedding. Its essentially a big ass party. We spend thousands on pieces of carbon that we know isn't as rare as companies want us to believe, yet the diamond is the most treasured gem stone in the world. The iPhone isn't necessarily the best phone on the market, yet its the default device that we choose to not only run our lives but is the epitome of "cool".
I'm not exactly sure what I'm trying to get at. Maybe all I'm trying to say is that my desire to see the Jets win a Super Bowl is no more or less rational than a woman's desire to have the perfect wedding. Maybe I'm trying to prove that football is a metaphor for life. Maybe I'm trying to rationalize my love for a meaningless game by de-rationalizing human culture.
At the very least, I want to say this:
Football makes me happy.
and the Jets kick ass.
In Rex I trust
