But really, the game itself is not so different from any other game. One team tries to get an object from one end of the field to the other. American football does this by running and throwing the ball, and occasionally kicking it. This is essentially true for rugby, though there is significantly more kicking there, and for what the rest of the world calls football, which actually only uses the foot to move the ball, making it the most aptly named football. That aspect of the game is not too hard to grad.
Even the more minute aspects of the game can be picked up from watching it for a little bit. The total number of downs, rule violations like holding and roughing the passer, and crucial issues like when a catch is a catch will either be explained by the TV or by common sense. Oh...so when the guy holds the other guy that's called holding. I can be more valuable, as I was this game, when the more bizarre violations come up, like an intentional grounding or a safety. But even then I tend to just say what the TV presenters would say eventually.
What I can do is shed some light on the cultural differences between British sports and American sports, particularly football. And one major difference happens almost immediately in every football game: celebrations/grand standing. Everything from routine tackles to touchdowns seem to warrant a hyper-masculine display of dominance. People like Jared Allen and Roy Williams (the receiver who celebrates every catch as if he just cured cancer) are some the worst celebrators.
Now, before everyone gets on me for saying that these sorts of celebrations are an American thing, I know full well that soccer and rugby players are equally as celebratory when they score a goal. More so, some of these celebrations can border on the absurd. That said, most soccer players only celebrate when they score a goal, and in most games that is not more than once or twice a team each game. In football, the American kind, people celebrate after every minor achievement. If the cornerback disrupts the play, he might pop up and wave his arms around wildly as if to suggest that he would never let a completion happen when he was on the field (regardless of how many times a wide receiver might make a catch). A safety tackles a running back in the open field and he acts as if such things could never happen (again, despite the previous history of the game).
Roy Williams, who was on my home team, the Bears, is awful about this. This year, he had 37 receptions for 507 yards and 2 touchdowns. That makes him about the 70th best receiver in the game, excluding running backs and tight ends, and his worst season by far. Some more interesting stats: historically, Roy Williams drops 8.2% of his passes, and he leads the league in this particular category; also, he is the third most unreliable receiver in the game, catching 48% of the passes thrown his way. And with the Bears, that was no exception. Despite his mediocre season and piss-poor stats, when he did make a completion, he would pop up off the grass mimicking the first down indication from the line judges. Seeing a man celebrate performing the task he earns millions to do when he leads the league in not doing that job (and it is assumed that he probably won't) grates on the nerves. Just what is he celebrating? Not sucking?
It raises questions about what is worthy of a celebration. Most people who don't like or see the value in sports would say that none of these mutant freaks should celebrate being doing something as simple as getting a ball across a line. After all, what really changed when that happened? Society is not better, people still die of diseases, our climate is running rampantly out of control, and my iPod can only hold 120 GB. Scoring a touchdown did nothing to improve the lives of anyone.
I'm not in that camp, and I see some value to sports as an entertainment, and even more so as a means of social narrative. So the touchdown, for my interests in the game, serve as important narratological moments, indicators of when the narrative shifts. However, not everything that happens is significant. When discussing note taking and high lighting, my college professor Mark Willhardt used to say that when everything is highlighted, nothing is important; that is, when you suggest that everything is worthy of attention, then nothing is singled out as being important. The same rule should apply to football: when you make an important play, one that changes the nature of the game...then you can celebrate. Sack a quarterback for a ten yard loss on third and one? Celebrate. Sack a quarterback for no loss on first and ten, when two plays later his team is celebrating a touchdown? Well...that celebration seems a bit premature.
This, though, brings us to the heart of the issue: narrative suggestions. I like to consider all of football to be one massive narrative construction. Each aspect of the game is like telling a story, and the celebration is included in that. What the player is saying with his celebration is not that what he just did is important in that moment, but that what he did is important for the outcome of the game. An historical inevitability that will eventually culminate with several other similar celebrations to cap off the narrative of victory that was started with that first every-day tackle in the open field. What the middle line backer is saying when he sacks the quarterback and does a stupid dance is not just that he is proud of what he's done, but he is foreshadowing the eventual celebration at the end of the game. Sometimes, the opposing team will buy that narrative and succumb to the psychological trickery. Other times, and as is often the case with people defending Roy Williams, they will wait for him to screw up again, and change the nature of the narrative being written.
Maybe if soccer games had to end with a winner and a loser, there might be more reason to celebrate the smaller things. With the option of a draw, what is the point of foreshadowing a mutual non-win? There is a certain competitive drive that stems from telling a story of victory and leads to this type of display, and a situation in which a draw is possible just doesn't foster that competition. Not that soccer players aren't as competitive; it's just a different story being told, and one most Americans are not keen to watch unfold.
There was one other thing my British friends didn't understand: the Giants were crowned the World Champions when they won the Super Bowl. For a league that doesn't even have a team outside the US, this seems like a spurious claim. Baseball and basketball at least have teams in Canada to give the thinnest veneer of World Wide Competition. But the NFL is only American, and purely American. Until the NFL is global commodity, and with the possibility of expanded games in London, it might be more of a possibility, tit is a little premature to call the Giants the World Champions. Even if we can assume that, with no other possible teams and little interest, the Giants would mop the floor with everyone else (hell, probably even the Seahawks could do that), that claim can't be made until the Giants have bested all the world's competition. When that happens, and I hope it will be in my lifetime, then there will be reason to celebrate.
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