Let’s make one thing clear. This column is not anti-American. No siree. It wears a cowboy hat, eats its steak raw and drives a 4x4. Yee haw.
If one points out that America’s great beer companies are guilty of peddling piss, this does not make one anti-American. If a major corporation gained a monopoly on moms and apple pies, turned all moms into evil witches and started making pies out of poisoned apples, pointing this out would not make one anti-American.
So when I say that football—known to the rest of the world as “that weird, boring, advert-wrecked, hours-long and ridiculously over-complicated gay rugby-in-crash-helmets that Americans call football”—is in desperate need of a radical makeover, I am not defecating on mom, apple pie and the flag. I’m trying to help.
First off, the game’s too damn long. Because of the adverts. And the adverts are crap. So get rid of all the breaks and all the adverts, except the ones at half time. Sure this will cut profits, but the only real talent these guys have is a high pain threshold and the ability to take large amounts of growth hormone and steroids. You could pay them $250 a week and all the protein they can eat. Where else they gonna work?
Next, get rid of the offense and defense. Have one team per side on the field all the time. Like in soccer and rugby league and rugby union and Gaelic football and Australian rules football and field hockey and all the sports that haven’t been totally ruined by incredibly irritating artificial breaks and time-outs, just so corporations can rattle the stick in the swill bucket.
This will take football back to its groovy roots. Play will flow continuously. Teams will have to think fast and adapt rapidly. With the shrill cacophony of lowest-common-denominator shilling gone, fans will thrill to discover the long-buried natural rhythms of the sport that TV and Madison Avenue tried to kill.
No longer spending most of the game sitting on their needle-pocked and massively padded asses, players will increasingly find themselves in the “zone”—where exhaustion meets muscle-memory meets opportunity meets genius—resulting in those ecstatic moments of unthinking magic currently so lacking in so-called American sports.
The crowd will have to remain seated, forced to concentrate on the nonstop on-field action for up to 30 minutes at a time. Which means fewer beer breaks. But this is dealt with by my last reform—allowing in only quality American micro-brews. Beers that need to be savored. And will actually get you drunk.
America, this is my love-gift to you. Enjoy.
FOOTBALL RULES!
Football blogger Sal DiFilippo’s pick for the best place to watch the big game
The Hilton Theater
Address: 3000 Paradise Road
Specs: $1 hot dogs and $1 beer; theater seats, betting window outside, a 15’ x 20’ HDTV with state-of-the-art theater sound.
Phone: 732-5111