Football - American-Style

It's been a hectic and exciting couple of weeks with all the college football bowl games and NFL playoff games playing on TV.  The college BCS Championship was decided Monday night in what's been called a "game for the ages" and the hype is now building towards Super Bowl XLVIII - the first outdoor, cold weather Super Bowl ever.  I like most sports but football is my favorite. The sheer number of possible offensive plays, defensive alignments, and outcomes appeal to the tactician in me; the game plans, to the strategist.  The athleticism, speed and strength of the players result in incredible and sometimes acrobatic plays.  It's truly a game of inches and seconds where execution is paramount and many games are decided in the closing ticks of the clock.  The relatively low number of  games played in a football season (12 in college; 16 in the pro's) assures that just about every game is meaningful in the quest for a championship.

What can you say about the NFL's "wild card weekend"?  Two of the four games were decided on the last play with no time remaining.  Saturday night the New Orleans Saints won at Philadelphia on a field goal, 26-24.  In one of the Sunday games, played with the thermometer hovering just above 0 degrees F. and with a wind chill diving towards -20, San Francisco defeated Green Bay 23-20 on a 33-yard field goal that cleared the uprights with zero time on the clock.  It's a game of inches...a Green Bay defender nearly blocked the kick, the ball barely making it through his outstretched arms. (Link to a video of the near-block)  A third NFL playoff game saw an amazing comeback by the Indianapolis Colts who rallied from 28 points down to defeat the Kansas City Chiefs by 1 point.

Future college national championships will be decided by a four-team playoff.   So, the national championship game Monday night brought the much-debated BCS era to an end.  And what an end it was!  The ACC's Florida State, dominant and undefeated in 13 games,  were double-digit favorites against the SEC's Auburn.  Auburn had made it to the championship game on the strength of a 106 yard return of a missed field goal by Alabama as time expired and a loss by the until-then undefeated Ohio State team.  The SEC had won nine BCS national championships, including the last seven, and most of "Football Nation" was rooting for Florida State.  (In the interest of full disclosure...I am a big SEC fan.) 

Auburn almost did it.  At one point in the first half they were up by 18 points.  But Florida State changed the momentum of the game late in the first half when they converted a fake punt and went on to score a touchdown.  Then there was the wild conclusion.  In less than 5 minutes at the end of the game, we saw three touchdowns and three lead changes.  Florida State, with a 100 yard kickoff return for touchdown and led by their Heisman Trophy winning quarterback, Jameis Winston, came away with the victory.  The Auburn Tigers had run out of miracles.

Sports are the one place that our ancient tribal tendencies are, most times at least, relatively harmless.  Fans of rival clubs can be notably antagonistic towards one another -  the shorter the distance between the club's home fields, the greater the antagonism.  So tribalism is a good analogy.  But in spite of this tribalism and fierce competitiveness, sports consistently delivers moments of grace, fairness and respect... moments where it is clear that the joy of playing the game and respect for the opponent are the driving force of the players' action.  It even has a name - "good sportsmanship"Who can ever forget the farewell tribute to Mariano Rivera in last year's baseball All-Star Game?

Sports also give us a chance to be passionate about something that, in the grand scheme of things, does not matter that much.  It gives a chance to escape, for a few hours at least, from our everyday concerns and responsibilities.  It provides us with the "circus" of the usually derogatory "bread and circuses".

There is no bigger circus in American sports than professional football's Super Bowl.  Complete with a blockbuster half-time show and specially created commercials, it draws a television audience of over 100 million people and creates a party atmosphere across the entire nation.  Never mind that often times the Super Bowl is a disappointing affair with a lop-sided score.  People are enjoying themselves.  And the game can have some amazing moments - here's a link to one website's collection of the ten greatest Super Bowl plays of all time.



Finally, international competitions, such as the Olympics and the World Cup, give us a chance to exhibit our nationalistic pride where it can do little damage. More on this in the next post.

Ten Good Things

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   Quote of the Day

"To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle."

- Walt Whitman

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Before the do-nothing, filibuster-mongering 113th Congress returns from its recess and before the democracy-challenged Supreme Court gets back in session, I thought it would be timely to present another list of Ten Good Things that happened in the past few months.

1. This has been the "Summer of Saturn." Starting in May and continuing through the end of this month, the ringed planet has been clearly visible in the night sky. Even with a small telescope you can see the rings (which are just 328 feet thick!) and maybe a few of the planet's moons. Because of the relative positions of Earth and Saturn in their orbits, the rings are currently at an angle. What a phenomenal reminder of the beauty of the universe!
 

[Photo is from skyscrapers.org website]

Link to Viewing Saturn webpage on NASA website

2. Was there a more memorable moment in the Major League Baseball's 2013 All-Star Game (or any All-Star game for that matter) than when Yankee pitcher Mariano Rivera took the field in the bottom of the eighth inning? As the greatest closer of all time jogged in from the bullpen in what will be his last All-Star Game, his American League teammates honored him by staying off the field. There he was - alone on the pitcher's mound with everyone in New York's Citi Field on their feet and cheering, American and National League players on the dugout steps cheering and snapping pictures with their cell phones.  Jim Leyland, the manager of the American League All-Stars, showed real class by bringing him in for the bottom of the eighth, thereby ensuring that Mariano would receive the adulation of the crowd - had the National League bats erupted in the eighth, there would be no bottom of the ninth and no appearance by Mariano Rivera. And as happened so many times in the past, three batters came up to face him and three batters went down.

Links to videos:
YouTube "Mariano Rivera Entrance 2013 All-Star Game"
MLB website "Rivera's tribute latest, and greatest, of its kind"

 

3. The Hero of Cleveland - Charles Ramsey rescued three women who had been held captive for a decade. "He was eating a Big Mac at his home in Cleveland, Ohio when Charles Ramsey heard yelling from across the street, grabbed his hamburger and knocked his neighbor's front door down rescuing [the] three Ohio women." McDonald's and 14 local Cleveland restaurants have offered him free hamburgers for life. [examiner.com website]
[Photo of Charles Ramsey is from AP]

4. Democratic Governor Steve Beshear of "red state" Kentucky (also the home of Mr. Filibuster Mitch McConnell), is enthusiastically implementing the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare). "Calling it 'the single-most important decision in our lifetime for improving the health of Kentuckians,' Gov. Steve Beshear today announced the inclusion of 308,000 more Kentuckians in the federal Medicaid health insurance program. The expansion, together with the creation of the Health Benefit Exchange, will ensure that every Kentuckian will have access to affordable health insurance." [News release posted on WFPL(Louisville) website]

5. Half a Loaf is Better, etc. - Republican Governor Chris Christie of "blue state" New Jersey signed off on ten new gun-control laws. Okay, most of these were non-controversial (who's going to argue with keeping potential terrorists from "obtaining firearms identification cards or permits to purchase handguns"?). Five more "controversial" bills are still on his desk - including one calling for "background checks for all private gun sales and require all prospective gun owners to attend a gun safety training class" and another that "would ban a model of .50 caliber rifle, the most powerful rifle available to civilians." Still, it's a step in the right direction by a Republican governor who is looking over his shoulder at the NRA and at a potential run for the Republican Presidential nomination in 2016. [Washington Free Beacon website]

See below for a Mayor Against Illegal Guns graphic showing individual states' progress towards gun-control.

 

6. Narita's "Song of the Seashore" was written in 1916 but I only came across it recently. Gentle, wistful and haunting, the song tells of memories engendered by a walk along the seashore. Links to a couple of excellent versions on YouTube:

Arranged for Flute Quartet - the version I first found

Arranged for Singer and Piano - a particularly beautiful vocal rendition

7. John Kerry has gotten the Israelis and Palestinians to sit down and begin talking peace. After three years of not even talking to each other, at least the two sides are sitting down at the same table. Whether anything finally comes of Kerry's initiative, only time will tell.

8. US National Soccer Team reaches the top 20. "Team USA's flawless execution at the CONCACAF Gold Cup paid dividends in two ways. First, they won the Gold Cup by defeating Panama 1-0 in the final at Soldier Field; second they moved back into the world's top twenty teams in the latest ranking released by FIFA on Thursday." [examiner.com website] This is the first time since 2010 that the national team has been ranked this high. 

9. The US Senate passed a bipartisan bill on immigration reform that includes a path to citizenry for undocumented immigrants.

10. When Daft Punk, the French electronic music duo, had to cancel from Stephen Colbert's Comedy Central show because of contractual obligations to MTV, Colbert showed us how to make lemonade out of lemons in this absolutely hilarious segment from the show. There are dozens of videos out there - here's the one from the Colbert Nation website.

Colbert Nation video of Colbert's Daft Punk dance


Other Stuff

Mayors Against Illegal Guns Graphic