Archive: Opinions

EditorialHave you ever wondered what anthropologists will think of us a thousand years from now?  They probably will think we didn't like music, because you need a CD player to listen to a CD.  Since we throw things away instead of getting them fixed, there won't be any CD Players, or for that matter computers, TVs, iPods, kitchen appliances, washing machines... they will conclude we lived in mud huts with no plumbing or electricity.

As a severely sports-impaired person I got a taste of what it will be like to be one of those anthropologists when I watched the last four minutes of the Super Bowl.  I had been watching a movie, but it ended and my wife said (to my amazement), 'Let's turn to the Super Bowl.'  Based on what I saw I was able to form theories about football based entirely on what I saw and not impaired by knowledge or history.  Here is what I came up with:

The Super Bowl isn't a bowl.
The football field was flat, just like all the other football fields I have seen.  Well, OK, I haven't see a lot of football fields, but I know that bowls have round bottoms and this one was flat.

There is no need to watch the whole game.  All the action is in the last four minutes.
When I tuned into the game New York was ahead.  In the next moment the Patriots scored seven points, putting that team ahead.  I figured, OK, that was great for the Patriots, bummer for the Giants.  Then in the last 35 seconds the Giants scored the winning points.  Before that neither team had scored much.

Football players can't tell time.
The clock said four minutes.  The announcer said four minutes.  Yet it took three quarters of an hour for the four minutes to pass.  In fact it took so long for the last one second of the game to pass that I decided to go to bed.  I knew I might miss an important play, but I couldn't keep my eyes open!

Maybe it's not their fault.  Their clock kept stopping.  Maybe it was broken...

Football fans can't wait for the game to be over.
With one second to go everybody rushed onto the field.  They couldn't finish the game until they cleared it, but nobody seemed to want to see more game -- it took forever to get them to go back.  I thought the Patriots may have been thinking they could still win it in one second, but I didn't see how.  But I went to bed not really knowing who would win.

The Giants aren't really that big.
I thought they would tower above mere mortals, possibly muttering 'Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum...' to psych out their opponents.  But they appeared to be the same size and height as the Patriots.

Football players want to get hurt as much as possible.
A bunch of hefty men, padded like crazy and wearing helmets, but not seat belts, run around the field, jump on each other, bump into each other, pile up on each other, all seeming to want to get bumped, jumped, and piled.  Then they get up and the ones who weren't actually injured do it again.

On top of all this excitement I was conflicted about who to root for.  I grew up near Boston, but have lived in New York State for about 20 years.  I probably lived in the Boston area for 24 years, so by time spent I thought I should root for the Patriots.  But in 1970 the Boston Patriots became the New England Patriots.  That means my loyalty was split among five other states.  Now granted, all the New England states together (well, not Maine, but the other five, surely) would fit into the area of New York.  But I thought that distillation meant I should root for the Giants.

With only four minutes to decide, I felt pressured, and didn't even notice the commercials that are allegedly the reason that some people watch the Super Bowl.  Patriots, Giants, Patriots, Giants...  After that last play I decided to be a Giants fan.  You don't always have the luxury in life of winning, so what the heck?!

So those scientists of the future have their work cut out for them.  Because they will have no way of knowing how big Giants really are.

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