The NFL Lockout Day 104: The Need to Preserve the Extraordinary
Posted: Sunday, June 26, 2011
by Edward Rhymes
Introduction
Football, O' football... where for art thou? Are you suffering from the lockout blues too? I discuss my take on the NFL lockout.
If we had to choose a sport, as a family, it would be football. Here's a brief family background: My wife was born and raised in Minnesota cheering for the Vikings (including the Bud Grant-coached Purple People Eaters of the old Met Stadium); I grew up on the South-side of Chicago rooting for my beloved Chicago Bears (Butkus, Sayers, Payton and the fabled 1985 team), played some college football in Wisconsin (Superior) and coached high school football in Massachusetts.
Given our affinity for the sport, this uncertainty about the upcoming NFL season is difficult for us. Football enthusiasts are hardwired for that extraordinary rush that football provides. Wow! Did you see that catch? Whoa! Did you see that hit? We as a family and as football fans generally speaking, coalesce around the extraordinary things these amazing athletes do.
They are asking their bodies to do not so much what they aren't able to --- we've seen them do some pretty incredible things often enough --- but rather what their bodies were not meant to do (high speed impact, high pain endurance, out-of-this-world acrobatics etc.). This makes this lockout even more unbelievable for us as fans because we've seen this sport's athletes push themselves to the limit so it is inconceivable that the league and the players will not do all they can to make sure the season, a complete season, is a reality.
Nevertheless, the most extraordinary thing about football is not its amazing athletes or its exciting play, but rather its unique relationship with its fans. It is that relationship that has made NFL football the most popular sport in America. Think about, we have cable networks devoted to practically every major sport, but the gold standard is the NFL Network.
This relationship is not indestructible, however. Not even did during the strike-shortened seasons of 1982 and 1987 did, in my opinion, the connection between the NFL and its fans seem so threatened. The much-higher salaries and an economic crisis unseen since The Great Depression, has made the public less than patient with the bickering between people who won't have to worry about where their next meal is coming from.
Additionally, with a level of exciting and dramatic playoff basketball unseen for quite some time, the NBA seems poised to comfort a multitude of brokenhearted NFL fans (for at least part of the season) if the owners and players prove to be self-destructive enough to do irreparable harm the 2011 season --- the extraordinary is not as easily rediscovered as one might think.
I am not pretending to know all the ins and outs of the issues that are being discussed between the parties involved (that's a whole other article), but I will say this: let us, football fans, hope that meetings that are taking place between the owners and the players prove fruitful enough that it restores to us that extraordinary feeling that football gives us like no other sport can.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Hi Edward I just had to read the article when I saw it involved football. There was a time I would scream at my 2 sons to turn the television off when a match was on, but after learning more about the game, (and falling in love with some players) I find myself screaming at them to turn the TV set on. Great sport.
Keep well
KacyHey Kacy, queen of SearchWarp, thanks for commenting.
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