The Classroom Conservative

Chicago Bears 30, Cleveland Browns 6

Whenever I attend an academic conference or visit a city to do some research, I must always deal with incredulous locals. "You came here to visit a library?" they will ask, looking at me as though I just arrived from Mars. On my recent trip to Chicago, however, I experienced something unique. By tacking on an afternoon at Soldier Field, I won the approval -- and understanding -- of every man and woman I encountered along the way. "Oh, you're here to see the Bears," they would exclaim with pride. "You came all the way from Canada for a football game!"

Although I am a huge NFL fan, buying heartbreak in January 2008 in exchange for having followed many mediocre New England Patriots teams, I had never gone to an actual game until last weekend. It was a fabulous experience. Forget for the moment that the sluggish home team had the advantage of playing the Cleveland Browns, one of the worst teams to take the field for years. The sheer spectacle was unforgettable. When you watch football on television, everything is so focused, so directed. In person, there is simply so much going on that you can never be bored. Sitting in the "nose-bleeds" high above Lake Michigan, I can imagine how one might die of exposure, but no one is dying of boredom.

At that height, having to scale steps that reach up almost horizontally, there is a comradeship amongst patrons. Even the friendly rivalry between Bears and Browns fans seemed extremely playful. "I left my sombrero in the car," said one guy from Cleveland, seeing a local in a Bears pancho. Upon spotting another wandering fellow dressed up as a beer keg, someone else called out, "Hey, how about coming as a guy who can find his seat!" I was surprised only at the callousness of a group of medical students behind us, young men who commented about one aged gentleman, "I'm not (yet) a doctor, but that guy should stay home!" Come on, should we question even a very old fan's right to partake? And, anyway, he was hardly the worst physical specimen at the game. "Chicago," I heard another out-of-towner say, "is the only NFL city where the fans wearing jerseys are bigger than the players!" That might be true: there seem to have been a few deep-dish pizzas consumed on the grounds that day.

What I do not understand, though, is why alcohol consumption plays such a big role at athletic events. I am no stranger to a drink now and then, but I cannot fathom why someone would want to get wasted at a football game, where you come to see and remember -- and where beers cost nearly eight bucks. A fellow in front of us, already feeling no pain as he ascended the steps, arrived with two in his hands. His companion had two herself. When friends arrived, they brought more for this gentleman, and he bought more from vendors and got up, at one point, to secure a fresh supply. By the beginning of the fourth quarter, he was giving them away. With a couple of minutes left, in celebration of a great defensive play, this guy jumped up and proceeded to tumble forward two rows. "I'm just trying to have a good time!" he grinned to all around him, at which point he threw a nearby glass into the concrete beneath his feet: his own end zone "spike." Beer splattered everywhere, and the fellow and his friends retreated down the steps in shame. They left before the game was over.

Whether you love how we organize ourselves economically or whether you loathe it, you must admire how our system can bind to itself people with varied financial interests. The owner of the Cleveland Browns was at the game on Sunday, so appalled by his team's performance that he fired his general manager soon after. A young woman not there was a clerk at Borders who was so excited to hear that I was going to the game that she forgot to demagnetize my purchase, causing me no end of trouble in other stores. "You're going to see my boys!" she squealed. "I haven't been able to afford to buy a ticket yet this year, but I love my boys. I'm worried that they played so badly last week, but you're so lucky to be going."

Lucky I am. But so are the Bears, a team that commands such loyalty. I also get the sense that the fragile fabric of American society is pretty lucky, too. In spite of all the open dissent you see, hear, and read, its citizens hang on to the shreds of those few things that bind them together. A common spectacle, shared by those at the top and the bottom of the economic ladder, keeps those whose interests are mutually exclusive from acting out their frustrations -- at least when the home team plays.

Brian Billick's Pay Cut

With Thursday night's Steelers victory as an appetizer, the National Football League hit its stride on Sunday with a full slate of games. I flipped between six matches, but I spent most of my time watching the Browns and the Vikings to see how Brett Favre would play. Now, I cannot claim to have heard every syllable uttered on the broadcast, but I did catch, on two occasions, analyst Brian Billick complain about his salary.

I have a lot a time for Mr. Billick, former coach of the Baltimore Ravens. But when a man grouses that his last contract, one which paid him $5 million a year, has been replaced with only a six figure deal to make televised observations about football once a week, I cannot help but notice.

Nearly ten per cent of the American workforce is still unemployed, right?

Nothing Is Impossible Online

For as long as I can remember, I have been reading Paul Zimmerman's football columns in Sports Illustrated. Dr. Z, as he is known, affectionately, writes in a direct, personal style that cuts through media spectacle and brings analysis back to the sporting enterprise, itself. But in online features like his weekly picks and especially in his "mailbag" and his "power rankings," assessments of the relative strength of all National Football League teams, Dr. Z allows himself running commentary about his wife, his love for travel and fine wine, and his life in the American northeast.

About six months ago, seemingly without warning, and in the middle of the football season, Dr. Z suffered three strokes, blows that left him with serious impairments. His writings disappeared from SI, and it was not until Peter King, his fellow sportswriter, updated the web readership that we learned what had happened.

I felt the shock of Dr. Z's illness profoundly. I could count on at least three regular postings a week, and I knew exactly when and where to look for them. When he was silenced, it was like losing regular conversations with a friend. So, as soon as Mr. King announced that there would be a fundraiser, I bought a ticket for the event in New Jersey, an event I could never find the time to attend. I am thrilled that the event and related auction raised more than $150,000 for the "Nothing Is Impossible" foundation to get intensive therapy for Dr. Z. Following his wife's blog, it is clear that he has come a long way already, and who knows how much more he might improve.

In any case, my point here is less about stroke therapy and more about how effective the internet can be in creating a sense of community. The foundation was announced online, and an online auction fueled the fundraising. The immediacy of Dr. Z's writings, the ways in which he engages directly his readership, demonstrates a real strength of the online form. And with print media losing traction, this warm response to a personal tragedy might underline something about how journalists can thrive in a new environment.

Hyperlinks And The Color Blind

Jon Wertheim's excellent coverage of the Australian Open men's tennis final last weekend featured a letter from John Webb, a reader from South Carolina who complained about the use of hyperlinks in cnnsi.com stories. Unlike sites like this one that use both font color and underlining to mark hyperlinks, cnnsi.com marks its links only in red. (I think they are red: I, too, am color blind.) The reader suggests choosing another color, but I have to wonder what is the problem with underlining? If that makes an ugly composition, how about adopting bold? The site currently abuses bold to mark proper names that have no links.

With the well-documented difficulties in the newspaper industry, it seems clear that even those of us who now get much of our daily information electronically will only continue to rely more and more on the internet. The ability to reference and cross-reference through hyperlinks is, along with the facility to update frequently, the demonstrable advantage of the form. But who wants to pore over lines and lines of online text in an attempt to discern subtle changes in color? If everyone, short of Kanye West, knows that you do not write in all caps, can we not agree similarly to refrain from relying solely on color to mark those places you would like your readers to click?

Thanksgiving Turkeys

The National Football League is the most successful sports operation in the world, and for my money it features the best talent in the best endeavor. It is almost always pitch-perfect in its organization: the length of the games, the length of the season, the number of teams, and the salary cap. What I cannot understand is how it gets wrong its Thanksgiving extravaganza.

I marvel at the big deal Americans make of Thanksgiving. There is no holiday like it in Canada, and there is certainly no other holiday I can imagine with such a solid sporting connection. As big as Thanksgiving might be, it would be diminished if it did not feature NFL football. There are now three games on this most special Thursday each year.

Unfortunately, these are now often meaningless contests, as parity makes it difficult to predict year to year who the competitive teams might be by this point in the season. As I type this, the third lopsided game of the day is churning towards its conclusion. Anyone who follows the NFL could have seen this disaster coming, but perhaps no one could have seen it coming last spring: far enough in advance to influence the schedule. However, it would not take an avid fan to know well in advance that the game involving the Detroit Lions would be a bigger turkey than that sitting on tables across the United States. The Lions are chronic underachievers, and they have been utterly terrible for about a decade. This year, they lost by more than five touchdowns. Their involvement in Thanksgiving football each year is based only on tradition, and I think it is one tradition the National Football League could do without.

SI's Peter King In The Mouth Of The Echo Chamber

It is fortunate that Sports Illustrated has Peter King and Paul Zimmerman, the two best football writers now working. Their writing is enriched by the personality they bring to their columns. In reading the former, I have learned about the highs and lows of raising two daughters while regularly travelling from New Jersey to cover the National Football League; in reading the latter, I have learned how a shared love of good wines can keep together a gridiron curmugeon and his long-suffering, red-headed artist/wife. I have also learned a tremedous amount about football. These two gentlemen never let their personal lives, and personal opinions, overshadow their knowledge of the game, but it has been great to get to know the men behind the words over, say, the past decade or so.

It seems to me that Mr. King has suffered, however, during this interminable presidential election campaign in the United States. It is none of my business whether he is a registered Democrat, but I could draw a reasonable conclusion that he was not terribly disappointed that Barack Obama won the recent election, and if the United States is able to negotiate an orderly, honorable withdrawal from Iraq that allows us all to maintain some of the principles that took them there in the first place, I am pretty certain that Mr. King would raise a cheer. These positions, whether he holds them or not, are not unreasonable. What I find unreasonable, however, is that on the few occasions he has suggested that some change to the status quo might enrich the lives of all Americans, he has received for his trouble a deluge of correspondence from readers who want him to stick to football.

What rubbish.

These readers have profited from Mr. King's catholic interests, as well as his pragmatic judgment of everything from coffee to television programs. (I am dismayed only that he does not appear to be the rabid fan of Mad Men that I am!) Mr. King's columns are not political, nor should they be. But people who object to a sportswriter discussing how black NFL athletes responded to Mr. Obama's election are the kinds of people who enjoy the internet only because it allows them to restrict their reading to people who think exactly as they do.

Insofar as today's media has become a small series of echo chambers where our own thoughts can be communicated back to us, we are an impoverished people. So long as Peter King fills my Monday mornings with pages and pages of football information stuck together with the other stuff of American life, I will consider myself lucky.

Lazy Storylines At The British Open

I enjoy watching British sporting events on television. You can catch them in the mountain time zone before lunch, and then you can get on with your day.

But I nearly choked on my oatmeal this morning: golfer Greg Norman had no sooner teed off at Royal Birkdale when the ABC announcers began pursuing the "Norman flop" storyline. For those of you who do not follow professional golf, Mr. Norman entered the final round of the 1996 Masters Tournament with a six-shot lead on a field that had done little to distinguish itself over the first fifty-four holes. But by shooting a seventy-eight, Mr. Norman lost by five strokes his best shot at a green jacket.

This morning, after not having played in the British Open since 2006, he found himself leading by two strokes. But he started off with three bogeys and surrendered his lead to defending champion, and eventual repeat winner, Padraig Harrington. This time around, Mr. Norman was years beyond his prime, playing in gale force winds. Had he been able to win, it would have been nothing less than the biggest story in golf this year - bigger, even, than Tiger Woods' injury. Did falling prey to the elements really warrant disinterring a image a dozen years old? Were there not other angles to take in discussing a man whose fifty-three-year-old contemporaries are using long putters and golf carts, a man who has played fewer rounds of competitive golf this year than the amateurs seeking to emulate his many achievements?

By this afternoon, Sports Illustrated had posted online a story that put all these matters into perspective, past flops included, but for those first few minutes this morning it sure felt like the journalistic establishment preferred the easy story to the right one.

Do Not Turn Your Back On Glenn Anderson

News has broken tonight that former Edmonton Oiler Glenn Anderson has finally been elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame. Because of a lost year during a work stoppage, this year's class is made up of players who were passed over in prior years. As a central figure during a much more entertaining time in the National Hockey League, Anderson surely deserves the honor.

But my favorite Anderson memory actually has to do with broadcasting. In the early years of cable television in Canada, it had the reputation as a place for "adult" content. When The Sports Network debuted, I think some of its commentators still held this view. For its hockey coverage, it hired a number of big name sportscasters who had a great deal of experience in Canadian media circles. The product was well-produced and very professional. The Edmonton Oilers were playing in the marquee game. Glenn Anderson hit the ice, and the color commentator, with his thirty years experience in media, said: "That Glenn Anderson is a great player. But do not turn your back on him. He will f&%k you!"

Dead air.

I can only imagine that producers were frantic behind the scenes, telling this living legend that just because Canadians had to pay to see this coverage did not mean that he was free to use the salty language of the locker room!

Needless to say, conventional coverage ensued.

Congratulations, Mr. Anderson. No one will turn his back on you on the dais at the Hockey Hall of Fame.

The CFL Does Not Warrant Special Protection

Did you know, as the National Post attests in its editorial, that the Canadian Football League is superior to the National Football League? It must be because the size of the ball used is slightly wider, because the size of each squad is larger, because the playing surface is different. It cannot be because the skill of its players is comparable. CFL salaries have been unable to compete with NFL salaries since the 1980s, and every CFL player who gets a shot south of the border takes it. I do not know any CFL player personally, and even the moldiest benchwarmer is ten times the athlete I ever was, but let us not confuse the issue with this chest-pounding boosterism. You see, CFL advocates want it both ways: the CFL is both the superior product and the minority enterprise that requires protection. If it was truly better, it would need no protection. The interest of fans would carry the day.

There are many reasons to follow sports played below the level of top-tier, elite professional enterprises. You can spend an exhilarating Friday night watching the Lethbridge Hurricanes play the Calgary Hitmen, but that does not mean that we need to require the Calgary Flames to pull out of the Saddledome for the good of "Southern Albertan culture." Lower division soccer teams in England have their loyal fans, but all these teams aspire to promotion to the Premiership, and no one sees a match between Reading and Swansea as anything other than an undercard. As a child, I was a big fan of "semi-pro" senior hockey in Newfoundland.

So what is it about the Canadian Football League that requires its supporters to disparage another, more entertaining enterprise based south of the border? If, as the CFL commissioner claims, the Grey Cup is a symbol of national unity, what have they to fear? We cannot change the title music of a hockey broadcast in this country without huge cries raised across the land, so is the very possibility of a NFL team in Canada much of a threat in the face of genuinely, spontaneously nationalistic loyalty? Do we really need a politician like Larry Campbell threatening a law to keep the NFL out of Canada? Need I fear a fine or imprisonment simply because I would rather watch the most dreadful game between Oakland and Cleveland than a pitched battle between Toronto and Hamilton?

I am so tired of being a pariah because I follow the National Football League. I have to listen to insults about my game from people who are terrified by the thought that the Buffalo Bills, a franchise that struggles perpetually, might play a game or two in Toronto over the next few years. Our Senate, with all the crises facing us, feels the need to occupy itself with Canadian football on the off-chance that Toronto will outpace Los Angeles in attracting a NFL franchise. If, as CFL Commissioner Mark Cohon suggests, a threat to his game is the beginning of the end of Canadian culture, I suggest we power down and hand the keys over now. All hail our new overlords, all spikes and four downs!

Okay, okay. That is drastic. I will instead try to ignore the stupidity and the waste of this annual debate. God bless the CFL, but I await the beginning of NFL training camps. And I long for the day that the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who watch NFL football on Sundays warrant the kind of respect that would bestow on them a team of their own – if the marketplace, open and fair, will bear its weight.

A Letter of Resignation to the New England Patriots

Robert Kraft, Owner

New England Patriots

One Patriot Place

Foxborough, Massachusetts

U.S.A.  02035

 

Dear Mr. Kraft:

 

It is with deep regret that I write today to request that my association with the New England Patriots be downgraded from rabid, devoted fan to interested spectator.  I do not think you will miss me.  In terms of official merchandise, I have only a mini football and a branded cooler.

 

To my shame, as an educated, reasonably sane adult, I got too caught up this year in the team’s so-called “quest for perfection.”  I was stung, you see, by the heartbreaking loss to the Indianapolis Colts in last year’s playoffs, and I took too seriously promises that I should “wait for next year.”  When the team beat San Diego early in the regular season, in the midst of the “Spygate” controversy, I began to buy into the idea that fate had something special in store for us all.  I suffered through all those gut wrenching, fourth quarter wins late in the year, but I was still unprepared for the cruelty of yesterday’s defeat.  To win eighteen times in nineteen games is a fine achievement, but it does not justify the considerable emotional investment for which I can now claim absolutely no return.  I have tried to play the “Pollyanna” game and look for something in the last six months that makes me “glad,” but I have come up empty.

   

Some people will call me a sore loser, but this is not so.  I actually admire the New York Giants franchise a great deal, and I often root for them in NFC matches.  In fact, my association with the Patriots goes back to my childhood, when the only American football I could see in Newfoundland was regional coverage from the NBC affiliate in Bangor, Maine.  Those Patriots teams were usually awful, so I believe I earned my share of the successes the team had since 2002.

 

You see, during the wonderful run you had in 2001-02, I found in the story of a rag-tag collection of underdogs considerable encouragement in my own life.  That team exemplified for me principles of selflessness and ingenuity that can be admired, universally.  During the 2003-04 and 2004-05 seasons, it seemed almost that you could rely on the Patriots to win: I did not even need to follow along that closely.

 

But something did change last year.  When the team was leading the AFC Championship 21-3 over the Colts, I left a restaurant in Calgary to drive home to Lethbridge.  I arrived in time to see the end of the 38-34 loss.  It was all I could do to even think about football for next couple of months; I went cold turkey, even eschewing my practice of easing off my high by watching the Arena League.

 

I will have to take some time to think about how I got drawn in so deeply this year.  I do think Tom Brady is swell, and the idea that the team spent the necessary money to arm him with a better supporting cast was intriguing.  I am also plenty tired of listening to how the 1972 Miami Dolphins, as unlikeable bunch of fellows as you will ever hear, are the greatest team of all time.  The idea that a team could go undefeated in the era of the salary cap is a bit like the impending arrival of Halley’s Comet: something you might see once in your lifetime.

 

Well, Halley’s Comet was cancelled last night.

 

It is some indication of my charmed life that last night’s loss is something like “Number Six” on my “Personal Top Ten of Worst Things to Ever Happen to Me,” and I recognize that nothing actually happened to me other than developing a sick feeling in my stomach and having my blood pressure spike ten points.  But it felt a little like finding out your best girl is stepping out on you or that there is no Santa Claus.  Sporting events are supposed to be spectacles of vicarious experience.  I can feel loss today instead of undergoing genuine tragedy, and I am thankful for that.  It is the same reason why we go to horror movies, I suppose.

 

But I love football because I love the fundamentals of the game: the strategy.  I like watching a long pass play; I like a long run.  I am happiest when I can admire good playing regardless of the result.  I envy the person who can appreciate what the Giants did last night.  For the longest time, I told people that I just loved the game, that I had no team.  I was always told that the highs were higher when you followed someone in particular, that the lows were more poignant.  I bought into that, but I am feeling only the latter, today, and my heart is broken.

 

I’m done with all football for some time.  I hope, eventually, to get back to my channel surfing on Sunday afternoons, seeking out good matchups.  Inevitably, the Patriots will be involved in some of them, and I’ll be hoping for you to do well.  But I also pledge never again to hang so much, personally, on the success of a collection of multimillionaires who, in reality, say nothing to me about my life, as Morrissey used to sing.  After all, it’s not like I am Gisele Bundchen.