Television Has Ruined Football

I went to the Bears opener with the Packers. What a show. The Air force parachutists, the fireworks, the smoke, flames, the screaming fans. The voltage in the stadium was incredible. National television was there in force with all the interviews and cameras and talking heads. It was amazing. The National Anthem was amazing. The monstrous flag was amazing. And this was the biggest rivalry in the NFL. Then the game started. You know the outcome, but here is what I found amazing. The game is so slow. Not because of the players but because of television

A few plays and then a switch of sides and then everyone stands around and waits. And while you are watching the two hotdogs race on the big screen or a Veteran walk out or a race between two cars the players just stand around with nothing to do. Minutes pass. The players stand around the stadium gets quiet. Oh right. Commercials! Those things that at home give you a chance to get more dip, another beer, hit the bathroom. For the fan at the game it is dead time and for the players, it is an interruption to the game.

I know. Its great that television is there but I watched the momentum wither away. It is incredible how slow professional football has become because of this electronic medium. Television does not try and keep up with football, football slows down to television time. The intensity of a college football game is explosive and even on the opener when the Bears got behind the fans became quiet and every time the Bears started to move the game went cold with challenges, timeouts, and then just for nothing but to make sure all those sponsors get their commercials in.

And yes the Bears lost. So maybe this is just sour grapes but it sure seemed like every time the train started to roll, it ran out of steam.  Or it went to a commercial. 

Could You Take a Knee?

Lets say you are on a company outing to a Cubs game. Everyone is there along with your boss and the company has bought the tickets and the beer and hot dogs and the peanuts. It is now time for the National Anthem. Everyone stands up and some people put their hands over their hearts. You are a middle class person with a house, kids, mortgage, dog, cat. You are solidly in the  middle of the middle and now everyone is standing and you decide you do not agree with some of the policies of the country or maybe you just don't go for the whole patriotic thing. So you take a knee. Your boss stares at you. His boss stares at you. You explain you disapprove of some things going on in America and so you took a knee. Your career is over.

You may not get fired that day. But essentially you better start looking for something else because from then on you are marked. Most middle class people can not take a knee. They have to feed their kids and pay their mortgage. They have to tow the line. Professional football players who make millions of dollars and get to be on television and live a life most people would kill for, they can take a knee. It is part of being at the top of the pyramid. Now you should be able to take a knee. No one is saying you should not be able to express how you feel. It is part of our basic rights as Americans.

But for most of us we can not take a knee. We do not have a million dollars in the bank. Only  the lucky few can do that. Is this fair? No. But we are used to that. So it is the NFL players right to take a knee. It is their right to bring up issues that need to be discussed. It is their right to make a million dollars from playing football. But I will say this; to whom much is given much is expected. Interpret that as you will.

Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair

Everything We Love and Hate About The Superbowl

What a game. I mean what a game. Doesn't matter what side you are on be you a Patriot or Seahawk fan that was a game for the books. And in that way the Superbowl was exactly what it was supposed to be. A game between the two very best teams. And it was. And of course we had to endure everything else that is the Superbowl. Take the commercials. Was it me but what happened to the funny commercials. Even GoDaddy went serious instead of bawdy.

I mean I know the NFL is remaking their image but did we have to sit through all those bad novels? What was the dad commercial all about. Or dad commercials. Be a good dad and drive a Nissan. Or the moody music commercials that went on and on and then ended up being about a truck or Budweiser. Or what about the girl commercials. Well I guess the NFL does have a domestic abuse problem. But I really felt like I was being given moral lessons between watching grown men try and destroy each other.

Katy Perry. Well she did ride around on a rocket swing. That was different. Poor Lenny Kravitz. One song that wasn't even his and you couldn't hear his guitar. But who were the rappers? They came out and took over the middle of the show. Maybe that was to give Katy time to get on her swing and sing about Fireworks. After the beach number with the singing sharks it had to get better.

And of course the fight at the end between the football players. That sure took it down a notch. You have to wonder what the rest of the world thinks about the Superbowl. Maybe they are like us. Awed. Amazed. Disgusted. Confused. Entertained. Sex and pickups and beer and commercials that strive to be art when they are very much commerce. I cant wait until next year.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher

What Happened to the Superbowl?

Peyton Manning had an off day. I don't think so. The entire offence had an off day. Maybe. Payton Manning couldn't throw the football. He couldn't take a snap. Bruno Mars landed in a zoot suit and had the Red Hot Chili Peppers as his guest. What? The Broncos looked worse than the Bears on their worst game. The heavy money was on Seattle? Weird upon Weird. Even the commercials weren't that good. And the game went to sleep.

The Super Bowl has a problem. Over hype. How about when Seattle won? Confetti. Guys wandering around in a daze. Who to interview? Not Manning. But you know there is just not enough fame to go around sometimes. Ask Joe Namath in that coat from about 1975. Somebody should tell Joe to lose the coat and that Burt Reynolds is no longer making Smokey and the Bandit movies.

I  don't know the whole thing was a snore. Maybe it was the neck surgery. But could the two teams be that mismatched? What was with the screen passes that went nowhere? The long passes that went over everyone's heads? The run back at the opening kick off of the second half. How about that snap.? How about that snap? What the hell happened?

It was almost like someone else showed up. Wish they had let us know.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher...Sometimes a dream is all you have
 

Madonna's Sunset Boulevard Show

There was a strange Gloria Swanson moment during Madonna's show right about in the middle when she was surrounded by fantastic dancing and lights and strobes and people doing flips and singing and all that activity swirling around her like Gloria Swanson walking slowly toward the camera for her final closeup with Max urging her on. "They have come for you  madame!" And it was surreal. Morphing herself into the latest hiphop rapish dancing whatever Madonna became that dated person in strange contrast to the very frenetic quality that used to be her.

And you say well she is fifty three. But it was the deliberate pumping of her new music over her old (what the Superbowl audience wanted) that really was  her undoing. She was running to keep up with herself and the careful flips and careful steps made me think of my mother at weird times. Not that my mother was a dancer but there was a certain careful quality to Madonna exacerbated by the show that could go on with or without her. The chariot bit didn't help, Cleopatra yeah sure, but all the vivacity that was her was overshadowed by the Grand Dam.

And so Gloria Swanson was suddenly there. Right in the middle of the show, moving through the waxworks, a shadow of her former self in the woman in the middle of the circus, with her careful determination to keep age at bay and like Gloria trying to impress her young man or us with her very modern songs and her show striving to be so up the minute. In the middle of it all I felt a little sorry for Madonna.

I cant help but think if she had gone out there and belted out her old songs and just reveled in who she was and is...then she could have avoided the old car and the creepy mansion of her menagerie that just made us think how unforgiving our society is with people that age. So I suppose it was fitting she disappeared in a hail of smoke, a phantom that was never really there in the first place, walking every closer, Max...Max....they have come for me at last....

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

The Bad Coach

When you are growing up there is only one adult that commands your respect. The Coach. For young males the coach is next to God, if not God himself. My first coach was a tough Irishman named McCulley who made us wrestle at practice until we couldn't stand. He took nothing. He would slap a boy who talked back and didn't mind throwing you down on the mat if you annoyed him. But he was respected and we won meets and we all knew where we stood with the coach.

So you can only imagine what went on at Penn State. How Sandusky got a ten year old boy into the shower and then did what he did. But I think back on my other coaches, like,  Coach Grady a huge sweating Russian who coached us in Junior High. We wrestled him and we took showers with him and nobody gave it a thought. We were always together in the locker room and Coach really enjoyed working out with us and I remember to this day how he covered the matt with adult sweat.

And then football comes along and The Coach becomes someone with even more authority. There is no one more powerful in high school than the football coach. You had your teachers but ultimate authority rested with the football coach. Coach Trosen at my highshool was an ex Marine with horn rimmed glasses on a strap. He had an explosive temper and he was big. You did not cross him. But he won games and somehow always got you to play your best.

But he ruled absolutely and no one questioned his judgement on anything. That is why a guy like Sandusky was so dangerous. To American males the coach is infallible, a master judge of the human condition and yet someone beyond the realm of human failings. The coach is a judge jury and executioner. And Coach Paterno should have known that just kicking Sandusky up to the Athletic office was not enough when he was caught in the showers the first time with a ten year old boy.

He should have banished him to Siberia. A cold and dark place where all bad coaches go who betray their boys. He should have screamed from the hilltops he had a bad coach and warned all those males who had no idea who they were dealing with. He should have called the police.  That's what you do with a Bad Coach.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Jay Cutler and the Changing Culture of Football

When I played high school football  for Naperville Central we had two a days in August with half pads in the morning and full pad workout in the afternoon. We were given little yellow salt pills against dehydration. Salt pills! Think about that for your blood pressure. But that's the way it worked and nobody drank Gatorade or special electrolyte drinks and water was held out as a reward for a good practice. The temperatures reached one hundred on some days and I remember just collapsing in bed at night and going back the next day. I broke my little finger during practice and the trainer taped it up and put two Popsicle sticks on it and that's how I practiced every day. Then my elbow got infected from getting hit so many times and the doctor drained puss and blood out of it every few days and gave me massive antibiotics and I just kept playing.

I remember reading a book called Meat on the Hoof at the time about a player with the Dallas Cowboys. His strategy was to hit the other guy so hard that he would think twice about hitting you back. I would read this book between the morning practice and afternoon and then go back and try and kill kids on the tackling drills. And it worked. The coaches couldnt' believe how hard I could hit and no one thought about concussions or heat stroke or not playing with pain. You just played or you quit.

Now we have Jay Culter who left with a knee injury that to a lot of people didn't seem that bad. If this had occurred even five years ago they would have just taped him up and sent him back in. But times have changed and football players with scrambled brains from concussions, unable to walk from the ceaseless beating they took for years in the NFL, has the football players, the coaches, the NFL, all considering that the old blood and guts culture of football is probably not sustainable anymore.

People know too much for one thing.  They talk about the long term effect of concussions and football players are a lot big bigger, faster, stronger and hit like freight trains now. The sport has changed and all you have to do is watch these players getting knocked out cold to know that the old football culture is on life support. Nobody but Jay Cutler knows what his pain threshold was with his knee, but it is a different world now and that slight difference gave him permission to leave.

Right or wrong, he left the game and I think we will see more common sense approaches to a game that used to be play under any circumstances. My memories of two a days in high school football come down to my little finger that healed without being set. A crooked little nub of grid iron glory.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Rocket Man will blast off February 15th



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