There are two sports I have always enjoyed watching on television: billiards and soccer. I find them both to be very relaxing to watch, in the same sort of way as a particularly interesting screen saver. It is one hundred percent unnecessary to know the rules, and I rather prefer not knowing, as I can set my own imaginary criteria for what the game objective ought to be and then be pleased or disappointed accordingly.
So this year, I have been greatly disappointed to not have had any time to watch any of the World Cup. I love the whole idea of the World Cup. It's a worldwide event, and it only happens every four years, so it still seems like a really big deal when it does (think about it, Olympic Committee). I think that that has a lot to do with why even people who usually don't care about sports, or at least don't pay any attention to soccer, can get really hyped up about the World Cup.
Watching all the excitement around me in a predominantly Latino area, I have spent the week pondering the differences between the world's “football” and American Football. There is no denying that soccer has cooler origins. First of all, ancient. It was developed hundreds if not thousands of years ago in South America. Second of all, as comparatively effete as it seems now, this game was originally extremely bad ass, as the “ball” would be provided by a conquered enemy, in the form of his severed head. The gore is a thing of the past, but modern players have replaced the warrior mentality with playing style filled with guile and trickery, strategically pretending to be injured more severely than they are or luring an opposing player close for a surprise head butt. As a spectator, I just like watching everybody run back and forth and making it look easy, without me having to know anything except where the ball is. It's easy. It's nice.
American Football, in comparison, doesn't necessarily look like a worse sport. It's just so...American. Football players are huge to begin with, and then made larger by all the insane padding they wear (people occasionally point to the soccer players' lack of padding as proof that they are tougher, but let me point out that soccer players are also allowed to dodge). American football can claim barely a century's worth of New World history, and professional football only a little over eighty years—less than baseball, or even volleyball, which was devised in 1895 as a game for pussies who didn't want to go outside.
One of the things I've noticed as I've been studying the game of football (American Version) is how whenever a player is mentioned, his position is mentioned as well, and not just as a quick point of reference, but as a complete description of a human being. If you tell a sports aficionado that a baseball player is a pitcher, they know he throws fast. If you mention a shortstop, they know he's got good reflexes. If you mention that a football player plays left tackle, they can reply back with a good approximation of his height, weight, and possibly shoe size. There's a rigidity to it—each player is a component of a larger whole, like a cog in an engine, or a single episode of LOST. It can't be a coincidence that both football and assembly lines were invented and perfected in the American Midwest—they were conceived by the same philosophy. An American philosophy.
I am intrigued by this assembly line/football analogy and I think I may return to it, perhaps in my next entry. For now I am pleased simply to have discovered in it the fundamental difference between what Americans call football and what Americans call soccer:
When I watch soccer, I see a group of individuals working together, but when I watch football, I see a team.
Soccer flows of its own accord, it is organic. Football requires the co-operative functioning of many parts; for lack of a better word, it is mechanical.
Soccer fans wear out their lungs blowing into vuvuzelas, but football fans bring air horns, which provide a far more obnoxious noise with a fraction of the effort.
And finally, American football almost never ends in a fucking tie.
Happy World Cup, Everybody!
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