Football vs. Futbol: An Analysis

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!

A piece of fiction, inspired by true events.

BEFORE YOU READ, BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION:

This post was inspired by the recent actions of Seattle Seahawks rookie Golden Tate, as well as the novels of Stieg Larsson, who would be a much, much better writer than I am if he were not dead. You should also know ahead of time that my husband did not think it was funny. And there will be another football history post in the next few days, so we'll be back to normal.

Agent Linquinetta Andrews* was enjoying her cover as a night baker at Top Pot Doughnuts. She had been there for more than a year, and she liked the job. She enjoyed the peace and quiet of the shop and kitchen in the nighttime hours, before the other employees showed up and the place was overrun by hungry morning customers. She liked the work of shaping the various doughnuts each morning and getting them fried. It was always fun getting them into the display case; watching the empty trays fill up with Top Pot's “hand forged” doughnuts, and thinking about how excited people were to come in and buy them. Linquinetta considered how many of her colleagues were working in Afghanistan and China, and thought that she could have been doing a lot worse for herself.

At 3am, she had just begun frying the morning's doughnuts. She set a batch of maple bars out to cool, and as she switched her now greasy pair of latex gloves for a fresher set, she realized that the garbage hadn't been taken out. Better to do it now, before she forgot and things got busy. She set a doorstop in the back door of the shop so she wouldn't get locked out; even though she would be away from the door for a few minutes, the shop was on the ground floor of a condominium complex and no one was able to get in from the street, so she wasn't concerned about vagrants or hoodlums sneaking into the store while her back was turned.

She realized her mistake when she came back, after only two or three minutes. As she started to open the door, she could hear voices from inside, and they were not voices she recognized. Linquinetta paused for a moment and listened, trying to decide what to do. There seemed to be two men, young. Probably drunk—they sounded like they were having a grand old time.

Her personal inclination was to go in and teach them a lesson. There were always plenty of potential weapons in a kitchen, and even without the butterfly knife and the taser she always kept on her for emergencies, Linquinetta's krav maga training made her more than a match for up to three opponents in a typical situation. But she maintained her discipline. If these guys hadn't been sent for her, violence on her part would only blow her cover. She crept closer and listened hard. The intruders were definitely not professionals; no one with any training would have ever made that much noise. For a moment she considered simply taking them out quickly and disposing of the bodies, just in case: a quick jab in the neck with her keys should do it. Then she remembered that she had left her keys in the kitchen. There was no way to get them without being seen.

“Aw, hell naw,” She breathed to herself. Now she was angry at herself, for getting so soft. A year ago, she would never have left her keys unprotected. If the boss found out about this, she would be disciplined. And she'd deserve it.

As humiliating as it was, she knew the best option was to let the local police force handle things. She pulled out her cell phone and dialed 911.

“Somebody just came in here and stole a bunch of shit,” was how she described her emergency to the 911 dispatcher. She couldn't help adding, “And now my keys are missing.”

“What did they steal?”

“They came in here and stole some donuts. And they stole my car keys, my keys to the building, and my house keys.” Not to mention one other key that she had better not lose, but she refrained from mentioning what that one would have opened.

“What do you need?”
Amateurs.

“I need you to send some cops here to make sure people don't steal shit.” Come on.

As it would turn out, the “criminals” were a local NFL rookie and a buddy, and they had just wandered in by following the smell. They hadn't taken anything more than a few doughnuts, and the whole thing turned into a bit of a joke. Linquinetta didn't see the humor.

On the other hand, she knew better than to dwell on something that wasn't worth it. She needed to go home and get some sleep. Her grandson's birthday party was that afternoon.

*Name invented.

Okay...almost defeated. Or, Madden 2009 Redux.

So I haven't been bothering anyone to read my blog for a while because I've had three big blocks to actually writing in it for the last three or four weeks:

One, a total dearth of football news. Lawrence Taylor did kidnap a girl in what I can only assume was an attempt to begin a slave auctioning service (like the one in Taken, where they sold teenage girls to rich men who should have been riding balloons around the world), but that was like a month ago and nothing really ended up happening and anyway, LT doesn't even play in the NFL anymore.

Two, totally broke. I really want to go to Hooters and interview the waitresses, but all my money seems to go to “rent” and “groceries” and then I went and took what I had left over and donated it to public radio or something equally supercilious, so as eager as I am to receive chicken wings from a girl in bright orange hot pants, that plan is still on the back burner until further notice. I just don't have the expendable income to ruck fules right now. I'm also getting nervous about carrying this plan out in the summer time, as the closest Hooters to my house is on Hollywood Boulevard and tourist season is officially upon us.

Finally, no time. I've been crazy super busy and when you actually have real things to do it is difficult to write entertaining essays about nothing happening in a field in which you have no knowledge.

But as little as I care about football, I do care about forcing myself to write on a regular basis, so I've taken the small boon of time that's been given to me as a Memorial Day gift to play some more Madden 2009 on the Xbox in an attempt to gain a more organic understanding of the game. How has it worked? I have no idea.

I gave up on any kind of tutorial nonsense this time around and just dove right into game play. One team against another—I initially chose to play as the Dolphins, since in theory, they're my team, but the version of Madden that I'm playing is from 2009, and as it turns out, the Dolphins were terrible in the 2009 season (which may have been last year, or may have been the year before that—like fiscal years and Oscar years, football years do not go from January to January and I'm still a bit iffy on how that works). So in addition to my own utter lack of skill, I'm playing with a weak team. I lost steadily. No surprise, but frustrating. I finally switched to the Patriots, who are rated as the most skilled team in the game, and chose to play against the Falcons, rated the worst. I managed to win this game, but it was a near thing.

I could marvel about how realistic the graphics and scenarios are in Madden, or I could complain about how you can only control one of your eleven players at a time and it's like, impossible to do anything at all when you're defending, so it's hardly an authentic football experience (then again, if I were on a football team for reals, I'd only be controlling myself, so that still just one player—god, we're spoiled in 21st century America), but this is not a video game review, it's a sports tutorial, so I will instead list some things I learned about the game itself that I feel are valuable.

1. Short passes are almost always the best way to go. Long passes often get dropped or intercepted and should only be used in times of desperation. On the other hand, if you try to run the ball, there are eight to twenty huge dudes in your way and you won't get anywhere. Also, fans hate running games because they like to see the ball fly through the air. And people.
2. Punt on the fourth down. This is one of those awesome things that every football fan knows whether they understand it or not, so if you can toss punting into a conversation, everyone will think you know what you're talking about. (Punting is a socially acceptable way to throw a tantrum about giving the ball to the other team by kicking it as far back away from their goal post as possible.)
3. Commentators are useless. I was hoping that listening to the commentary might teach me something, but all the pre-recorded virtual commentary did was rub it in when I did something stupid. And it usually wasn't even my fault. Seriously, how is a person supposed to learn in such a non-supportive environment? Turn those assholes off.
4. Finally, if you're defending the goal as opposed to running offensive plays, just don't touch your Xbox controller. You only have control of one guy and he's nowhere near the ball, and if you try to see if you can get anything done he'll just run across the line and you'll get a penalty. So when you're defending, make a sandwich or something—but make sure you give the controller to your husband first so he can pause the game when you get the ball back. Otherwise, you might accidentally run out of time and you get in big trouble for that. Avoid.

That's about all I've got right now. Hopefully one of the players will do something entertainingly criminal soon, or I'll get my act together for the pre-season. In the meantime, I highly recommend going back and reading my team rundowns from back in February. That's when I was on my A game.

(Also, if you're in LA, ask me on Facebook about the play I'm in right now so I can prove to you that I'm not a failure at all aspects of life.)

Distracted, but not defeated!

I have never pretended to not be boring. I love being boring. All of my favorite activities involve being quiet and sitting still, which was how I knew that I would enjoy blogging.

Unfortunately, despite my best efforts sometimes even I lead a moderately interesting life, which is what happened to me this past month and is the main reason I have not been posting to WtB lately. I would feel guilty about this, but I'm sure that almost nobody noticed and that the couple of you who did are kind enough people not to have minded.

Very little of interest seems to be happening in the NFL right now, but that's no excuse. I could have actually put together that trip to Hooters I was talking about (except I couldn't have, because I'm broke and have no free time). I could have written another schticky entry about playing Madden on the Xbox and being bad at it (except again, I have no free time (but that will probably be my next blog entry, anyway)).

My personal life is busy but it's still boring, so I'll spare you. But so far, life hasn't thrown anything at me that's a big enough deal to let go of this silly made-up project that I made up for myself. Make no mistake; if something ever actually does come up that is awesome (or terrible (or both!)) enough for me to toss this blog by the wayside, I won't hesitate. But I'll at least check in first.

And I'll probably write about the XBox again in the next day or two.

Letters From Rookie Camp

Dear Mom,

How are you? I am fine. Camp is pretty fun, lots of work tho. We play football all day long, except for an hour in the afternoon where we can do arts and crafts, archery, or swimming. I chose swimming of course! Ha ha. And on Sundays we write letters, we can write as many letters as we want but I'm only going to write to you. The uniforms they gave us are really nice, they look really professional and they fit good. The only bad thing was when I wanted to wear number 21 like Ladii Lady Ladainian Tomlinson (I axed the coached to help me spell that) but they wouldent let me wear that number cause Ladin Ladainian Tomlinson already wore it so I'm wearing number 24 instead and that's cool because it looks the same. Well that's all for now because we have to practice again. Love you and see you soon.

Love from your son,

Ryan Mathews


Dear Mom and Dad,

Thank you for the package. It was very nice and all the other guys here are jealous of me for having such great parents. So far I like it a lot and I don't think that it is too hard except that we practice football so much that sometimes it is hard to make time for practicing the violin and writing computer programs. Other than that, things are just about perfect here except that I miss you and the dogs. Please write soon and let me know how they are. Also, if I help my team win the Super Bowl, can I have a girlfriend?

Your devoted son,

Ed Wang


Dear Baltimore,

I can't tell you how happy I am to be playing for your football team and I really hope to do a good job. But I want to let you know that when I was drafted and I said, “I'm going to be rookie of the year,” that was just because I was really excited. I didn't really think I'd be rookie of the year, and I would hate for anybody to expect me to be rookie of the year and then be disappointed, because what many people don't realize and what I didn't realize before I started training for the NFL, is how hard football really is on the professional level. You know only one guy a year can be rookie of the year and after your rookie year you are no longer eligible, so it is totally possible that somebody else might turn out to be rookie of the year this year, and well, then I never will be rookie of the year. So please ignore the fact that I said I was going to be rookie of the year and don't get your hopes up about me becoming rookie of the year.

Sincerely,

Sergio Kindle

This Week in Football: News Post

People often ask me about my process. By “often,” I mean “never,” because this blog attracts a phenomenal lack of interest, but I don't mind. I needed an opener.

So, going on the made-up premise that someone is interested in my “process,” it turns out that quite often I haven't really got anything to write about, especially since it's still the off-season. So when I feel like I really need to write a blog entry for the sake of personal betterment and hoping to finish something I've started, what I do is I go on espn.com and nfl.com and look at their news articles and see if any of them might be turned into comedy appropriate for Writing the Bench.

Sometimes I have to dig a little, but today I feel like I've hit a gold mine. So here for you, to save you the trouble of sifting through the internet yourself, a rundown of what's going on in football today:

BRYANT'S MOTHER NOT A HO – I thought about writing a whole “Better Know a Player” entry about Dez Bryant, but besides getting drafted pretty early on this year because he's really really good at football, the only interesting thing he's ever done is imply that his mother was a prostitute, and then get angry when somebody asked if his mother was a prostitute. Apologies were diplomatically extended to Bryant, but not his mother herself, who is still waiting. A little fact checking revealed to the world their major error: Mrs. Bryant was not a prostitute, she was a crack dealer.

PILL THEFT IN NEW ORLEANS – New Orleans Saints Security Director Geoffrey “Not to be Confused With 'the Great'” Santini has resigned his position and accused senior staff members of stealing and abusing a large quantity of Vicodin pills from the teams' headquarters. “Listen, I don't know why everyone keeps thinking I'm taking Vicodin from the team medical supplies just because I always complain about having a bad back and I think pharmacies are a rip-off. I would never, ever ask defense coach George Vitt to steal pills for me, and anyone who says I would has obviously never had sciatica, because that shit hurts and I would never hold anyone responsible for their actions when they were dealing with that amount of pain,” said Saints coach Sean Payton, who was not named in the initial newspaper articles.

NEW CONTENDER FOR SILLIEST NAME – All I heard all during the draft was about a dude named Golden Tate, followed by a lot of giggling. But nobody ever even mentioned to me that there was an NFL hopeful this year named Scott Sicko! Granted, I probably never heard about him because he ended up not actually getting drafted. And as silly names go, “Sicko” is a little bit on the nose. But even though he didn't get drafted, he was eventually offered a spot on the Dallas Cowboys, which he took, and that means he's going to get to hang out with Dez Bryant for at least a few weeks. Sicko has also been heard to say that he is excited to play off the field this season as Ben Roethlisberger's wing man, as he feels he possesses the perfect qualifications for that difficult and extremely specialized position.

Better Know a Player: Tim Tebow

Just because somebody's an underdog, that doesn't automatically mean that you should root for them. I mean, sure it, was great when Mine That Bird won the Kentucky Derby, and everybody loves that one movie where a hobbit gets to play football one time for like five seconds as a reward for twenty years of hard work, but sometimes—and I'm not even saying that it's often—just sometimes, an underdog is also kind of a poozer.

Take Tim Tebow, for instance. I think he was literally born under a dog, which is customary in the Philippines when the native midwife suspects that a woman might be giving birth to a demon (if the baby is not a demon, the dog will try to eat it; if the baby is a demon, it will eat the dog, but then the midwife (who travels prepared) will shoot it in the eye with a dart made out of an eggshell and send it back to Hell (I am positive that I read that in National Geographic, but it might have been during a fever dream)).

You see, Tebow's parents were missionaries in the Philippines when his mother got pregnant with him, and while she was pregnant she contracted dysentery, opening the way for some wonderful jokes about pooping that I am way to classy to make. Even the so-called “first world doctors” thought that she ought to abort the fetus for the sake of her own life, which was why twenty years later Tim and his mom appeared in a pro-life Superbowl ad which made no mention of that story and instead chose to merely irritate the viewing public.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAnyway. Little Timmy was born after all, and he escaped from the dogs and the midwives and like most children who are born in inauspicious circumstances, he fought hard against obstacles that didn't actually exist, excelling in general and making everyone around him look bad. His parents did not send him to public school; his mother homeschooled him and all of his siblings, which I have no problem with if she was actually a good teacher and I have no evidence to say that she wasn't. Tim Tebow has now become the poster child for homeschooling, although it is not clear to me how his representative skills are helping the cause. But the reason that the Tebows never actually come out and say for teaching their kids at home was that they wanted to make sure their kids were educated in the ultra-Christian environment that they felt no one else could properly provide. Which is also fine if that what you're into; I consider myself to be pretty pro-Jesus too, even though I don't walk around with bible verses painted on my face.

I decided to write an entry about Tim Tebow because I keep hearing his name and he only just barely got drafted to the NFL (by the Broncos, if you're curious), and his press crew is presenting him as an underdog—born against the odds, healthy against the odds, allowed to play football at a public school against the odds—but I'm not buying it. To me, he seems more like a football version of Dennis Rodman—but for Jesus. And like I said, I'm down with Jesus, but the showboating thing is not so cool, especially when you leave the coolest parts out. So, Mr. Tebow, I have a couple of requests for you, as (for lack of a better word) a fan:

One, just play football. I did all this research on you and I still don't know whether you're actually good. I'd like to know. I bet the Denver Broncos would also be pretty happy to find out.

And two, if you are pro-life, especially as a person without a vagina, and you don't have a story to back it up, you're like the white kid who majors in African American studies because they're really, really angry about injustice, even though they grew up in the suburbs and they were never really even picked on at school. Nobody's buying your manufactured passion. So if you are going to speak out about abortion, look back, face the memory of that Filipina midwife, and tell the world:

“I know about the evils of abortion. I am a survivor.”