Out of My Mind (46 page)

The two worst games to watch on television are hockey and soccer. The trouble with them, from a viewer's standpoint, is the lack of predictable continuity. One player kicks the ball or hits a puck with a stick but, as many times as not, the ball or puck doesn't end up under the control of the person to whom it was directed. This is not satisfying. Even if you're sitting in a cushy armchair, it's frustrating.

Baseball has good dramatic form with nine innings, each divided in half, and the three-strike and four-ball rules work well. After three outs, the sides change positions on the field and that gives fans time to savor their team's situation. That's the most I can give baseball.

Golf is a slow game to watch on television, but if you don't have anything to do at home on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, the courses are the way you'd like to have your back yard look, and every once in a while there's some drama. The trouble with golf as a television sport is that
the action of a golfer hitting the ball with a stick takes so little of the total time involved in watching a four-hour, eighteen-hole match that the game is more apt to induce slumber than excitement.

Tennis is good on television because, shooting from one end of the court, a camera can get the whole picture of the action and can also provide close-ups of the most interesting shots. Unlike golf, the action in a tennis game is interrupted only briefly while the players serve the ball or change sides. You also get a better idea of the appearance and personality of tennis players from watching them on television than you get of other athletes. You know a lot about Andre Agassi or Andy Roddick just from watching them play.

Basketball is moderately interesting, but there are no pauses during which a fan can relish the situation on court. It's incessant scoring. When a team gets the ball, it moves down the court, and more often than not, puts the ball in the basket.

It's a mystery to me why anyone watches some sports on television. NASCAR (National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing) has a huge following and I've tuned in once in a while but unless there's a crash, it's about as interesting as a traffic jam during rush hour.

When I'm dull on television, at least it doesn't last long.

All normal readers should be aware that there's a small minority of dissident, dysfunctional Americans who don't like football. These Americans, if you can call them “Americans,” think watching a game is a waste of time, and further, they completely fail to understand the loyalty football fans have for one of the thirty-two NFL teams.

It is to these misguided, uninformed individuals that I address my remarks here.

Football is watched by a great many more people than play it for a variety of good reasons. First off, it is not a game that's practical for a lot
of Americans to participate in the way they play golf or tennis because, second off, a uniform costs about $950. The hat alone, known as a helmet, goes for $250.

There are eleven players on each team on the field, although thirty-four other players stand around on each sideline, hoping an emergency occurs, such as an injury to one of the players that will make it necessary for one of the coaches to send in a substitute. (In baseball, the person telling players what to do is called “the manager.” Although his function is more or less the same, in football that person is referred to as “the coach.”)

To begin the game, a dozen or so players from each team called “captain” or “co-captain” gather with officials in the middle of the field and flip a coin to decide which team will kick the ball and which team will catch it, then try to run with it toward the kicking team's goal line.

It's important to note that while we play different games with twenty-seven different size and shape balls (My estimate. Don't forget squash and croquet.), the football is the only one that is not round. The ball not being round substantially differentiates the game of football from other ball games.

The mission of the team with the ball is to advance it by at least ten yards in four tries. The ball can be moved either by throwing it or running with it. If you care who wins, the fact that the ball must be moved at least ten yards in four tries or returned to the other team adds constant drama to the game.

Part of football's popularity derives from the fact that the players are easy to see. Many of them are over 300 pounds so they can wear big numbers on their broad backs.

The defensive lineman tries to tackle the quarterback before he gives the ball to another player or throws it. This is enjoyable to watch because the quarterback makes a lot more money than the other players, and everyone likes to see him get knocked to the ground—or even out.

If you don't care who wins, it isn't any fun to watch a football game, so what you have to do in order to enjoy the game is to transfer your allegiance to another team. When Pittsburgh plays Seattle I root for
Seattle because I like the sound of their city's name and I don't care for the color of the Pittsburgh uniforms.

I hope this explanation will help non-fans enjoy the Super Bowl. This is one of the most important events of the year—the results of which don't matter one bit to our lives.

One trouble with sports now is that their seasons overlap. It used to be that football was played in the fall. Baseball was spring and summer. Basketball was a winter sport.

Hockey was played in the winter because that's when the lakes and ponds it was played on froze. Now hockey starts in September and ends in February.

Baseball starts in April and keeps going until they play the World Series during the football season in September. The basketball season overlaps both football and baseball. Professional basketball starts in November and doesn't end until June.

Basketball is a flawed game now because it depends too much on the height of the players. Maybe it's because I'm only five-foot-nine myself, but I object to a sport in which it's so important to be seven feet tall.

Basketball doesn't depend much on the marks the players get in the classroom—if they go at all. When I see two college teams playing basketball, I always wish all the players had to take an exam to make sure they can count. Any player who couldn't count to ten or spell C-A-T wouldn't be allowed to play.

I also think there's too much scoring in basketball. One pro team will often beat another by 116 to 112, and the report in the newspaper will refer to the winner's “dominance.”

The fact is, in a basketball game these days, the team with the ball almost always scores. A player drives to a point under the basket and simply reaches up and drops the ball through the net.

Maybe they ought to figure out a handicap system. Officials would measure all the players, and if twelve players from one team had a cumulative height of 72 feet (six feet each), and the other team's total height was 70 feet, the shorter team would start with something like a two-point advantage on the scoreboard.

Sometimes, when there's nothing else on I want to watch, I've looked at some of the NCAA tournament games. I haven't enjoyed watching these games because half the time I've never heard of the colleges playing. I was looking though the names of the sixty-five colleges entered in the NCAA tournament this year and I never heard of seven of them. I suppose it will make someone mad, but the mystery colleges to me are: Belmont, Murray State, Northern Iowa, Pacific, Southern Alabama, Southern and Winthrop. I have just barely ever heard of the early favorite to win the tournament: Memphis. I hardly know George Mason College or University, and that was an early favorite.

I suspect some of the colleges are nothing more than basketball teams attached to something that calls itself an educational institution to get into the tournament.

I've often dreamed of going back to college. I'd appreciate learning more now than I did then. It would be fun to register in one of these basketball colleges just to see whether I could pass any of their courses. I certainly couldn't make their basketball team.

A high school basketball game between two local rivals is healthy fun for a community, but too often, one of the teams with an overly ambitious coach starts cheating. Maybe he encourages a six-foot-eight-inch kid from a town fifty miles away to move to town in exchange for a place to live, or perhaps a car. Maybe he talks a couple of players into repeating their senior year.

There's often a conflict in a school between the serious teachers who believe that education is of primary importance and the boosters who want to see their team beat the team from the adjoining town. Too often, the teachers lose. If Belmont, Winthrop or Northern Iowa wins the NCAA tournament, I'll apologize.

One regular ticket for the Super Bowl costs about $600. If someone offers you a ticket for $I0, don't buy it if you want to see the game. In the stadium, the game is an afterthought. It's treated as though it was an intrusion on the mindless noise flowing endlessly from the stadium speakers.

I have been to all but two Super Bowl games since 1967, and this year may be my last. Going to the game should be a good experience for a football fan but it's not. Everything about going to the game is unpleasant. The game of football is the last thing the people at the National Football League think of. I realize that I'm probably not the audience they're aiming at, but I talked to a dozen people at the game and in the bus going back to the hotel who were as offended by the production as I was.

Last year I stayed at the NFL headquarters hotel, the Marriott at the Renaissance Center, and it is in a complex of buildings so confusing to get around that only a master architect like John Portman could have designed it. General Motors uses part of it for executive offices. I was in an elevator with several reporters Saturday, and one of them said maybe the reason GM's business was in such trouble was that none of the executives could find their way to their offices.

Detroit desperately wanted to have people like their city. It was sad. I was asked a hundred times how I liked Detroit. It amused me because when there's a big event in New York like a political convention, New Yorkers don't give a damn whether out-of-towners who come like the city or not.

There were people in red vests who'd been assigned to help strangers find their way around the maze, but they appeared to have been shipped in from Toledo. They had no answers to such basic questions as, “Where is the newsstand?” “Which floor is the newsroom on?” or “Where are the buses to the stadium?”

I arrived at Ford Field more than two hours before kickoff and by the time the game started, I was numb from the noise they were passing off
as music. I would have been willing to pay for silence. I kept hoping some disgruntled fan would cut the power line.

The half-time extravaganza took forty-three minutes. I wasn't interested in watching the half-time show, so I went out back to get some $5 popcorn and a $2.50 bottle of water. I just wandered around, noting, for instance, that Tropicana was “the official grape juice of Super Bowl XL.”

I didn't want to miss the second half kickoff so, after twenty minutes I went back to my seat. The half-time show wasn't over. I was shocked to find it hadn't even started yet. Stagehands were still dragging large pieces of the stage into place on the field. Mick Jagger and his entourage finally came out and performed for about twelve minutes with an inadequate sound system, then workers started the long process of breaking down the stage and dragging the pieces back where they came from.

The blaring from the loud speakers was unremitting throughout the game. During any break in the action—even between plays—the huge screens at either end of the field showed one highlight after another from previous games. No one in the stadium had time to savor the action, anticipate the next play, or exchange a comment with someone sitting near him. Noise was the dominant element in the stadium.

The NFL ought to start putting more emphasis on the football game and less on making money, or it's going to kill this golden egg-laying goose.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rooney, Andrew A.

Out of my mind / Andy Rooney. p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

eISBN : 978-1-586-48530-6

814'.54—dc22

2006023497