Am I ready for some football?

[arcana_mundi]

So I'm back from Bloomington, where I finally realized my long-time dream of 1) declaring that incantation in medieval magic might not be a proto-science, but it is definitely part of the history of applied high-order symbolic language, and 2) did so in a room about half full of philosophers of science, and was not promptly cut to ribbons. I didn't

Comments

[coaldustcanary]

I'm an obsessive New York Giants fan as far as pro football goes.

I was not much interested in football until I went to my undergraduate university - Penn State. PSU is one of those classic football programs, Linebacker U., the legend of Joe Paterno, etc, etc. I started going to games, and it was the energy of being there for the games (with 100,000 other screaming fans) that got me hooked. When I wasn't at school, I watched the games with my father, or with neighbors. (At the time, my parents also lived in Pennsylvania, and many of their neighbors were PSU grads.) The ritual of watching football became important to my relationship with my dad. A few years later, when I moved back in with my parents after finishing my Master's degree, I got into the habit of watching pro games with him. His team has always been the Giants, so they became my team as well. Even after I moved out, I would always come home and watch the games with him on the big screen and it would be a family affair. Two years ago, the Giants won the Super Bowl, beating

[arcana_mundi]

You must have been thrilled with tonight's game! My family has a real antipathy for the Dallas Cowboys so I was predisposed to root for the Giants and it was fun to watch them plow down the field. I thought they had lost when it was 1:14 til the end of the 4th and Dallas was up a point, and then they showed the kicking guy warming up and I was like OH YEAH THAT THING! And then that assmonkey coach called timeout like the second of the kick and the kicker had to do it again - and did it EVEN BETTER. I felt happy for him. Great game to watch.

That said, I couldn't help but to really admire Marion Barber and get a little thrill when he had the ball: how far will he go THIS time?

[coaldustcanary]

Yes, indeed. It was a really fun game to watch. It's been very interesting for me especially to watch Eli Manning mature into a really good quarterback - his draft year was about when I first started getting into pro football after I finished my undergrad, as he and I are the same age

[chickenfeet2003]

The problem I have with football is the lack of continuity. Most of the time it's 2 seconds of play followed by a whole lot of nothing. While this allows individual plays to be complex, it reduces overall complexity because there is little need to think about "what next?". For example, if I'm the ball carrier, all I have to worry about is how far I carry the ball. I don't have to look for support and I don't have to worry about getting isolated. The combination of complex individual plays in an overall uncomplex structure moves the onus of play design from players to coaches and, to some extent, the players become mere executants of someone else's thought process in a way that can't happen in soccer or rugby or basketball. To put it more succinctly and in the words of Gareth Morgan (York University schilar of organisational development and complexity) "Football is rugby reinvented by Frederick Taylor".

[arcana_mundi]

Well, how far you carry the ball does in fact depend on the route you take and your coverage. So I don't think that's totally accurate except in cases involving some kind of wild Hail Mary where the receiver is wide open and has nothing but green between him and the end zone. Everyone on the field has to be observing and reacting to all the other vectors represented by the other players, with the possible exception of the linemen, who pretty much just cronch the hell out of each other and work on blitzes (or defending against them). I'm not sure how they know who they're responsible for running down and picking off while the receiver does his thing. Maybe they yell "I got this!" and I'm not hearing it

[galligaskin]

I prefer basketball and rugby. Football is a little too slow for an attention that isn't absolutely thrilled by sports to begin with. Still, I do like to watch the Super Bowl, if there are willing compatriots. I root for the team with the snazziest uniform or the best fans.

I know a bit about football, because I used to play it growing up. Tackle, with a bunch of guys, actually. (Oh the things most people don't know about me!)

I honestly think football (like most sports) is more fun if it's small town or up-close, because the people-watching and the grunting noises from all the men are pretty hilarious. You just don't get that from a tv.

The best sport is, of course, vintage baseball with cheating and swearing. Baseball is fun, anyway, because you can really pick out all the players' tics.