What Football Means to Me

Embarrassed though I may be to admit it, I now follow professional football. This is usually an interesting way to pass time, but there are drawbacks, chief amongst them the political views held by most football commentators.

"How can one know the political views of sports commentators?" you are perhaps wondering.
"Politics have naught to do with professional football, and I cannot believe that professional sports journalists would inject their broadcasts with irrelevant political opinions. I must conclude that either you have gone out of your way to do a fair amount of research (in which case, why are you complaining?), or that you are making some rather large assumptions."
I assure you, gentle reader, that I have done no research. Any assumptions that I make are small and based on many subtle clues that these commentators give throughout their broadcasts. For instance, when Sportscenter broadcasts live from Iraq, and Chris Berman takes the opportunity to play a clip of a young Russian tennis player vocalising her support for the war on terror.
Said Chris (the folks at ESPN call him 'Boomer'), "You have to admire that girl for having the presence of mind to say something like that. I can only hope that one day when this war has succeeded in establishing a free Iraq, terrorism will be wiped from the globe and none of us will ever need to worry about living in a world where something like September 11th could happen." (I paraphrase 'Boomer', but accurately.)

Or when former Steelers great Terry Bradshaw (the folks at Fox call him 'TB') looks into the camera, points his finger sternly, and promises Osama bin Laden that we are coming for him (Within a cave on the other side of the world, Mr. bin Laden shakes his fist at the screen and vows to no longer root for the Steelers.)

Or, when John Madden innocently commented that the lead in the New England/ Indianapolis game was constantly "flip-flopping."
"Well, this is the state for that, John." replied his partner, Al Michaels (the folks at ABC call him 'Fuckface').
'Fuckface' was referring to Massachusetts. You know, where John Kerry is from. If you have seen President Bush speak or watched Fox News coverage of anything in the last few months then you know that John Kerry is a notorious flip-flopper, an unkind way of saying that he is capable of complex thoughts and possibly even self-doubt.

In this election season, when I turn away from CNN and C-SPAN and the News Hour with Jim Lehrer and try to watch something stupid and relaxing, i.e. football, I don't expect or want to be reminded of the election, particularly not of the millions of patriotic shitheads who have absolutely no idea what is going on in the world around them, of which professional sports journalists represent a small sample. Fuck all of these people and their mindless predictions and empty analyses of a nearly meaningless game. Fuck them eternally.