Hard Hitters: Why do we Love Football?
By Alex Gordon
The play that most defines football to me happened at the 2013 Outback Bowl in Tampa, Fl. It wasn't a game I watched. I didn't even know it was going on. Like many others, I saw the play on Sports Center. Premised on the sliding topic bar as “Jadeveon Clowney blows up Outback Bowl,” I wasn't expecting anything. Up until then I had never heard of Jadeveon Clowney or had any idea who he played for or what position he played for them. I learned after a commercial break that he was a defensive end, one of the best in the country, expected to be taken in the top five of the NFL draft. I was informed that he was a physical specimen. 6’6” 265 pounds of fast-twitch muscle fiber. It was a blitz, well called apparently, that lead to an offensive line miscommunication. The missed block was all Clowney needed, the rest was simple physics. Two objects in an inelastic collision, the other we’ll call Vincent Smith (the Michigan running back), momentum is conserved and exerted at twice the force on both objects. Smith went down, needless to say while his helmet continued going up. Clowney palmed the now owner less football in his left hand and rose with a roar of his own to accompany that of the South Carolina faithful. It was everything sports was about in a singular moment. Significant, Clowney forced the fumble just after Michigan had completed a questionable first down in the fourth quarter of a bowl game, and seemingly superhuman. A display made by one of the rare individuals with the physical gifts to do so. To quote a well-used adage on the entertainment and sports program network, it was “what we watch for.”
It stayed with me, though, for its reverence. The play was shown over and over and over again. For weeks after it happened you couldn't watch an hour of Sportscenter without seeing what became simply known as “the hit.” The YouTube video has 5,388,915 views to date, and even though Smith claims he has been hit harder, the appeal of the play obviously lies in its animosity. The comparison has been drawn between football and war, and it is well documented that when we watch sports our hormones react as if we had our names on the jersey. It appeals to our base instincts in that respect, along with the tribal nature of fandom. It doesn't take an active mind to picture Clowney as the gladiator and the crowd, having been wronged the play before, the vindicated masses.
No sport is without its flaws, but football’s are more glaring than most. The domestic violence charges, rampant commercialization especially in the college game (granted big money in any industry usually leads to this result), an owner who refuses to admit his logo is a racial epithet, and the concussed elephant in the room, head injuries and post-playing career repercussions of the sport's physicality. Which could very well lead to the destruction of the game that is, by the numbers, most certainly our national pastime. As a sports fan, I feel that the game leaves much to be desired. I have always been a firm believer in the significance of any sport, their ability to make us believe in ourselves, and at times, something greater than that. I feel like they can also express, much like art, literature, and theater, our ability to create almost endless material despite the given confines of a medium. I’ve always felt football’s physicality limits it in this sense. Unlike other sports such as soccer and basketball, where contact is incidental, and only necessary when a move is made so well that a foul is the only way to stop it. Football is the opposite, without contact a move could not be made. I will concede the beauty of a long reception and the complexity and specificity of in- game strategy, but the necessary physicality stifles any possible flow. Many view football as America’s sport with baseball a relic of the past, now too slow, too pitcher dominant, and basketball still battling the lasting repercussions of the Malice at the Palace and early 2000’s perceived listless defense and isolation offense. Football appeals to our base instincts, but sports can be so much more than just glorified physicality, and I feel we have the ability to see so much beyond that.
It stayed with me, though, for its reverence. The play was shown over and over and over again. For weeks after it happened you couldn't watch an hour of Sportscenter without seeing what became simply known as “the hit.” The YouTube video has 5,388,915 views to date, and even though Smith claims he has been hit harder, the appeal of the play obviously lies in its animosity. The comparison has been drawn between football and war, and it is well documented that when we watch sports our hormones react as if we had our names on the jersey. It appeals to our base instincts in that respect, along with the tribal nature of fandom. It doesn't take an active mind to picture Clowney as the gladiator and the crowd, having been wronged the play before, the vindicated masses.
No sport is without its flaws, but football’s are more glaring than most. The domestic violence charges, rampant commercialization especially in the college game (granted big money in any industry usually leads to this result), an owner who refuses to admit his logo is a racial epithet, and the concussed elephant in the room, head injuries and post-playing career repercussions of the sport's physicality. Which could very well lead to the destruction of the game that is, by the numbers, most certainly our national pastime. As a sports fan, I feel that the game leaves much to be desired. I have always been a firm believer in the significance of any sport, their ability to make us believe in ourselves, and at times, something greater than that. I feel like they can also express, much like art, literature, and theater, our ability to create almost endless material despite the given confines of a medium. I’ve always felt football’s physicality limits it in this sense. Unlike other sports such as soccer and basketball, where contact is incidental, and only necessary when a move is made so well that a foul is the only way to stop it. Football is the opposite, without contact a move could not be made. I will concede the beauty of a long reception and the complexity and specificity of in- game strategy, but the necessary physicality stifles any possible flow. Many view football as America’s sport with baseball a relic of the past, now too slow, too pitcher dominant, and basketball still battling the lasting repercussions of the Malice at the Palace and early 2000’s perceived listless defense and isolation offense. Football appeals to our base instincts, but sports can be so much more than just glorified physicality, and I feel we have the ability to see so much beyond that.
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