Yes, I know all the footballs have been
flattened and stacked away for the winter … I’m on a monthly schedule now, and
you’re seeing this about five weeks after I wrote it. Besides, there’s no bad
time to make ball jokes.
SLIGHTLY
OFF THE MARK
Apparently the New England Patriots
are being accused of having soft balls.
This came as a shock to me. I mean,
they’re tough football players. At the same time I saw the comedic
possibilities of such a thing, and made it halfway through a truly hilarious
column full of crude puns and various other plays on words, just to prove I’m
an athletic supporter.
Then I realized they were talking
about their footballs.
Well, that took all the air right
out of me. But I suppose it’s for the best, as this is a family paper and that
piece was turning decidedly un-family friendly. I suspect there aren’t a lot of
kids who read my column. Still, any that did read it would have thrown
questions at their parents, who would have to explain the concept of gutter
humor, so it’s probably for the best that I dropped the ball.
Speaking of dropping the ball, I
actually watched that game. I’m no expert, but it didn’t seem to me the
Patriots won it at all; it seemed like the Colts lost it. It’s similar to the way the Republicans did such a bang-up
job of losing the last two Presidential elections.
When I say I’m no expert, what I
mean is that it was the first football game I’ve watched since 2007. So yeah,
no expert. I have nothing against football the way I do against basketball,
which is a horror experience straight from hades, but I have to budget my time
and there are books to read. Besides, they don’t show the cheerleaders often
enough.
Not to mention cheerleaders in pro
sports don’t look like cheerleaders anymore; they look like showgirls backing
up Wayne Newton in Vegas. Not to mention they could now be my daughters, which
takes most of the fun out of it. Not to mention my wife has a sword collection,
which takes the rest of the fun out of it.
So we’ve established I’m no expert.
However, I do know that a little pressure can make a big difference. We own one
of those inflatable beds. I’ve learned a few pounds of pressure can make the
difference between sleeping well until our 85 pound dog makes his full bladder
known by leaping on my chest, and hardly sleeping at all. Both usually result
in blinding back pain, but never mind.
The claim is that the New England
Patriots deflated their balls, so they could be gripped better by their
players, and no way am I going to point out the obvious joke in that sentence.
Each team is responsible to bring twelve balls, plus the home team has to bring
a dozen more backup balls. I assume they have to show the officials before the
game starts that they have a lot of balls.
What happens after that I’m not
sure. I mean, do they switch between the regular and the deflated balls
depending on whether they’re on offense of defense? And if it makes that much
of a difference, how do the officials never notice? They actually check the
balls before the game and then hand them all over to a ball boy, who has the
most uncool job title ever.
The Patriots have a history of
cheating. Apparently in 2007 their coach was fined $500,000 for filming the
sideline signals of the other team, and his cameraman was fined $250,000 for
filming the cheerleaders. I wonder if the New England cheerleaders look like
cheerleaders? Be right back …
Nope. Showgirls. Not that there’s
anything wrong with that.
Let’s keep in mind that the team is
named after, well, patriots, those people who fought off the British to secure
our right to drink coffee. The British were very perturbed, and in fact accused
the Patriots of cheating even then:
“They hide behind trees and fences,
instead of standing in a straight line across an open field and letting us fire
on them! That’s just not cricket. On a related note, we might just have to
replace these red uniforms with the white straps forming a cross in the middle
of our chests …”
So you see, the patriots of old were
accused of deflating the British soldiers.
Some people in football are saying their
balls are messed with all the time. In one case, a quarterback admitted he paid
ball boys to break in their balls before the Superbowl. I guess they handle
better when they’re scuffed (the balls, not the ball boys), which seems to be
the way a lot of drivers I’ve encountered feel about their cars.
In this time of war, government
overreach, people not buying my books, and other equally important problems, I
used to think sports were a good pressure relief. It took our minds off of
cheating leaders, violence, commercialism, overspending …
I can’t even finish that sentence,
it’s just too silly. Maybe I’ll just throw my support to a sport that’s real
and honest, not staged for entertainment, not more personality than
competition.
Maybe … pro wrestling.
No balls there.
 |
| Nah, it looks fine. |
Nah, it
looks fine.
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