Obviously you keep watching because you love brutality.
Couldn't this have waited? I'd really like to enjoy at least one week of football.
This has something to do with Ogged's new role as the 21st century's avatar of misogyny, as posited in the thread just below this one.
Also, I agree. This stuff is hard to watch. Everything about football lends itself to injuries. Even the small number of games in the season.
Obviously you keep watching because you love brutality.
I'm going to rip out your guts, Ben.
Of course, brutality is very entertaining, but I don't actually want to see people maimed. Ultimate Fighting is good in this regard.
As for football, that I watch because of the intricacy and precision. It would actually be more beautiful if the players were smaller and quicker.
That's why real football is superior; at least there if somebody leaves the field disabled for life it's because an opposing player decided to take him out, not because the sport itself is so inherently dangerous.
Who was the guy who had his leg broken in a scrimmage during the SuperBowl a few years ago? As I recall, the network played the clip where his bone cracked and pushed out the back of his leg, over and over again.
A scrimmage during the Super Bowl? I know those words but that phrase makes no sense.
Given football's fathomless vulgarity, I'm not sure why you watched in the first place.
9: WELL I DON'T EVEN OWN A TV
If football were invented today, it would be outlawed very quickly.
I see this thread's off to a great start.
Get that weak shit out of here you bitch! (tackles teo, breaking his arm)
11, you have the argument wrong. It should be: "If football were invented today, the FDA would never have approved it. Therefore the FDA is evil, and we should strangle the government in a bathtub. But only so long as the government has come to term. Otherwise that'd be abortion. Then we'd have to strangle ourselves in the bathtub. But not in a kinky way. Because then we'd have to strangle ourselves in a bathtub... Ahh! Recursion!!!"
Sox just turned an elegant little double play. Why are you people wasting time with football so early?
9: WELL I DON'T EVEN OWN A TV
This is true. I'm watching the Sox-Orioles game on my laptop at the moment.
If football were invented today, it would be outlawed very quickly.
It's nothing compared to a century ago. Crippling injuries and death were pretty common back then; sadly, slo-mo replay hadn't been developed yet.
I just want the Phillies to get out of the 6th inning with the lead right now.
THANK YOU PULPO
More to the point Na fucking mibia just scored two tries against Ireland in six minutes. Christ almighty.
Ha, yeah it's been rugby here all weekend. I missed the England match but apparently they were shit. The Welsh were great.
Rugby looks cool, I wish they'd show it here.
More to the point Na fucking mibia just scored two tries against Ireland in six minutes. Christ almighty.
Shit. I know (really) a Namibian/Irish couple who are just getting back together after a while. Hope this doesn't blow it.
21 gets it right. Also true of badminton.
Yeah, England were shit. But the Irish are sucking at the moment as well.
Rugby looks cool, I wish they'd show it here.
Okay, now you're being reasonable.
Oh fuck, ignore that last comment, just realised the game's on sky+ not live! Doh!
Rugby is great. Objectively better than American football on all measures except possibly cheerleaders.
STOP TROLLING
FOOTBALL, BASEBALL, RUGBY AND BADMINTON PEOPLE
Nah, rugby must be good; I can sit and watch a rugby match but get bored shitless during (real) football.
Are rugby union players crippled by injuries at age 40 and dead at age 55, like gridiron players?
What about rugby league?
I won't watch football or boxing because I find them far too creepy and unpleasant due in large part to the poor labor conditions.
The NBA, on the other hand, is pure yumminess.
September and October are times to spend with friends and loved ones instead of watching football. That way you can feel better about yourself when you go crawl into your cave when NBA League Pass starts up in November.
31. a. Not as often. b. What about it?
I thought kicking took the place of the forward pass.
Also, does "rugby" mean "rugby union", or "rugby league"? What's the difference?
Is there a forward pass in rugby?
No (as you probably are already aware). That's the core innovation of the game: having to move the ball forward while only being able to pass it backwards. You can kick it forward, though.
The forward pass wasn't legal in early football, either.
Ok, that's what I thought. The forward pass is a pretty great thing; so I'm not sure about this objectively better in every way business.
This is a tennis weekend, not football.
Playing tennis, that is. We finally have beautiful weather.
(Actually, my son and gf LOVE football more than anything else.)
Baseball may not be the globalized melting pot of Association Football, but my favorite team does contain players named "Fabio", "Juan Carlos", "Tadahito", and "Pierre-Luc".
"As for football, that I watch because of the intricacy and precision."
Boxing is a beautiful sport at its core as well, but that beauty doesn't significantly mitigate its ultimate creepiness.
The forward pass is a pretty great thing
I see the point (the game-winning hail mary pass and all that). But just watch some YouTube highlights to see a good overlap or rolling maul.
I've been watching youtube rugby clips since CT had a few rugby posts up. Nice game, like I say. And the beauty of the forward pass isn't really the hail mary but a quick timing pattern.
Baseball may not be the globalized melting pot of Association Football
This is why the US military should be distributing mitts and bats instead of deflated soccer balls. I want to see guys named Ahmed and Tariq on the pitching staff alongside Hideki, Josh and Julian.
I didn't know there were as many white people in all of Namibia as there seem to be on the Namibian rugby team.
For me, the appeal of the forward pass is its high-stakes nature. There was a play in an Eagles game 3 years ago where McNabb ran around for 20 seconds looking for someone to throw to. If he gets tackled, the play is an disaster. But he finally gets the ball to someone near the end-zone, and it's a big play.
When I was young and underemployed, I watched football for the brutality. I had a shitty job with pay to match. That season, the Eagles had a monster defense, and I used to watch to see them brutalize opposing quarterbacks. When Reggie White would tackle Troy Aikman so hard that his head would bounce off the turf, it made the fact that Troy Aikman was famous and successful, while I was poor and a nobody easier to take. At that point in my life, the only thing that would have been better would have been a TV show that showed millionaires being hunted for sport.
I didn't know there were as many white people in all of Namibia as there seem to be on the Namibian rugby team.
You should have seen the old Springbok teams. You'd think there were only white people in South Africa.
BTW, I love all the national rugby unions' logos on that page. Except Portugal, whose logo is a stylized football with the word "RUGBY" under it. Nice job making it distinctively Portuguese, you idiots.
47: See, now there'a a bat-and-ball sports gap.
Except Portugal, whose logo is a stylized football with the word "RUGBY" under it.
That's because they have to remind the Portuguese themselves what game it is, exactly.
Hockey is far more violent that football.
54 - but less dangerous to the head and spine.
The Portuguese are mostly still amateurs (think there's one professional who plays in .. Italy?). So someone's uncle probably doodled that in 20 seconds.
Hockey is far more violent that football.
Not sure how you figure. In any case, collisions in hockey tend to be torso to torso, whereas in football, you have a lot of head-to-body collisions, as well as torso-to-leg collisions, both of which are likely to cause serious injuries.
54 - but less dangerous to the head and spine.
I dunno, have you ever talked to a Canadian?
Hockey injuries more likely to draw blood, less likely to cause permanent damage. Except to the teeth.
Actually now that I think about it, there have been a lot of concussions reported in hockey as well. The NHL compares to the NFL in that arena. But that's just one type of injury.
Given football's fathomless vulgarity, I'm not sure why you watched in the first place.
Stras, we are soon going to include you under the w-lfs-n sports commenting rule. That is to say: shut up, hooker.
That's why real what Europeans incorrectly call football is superior boring as shit to watch.
There, fixed that for you.
I'm watching the [Red] Sox [ahem]-Orioles game on my laptop at the moment.
How does one accomplish this feat? Or do you mean you're watching the scoreboard on ESPN or something?
I'm currently upset that of the three local networks, two are dedicating coverage to golf, and only one to football. GOLF?! Not a sport.
Beckett getting Roberts to swing at that last pitch in the bottom of the seventh, in the dirt, after a long, high-stakes at bat: better than some entire seasons of other sports.
While I agree with the sentiment, apo, Jesus is the hooker here.
How does one accomplish this feat? Or do you mean you're watching the scoreboard on ESPN or something?
MLB.com streams all games (for a fee); one of my co-workers subscribes and it looks pretty damn good. Other leagues don't do anything similar, as far as I know.
Comment all you like about sports, stras.
63 -- I suppose that Jesus has a mlb-tv subscription, which is how I'm watching. You can watch any game of the season, live or archived.
Beckett getting Roberts to swing at that last pitch in the bottom of the seventh, in the dirt, after a long, high-stakes at bat
I understand each individual word but the sentence is meaningless.
Apo throws an interception!
Apo's still a little hung over from getting rip-roaring drunk while watching Ultimate Fighting last night.
I understand each individual word but the sentence is meaningless.
I've noticed that when I listen to the news on the BBC, everything makes sense except the sports report.
(speaking of fathomless vulgarity)
70 is right. It's mlb.tv, and mlb.tv is awesome. Have you checked out the mosaic feature, CC?
BTW, you football fans are so, so easy to bait.
76 gets it right.
I almost subscribed to mlb.tv before realizing "What am I doing? This is my work computer, even if I do spend hours on it doing personal stuff every day and compensate by spending only 8 to 10 hours at home every night. That would set a bad precedent."
76 -- We ought to leave to poor suckers alone, Jesus.
What's mosaic feature?
mlb.tv works best if your browser is Mosaic? Wow, old school represent.
No, the premium mlb.tv subscription offers the option of having six games at once on your screen (with volume for one at a time).
And they call it mosaic, in case that wasn't clear.
Okay, this is ridiculous. Now it's racing, the US Open (Liza Minelli? Shut up.), and golf. I NEED TO SEE THE BEARS GAME. Ack.
They've held Tomlinson to 3 yards on six rushes so far.
I wish I could see that game, too. Sad.
85: They're playing San Diego. Not on in SF?
Football is one of those primal war metaphor sports, except raised to a beautiful level of precision and complexity by the many options available through the pass. It's good that players have to wear armor to participate.
It would actually be more beautiful if the players were smaller and quicker.
I see cute little 3" football players playing on a birthday-cake field. That would be so exquisite!
You could pop them in your mouth after the game was over, and then eat the cake.
JE, that's a horrible idea for a fetish website.
Jesus, I think mosaic would just be annoying. The fucking Yankees are fucking winning again, for example. I don't need to have that in my face.
I was trying to write a Heebie comment. She doesn't seem to be here.
Emerson, as god is my witness, I thought that was Heebie until I got to the signature.
91: Yeah, I like the idea of it, but I've never felt any need for it. I could see maybe trying it at the end of a tight season, which this one isn't anymore. Fucking Yankees, though. They've been spectacular since the All-Star break, death be upon them.
86: No, the Bay Area gets the thrilling Raiders-Lions matchup instead. It's almost enough to drive me to do something else with the rest of my Sunday afternoon, but I'm a bit hungover from last night.
Was pleased to see that the Vikings made easy work of the Vickless Falcons. Unfortunately, I don't imagine that Petersen can carry the whole team.
Holy crap, this Bears game is on! I didn't know we had Fox. Clearly, I don't watch enough TV.
The Panthers looked better than expected in their opener.
Holy crap, this Bears game is on
Grossman has been terrible.
OTOH, holding LaDainian Tomlinson to 12 yards on 11 carries (especially given that one rush was for 10 yards) is pretty goddamned impressive.
The ease with which the newish Ogged-as-misogynist label way back at comment 3, with some historical referent, seems to go down ... doesn't go down well.
It's Sunday afternoon, though. Enough.
re: 4 and 72
I can't watch Ultimate Fighting.
There's a certain ironic inconsistency in the fact that I don't like watching it (the violence of it bothers me) when I'll be spending two hours tomorrow night kick-boxing.
Randy Moss is back. I think that at his best he might be the best receiver of all time. I hope he has a few more good years.
The reason intellectuals like baseball so much is that football is too complicated for them.
@101: Think so? Doesn't seem either ironic or inconsistent to me; I'm like that about a lot of things. I played (North)American football—in both countries—and hockey with abandon, but don't really like to watch either on television. Live, in a stadium or by a field, or in a darkened arena for hockey, is genuinely absorbing. I remember Oscar Robertson, the great basketball star of my youth, saying he couldn't watch either.
I am so far not happy to have found this Bears game on TV.
104: I remember Oscar Robertson, the great basketball star of my youth, saying he couldn't watch either.
Yeah, I guess it was all basketball for the Big O.
102: they seemed to be using him well, and not overusing him.
the only thing that would have been better would have been a TV show that showed millionaires being hunted for sport.
I pray that some producer will see this and make it come true.
If I had started Berrian instead of Deion Branch, I'd have opened my fantasy football season with a win over the guy with Tomlinson, rather than losing by three. Isn't a team's #1 receiver supposed to catch, like, even one pass?
the only thing that would have been better would have been a TV show that showed millionaires being hunted for sport.
I pray that some producer will see this and make it come true.
The only problem with this is that the hunters would be billionaires.
broken neck?
nah.
the wires are just saying he had a "cervical spine injury".
nothing like a broken neck.
poor bastard. hope he gets better.
4: As for football, that I watch because of the intricacy and precision. It would actually be more beautiful if the players were smaller and quicker.
I haven't read the whole thread, but I assume someone has pointed out to ogged that they already have such a sport, namely college football, which is indeed far more beautiful and more fun to watch.
Grossman was a disaster today. The Bears D can carry almost any offense, just not the one they have. Sad.
Your boys had a nice day, though, baa. That Moss guy looks like he might be a good addition.
The Bears D can carry almost any offense, just not the one they have
I think they could carry any quarterback except Grossman. Why they don't pull him, I have no idea.
college football, which is indeed far more beautiful and more fun to watch.
College football is in no way quicker than pro football.
And most of the players aren't as skilled...
I'm a little scared of this year's Pats, and I'm a fan! I can only imagine how it is for everybody else.
College football play, as Apo and ogged note, is inferior to the NFL. There are also too many blowouts. And the bowl system sucks. To top it off, it's an exploitative enterprise that pays employees in a worthless company scrip (a diploma in sociology of sports) and at the same time degrades the educational mission of US universities. Other than that, great entertainment if your town doesn't have any NFL.
No, college isn't faster than the NFL, but the players are smaller. And it *is* more exciting. Though there are more blowouts. And the bowl system can't even be considered part of this conversation, because yes it sucks bad enough nearly to wipe all the joy from college football altogether.
To top it off, it's an exploitative enterprise that pays employees in a worthless company scrip (a diploma in sociology of sports) and at the same time degrades the educational mission of US universities.
Seriously, how can you not love baa? That corrupt aspect is even more clear in major college basketball, where recruiting talented employees with severely restricted wages is more obviously the difference between a coach who makes 150K and a coach who makes a few million dollars a year.
--snip--
ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. -- Kevin Everett had surgery Sunday evening, hours after the Buffalo Bills reserve tight end showed no signs of movement after sustaining a severe neck injury in the team's season opener against Denver.
Bills spokesman Scott Berchtold said he was informed by the team's medical staff the player went into surgery at a Buffalo hospital at about 8 p.m. Berchtold said he had no further information, and didn't know whether Everett had shown any signs of movement since he was driven off the field in an ambulance.
--snip--
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49 is possibly the best comment on this thread, although baa's a contender with his comment on college ball.
nattarGcM can't watch UFC? What the hell kind of Scot are you anyways?
Moss is very promising.
But it's no lichen.
What the hell kind of Scot are you anyways?
The chilly and cerebral kind.
Lichen tells no lies and makes no promises.
49 was remarkably honest, or would be if there seemed to be any sense of shame about feeling, or having felt that way. So it might merely be brazen, for all I know.
It would actually be more beautiful if the players were smaller and quicker.
What they should do is reduce the number of players on the field. Field dimensions and team sizes were set back when top athletes were much less athletic than they are today. Can you imagine 9 on 9 football at the NFL level? The great running backs would have room to work. Reggie Bush became a non-superhero in the NFL because no human being can evade 11 NFL-quality defensive players.
Can you imagine 9 on 9 football at the NFL level?
That would indeed be awesome.
There's an even more crying need for 4 on 4 NBA basketball. I need to start a mass movement around this somehow.
Of course, the players unions would never permit this.
135 - or maybe the court should be expanded.
The NHL does 4 on 4 regular season overtimes, right?
This doctrine applies to pretty much all sports. The best soccer-football matches tend to follow red cards: the best match of 2006 was Netherlands-Portugal.
This doctrine applies to pretty much all sports.
I'm not exactly taking it all back, or anything, but that Tony Romo plays a game worth watching.