Crapping on Everything: A Game of Inches

No two people could possibly agree on the perfect halftime show, so too many of us crap all over it, as we do just about everything! Truly, a sad testimony of the wired gen.

Social media, which I reckon I am egregiously using now, and the immediacy of every-person-a-sage mentality ensure that pretty much everything we should be thankful for—in a country blessed by an embarrassment of riches and amenities compared to 95% of the world—gets crapped on daily, minutely and “twitteringly” nano-secondly! Shame on ‘bout all of us! 

I have only watched, for a myriad of reasons I shan’t enumerate, two pro football games in the last two years, and both have been the Super Bowl!

I have enjoyed the hell out of them: the excellence demonstrated by all the teams who made it to the dance, and the blessing of watching at no cost to me the game and the halftime performers in the comfort of my own crib, heavily augmented by diet-bustin’ chicken wings and chips and things! And, I did it miraculously sober this year.

I thought the halftime show spectacular and am always amazed at the logistics required to pull it off in a timely manner. At least half of America should have been happy they didn’ see Janet’s nipple, or Michael J’s package grab, and half probably were thankful to see Maroon Five’s Adam Levine’s chest, while half were not!

I thoroughly appreciated the symbiosis of Maroon Five and two rappers I was unfamiliar with honoring an old-school R&B sound while not letting social-justice warriors taint the music with anything non-music related!

I was stunned by the haters who would have hated on anything but what they think the show should have been! Amazed also was I at the social-media front-liners who were displaying their hipness by non-subtly brandishing their non-hipness ensuring to their sycophants that they were indeed hip for showing they weren’t! Capisce? Me neither!

I am thankful and hope to remain thankful for a distinctly American pastime void this year of institutional hating on what is just a game and for getting to see two great teams play old school football with Bushesque “strategery,” great coaching, and a deep-seated recognition by the well-prepared, enthusiastic combatants of the importance of the game of hard fought inches!

Pacino’s character Coach Tony D’Amato in “Any Given Sunday” said:

“I don’t know what to say, really. Three minutes to the biggest battle of our professional lives. All comes down to today, and either, we heal as a team, or we’re gonna crumble. Inch by inch, play by play. Until we’re finished.

We’re in hell right now, gentlemen. Believe me. And, we can stay here, get the shit kicked out of us, or we can fight our way back into the light. We can climb outta hell… one inch at a time.

Now I can’t do it for ya, I’m too old. I look around, I see these young faces and I think, I mean, I’ve made every wrong choice a middle-aged man can make. I, uh, I’ve pissed away all my money, believe it or not. I chased off anyone who’s ever loved me. And lately, I can’t even stand the face I see in the mirror.

You know, when you get old, in life, things get taken from you. I mean, that’s… that’s… that’s a part of life. But, you only learn that when you start losin’ stuff.

You find out life’s this game of inches, so is football. Because in either game – life or football – the margin for error is so small. I mean, one half a step too late or too early and you don’t quite make it. One half second too slow, too fast and you don’t quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They’re in every break of the game, every minute, every second.

On this team we fight for that inch. On this team we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch. Because we know when we add up all those inches, that’s gonna make the fucking difference between winning and losing! Between living and dying! 

I’ll tell you this, in any fight it’s the guy whose willing to die whose gonna win that inch. And I know, if I’m gonna have any life anymore it’s because I’m still willing to fight and die for that inch, because that’s what living is, the six inches in front of your face.

Now I can’t make you do it. You’ve got to look at the guy next to you, look into his eyes. Now I think ya going to see a guy who will go that inch with you. Your gonna see a guy who will sacrifice himself for this team, because he knows when it comes down to it your gonna do the same for him.

That’s a team, gentlemen, and either, we heal, now, as a team, or we will die as individuals. That’s football guys, that’s all it is. Now, what are you gonna do?”

As the truly sagacious prophet, Bobby Boucher said, “My Mama says that alligators are ornery because they got all them teeth and no toothbrush.”

Well, maybe the Waterboy was right about a lot of us?! We either need less teefuses or more toofbrushes! But we need to clean something; maybe our own “houses,” in order to be less ornery, more team-spirited and verily more thankful! Cheers!

Chilly, a known nabob of NFL negativity, and a fella who has to be reminded daily, by himself, God and others, not to be what he loathes…