Early last year, Miami police were called to a building housing a gym, a jewellery store, and a nightclub. They’d received reports of a burglary taking place inside. Upon arriving, Detective Mike Muley confronted a man inside the building. The man was built like a tank, sporting a questionable goatee and apparently not averse to violence. After a vicious struggle, Detective Muley – who later claimed he feared for his life - shot the man, nearly killing him.
That same goateed juggernaut had scored infamy years earlier when he didn’t show up to play in the Super Bowl – the definitive celebration of American sports excess – because he’d stopped taking his medication and went nuts. That man, Barret Robbins, was the centre for the Oakland Raiders.
It’s a sad story of a difficult life, of a man who came close to achieving the American dream – raking in stacks of cash playing professional sports – and ended up lying in a hospital bed. But that’s not the point of the story. No, the point is to illustrate that the National Football League attracts some genuine fucking weirdos. It rewards jacked-up, violent thugs and madmen with little regard for the sanctity of human life. It pays good money for the kind of men most people would cross the street to avoid. It collects maniacs and puts them on a paddock together, united only by a pigskin ball.
And that’s a wonderful thing to watch. Where else but in American football could you ever hope to find a collection of bloodthirsty men wearing spandex suits and astronaut helmets beating the goddamned shit out of each other on behalf of a maths-crazy, tactic-obsessed coach? The concept itself is a marvellous thing, and in action it only gets better.
American football is chess with violence. The pawns are replaced by a hulking defensive line who are collectively employed only to physically injure the offence as often and as effectively as possible. The queen is the quarterback, who can rush or pass or spike the ball, all the while trying to avoid the spine-cracking tackles every member of the defence wants to lay on him. The ball is the king: it will be protected at all costs, even if that means someone loses an eyeball or breaks their groin.
But, you say, aren’t the players all total girly sissies who wear skirts and eat Iced Vo-vos compared to rugby and AFL players? I mean, the NFL guys sport so much protection, while the Australian equivalents happily bash each other with only a groin guard and a mouth guard to ease the pain!
And maybe you’d be right. When you spend almost an hour getting the absolutely almighty shit beaten out of you by guys who sport brains made out of nothing but muscle and fat, it might be a bit girly to wear a mask. But then, it might just be practical; if every NFL player decided to stop wearing so much protection, by the end of 2006, approximately nine out of ten of players would be dead. And dead people can’t play sports, as evidenced by the failure of the 1996 Zombie Wrestling League.
American football is a beautiful thing. At first glance it seems to make so little sense – what is happening? Why is that guy running straight into that other guy? Who are these people? Who is controlling their movements? But it’s this twisted logic and the maths-meets-murder aesthetic that makes the yank brand of footy such a testament to the majesty of sport, and the mysteries of the mind. It’s brain food for the genuinely weird, stupid or violent. And that’s something that should be celebrated in every corner of the world.
That same goateed juggernaut had scored infamy years earlier when he didn’t show up to play in the Super Bowl – the definitive celebration of American sports excess – because he’d stopped taking his medication and went nuts. That man, Barret Robbins, was the centre for the Oakland Raiders.
It’s a sad story of a difficult life, of a man who came close to achieving the American dream – raking in stacks of cash playing professional sports – and ended up lying in a hospital bed. But that’s not the point of the story. No, the point is to illustrate that the National Football League attracts some genuine fucking weirdos. It rewards jacked-up, violent thugs and madmen with little regard for the sanctity of human life. It pays good money for the kind of men most people would cross the street to avoid. It collects maniacs and puts them on a paddock together, united only by a pigskin ball.
And that’s a wonderful thing to watch. Where else but in American football could you ever hope to find a collection of bloodthirsty men wearing spandex suits and astronaut helmets beating the goddamned shit out of each other on behalf of a maths-crazy, tactic-obsessed coach? The concept itself is a marvellous thing, and in action it only gets better.
American football is chess with violence. The pawns are replaced by a hulking defensive line who are collectively employed only to physically injure the offence as often and as effectively as possible. The queen is the quarterback, who can rush or pass or spike the ball, all the while trying to avoid the spine-cracking tackles every member of the defence wants to lay on him. The ball is the king: it will be protected at all costs, even if that means someone loses an eyeball or breaks their groin.
But, you say, aren’t the players all total girly sissies who wear skirts and eat Iced Vo-vos compared to rugby and AFL players? I mean, the NFL guys sport so much protection, while the Australian equivalents happily bash each other with only a groin guard and a mouth guard to ease the pain!
And maybe you’d be right. When you spend almost an hour getting the absolutely almighty shit beaten out of you by guys who sport brains made out of nothing but muscle and fat, it might be a bit girly to wear a mask. But then, it might just be practical; if every NFL player decided to stop wearing so much protection, by the end of 2006, approximately nine out of ten of players would be dead. And dead people can’t play sports, as evidenced by the failure of the 1996 Zombie Wrestling League.
American football is a beautiful thing. At first glance it seems to make so little sense – what is happening? Why is that guy running straight into that other guy? Who are these people? Who is controlling their movements? But it’s this twisted logic and the maths-meets-murder aesthetic that makes the yank brand of footy such a testament to the majesty of sport, and the mysteries of the mind. It’s brain food for the genuinely weird, stupid or violent. And that’s something that should be celebrated in every corner of the world.
(Originally published at Rouser).
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