football schmootball

i might get a lot of flak for this, but i'm going to go ahead and say it anyway:  i hate football.  crazy, right?  especially in these weeks leading up to the superbowl, when our whole country winds up glued to the tube to watch a bunch of overweight men pummel each other to the ground.  but i have my reasons.  i find it incredibly slow.  i find it hard to understand.  i find it curious that in every other sport i can think of, players are expected to be versatile enough to play both offense and defense -- but not football. shoot, they have a player whose sole responsibility is to kick the ball a handful of times a game.  he makes more money per kick than i make in an entire year as a teacher.  can anyone explain to me how that makes any kind of sense? 

but mostly, i find it barbaric.  so i felt quite validated when a psychiatrist friend of ours sent me the link to malcolm gladwell's (you know, the author of outliers and the tipping point) recent article in the new yorker.  it confirmed everything i believe to be true about the sport.  titled "offensive play", he asserts that the closest thing we've got to professional football these days is -- get this -- dog-fighting.    now, i have to admit that the article is a tad long and over my head sometimes with the football references, but the main point is one i agree with: football is dangerous.

which is why i have said from the time liam was born that he WILL NOT play football.  in fact, i think it went something like this in the delivery room:

doctor: "chris, would you like to make the announcement?"
chris (emotional, gazing at his son for the first time):  "it's a BOY!"
sara:  "he will not play football."

and i think for a while, chris probably thought, hmm, isn't she cute when she gets riled up about silly things?  i'm sure she'll change her mind.  (or, more likely, hmm, isn't she the most annoying person on the face of the planet when she gets riled up about silly things?  i'm sure she'll change her mind.)

but he's starting to realize that i couldn't be more serious.  and if i have to adopt the approach of a mother of an adult friend of ours, who somehow, despite being an extremely organized and successful professor, just happened to "miss" the deadline for football registration each year (wink wink), i will do so.  but over my dead body is my sweet son going to don a helmet and shoulder pads and walk out onto that field with the risk of being smacked down with a concussion only to wind up sitting at a bar decades later unable to remember large portions of his life all because his momma didn't stand her ground.  (think i'm exagerrating?  read the article.)

and if that oh-no-i-missed-the-deadline plan doesn't work, and if chris, athlete extraordinaire, just tries to fight me on this, i've got a back-up plan.  a surefire way to convince him that liam would be much happier on the soccer field, or tennis court, or basketball team.

i'll just threaten to enter susanna in pageants.