“Blood on the ice ran down through the years, the king of the goons with a box for a throne. A thousand stitches and broken bones, he never lost a fight on his icy patrol.” From Hit Somebody, written by Warren Zevon and Mitch Albom.

I’ve long possessed a go-to line when I want to leave a party or a large dinner filled with people too normal to engage in my pop culture passions. I tell them I find football to be boring.

Not stupid, not dangerous, not big-tummied people who paint themselves up because getting a ginormous tattoo probably is lethal. Nope. Simply boring. People are at first incredulous, but they quickly succumb to the creepiness inherent in my sincerity. “Boring?” They respond… or “Boring? Really?” if they are among the more erudite.

I inform them I’m a hockey fan, and the area around me thins out. Those who are hockey fans as well might shoot me a kind look of support. Hockey is a very fast, very high impact game played by professional monsters too young to have a fear of death yet too well-employed to have all of their teeth. Even in what looks like a likely blowout, the fate of a game can switch in the last three minutes.

In comparison, football is, to me, little more than a large hunch of well-built apemen slamming into each other for one minute and then wandering around for five minutes discussing what happened. My first paying gig at wordsmithing was as a prep sports writer, and even then I had a hard time covering football. Continue reading “Brainiac On Banjo: Freedom of Sports” →