More Proof That The NFL Is King
- Tuesday, August 10, 2010 9:24 AM
- Written By: Harry Parmenter
So Nielsen reports that 11.4 MEEEELION viewers watched an hour of the first game of the season, the obligatory Hall of Fame game featuring Bengals-Cowboys.
This is an astonishing fact.
No televised baseball this season has had 11.4 million people watching, and, for perspective, 18 million watched Game 7 of one of the most storied rivalries in history: Lakers-Celtics. (STILL can't believe Boston lost; a pox on you, Ron Artest, with that lucky heave).
What does this tell us?
Duh. America Worships the NFL.
Not to mention college football.
What IS it about football? The recession-proof sport.
My theory: it's all about aggression. Vicarious for us viewers, true. Big men hitting one another repeatedly in punishing fashion. Yet blended with consummate artistry: The one-handed reception, the up-the-gut run for seven yards, the pick out of nowhere that decided the last Super Bowl.
What a game.
We all love Football. The birth of fantasy leagues just lends credence to the fact this is America's Game. While hitting a baseball thrown at 95 mph is tougher, while an aesthete like Kobe Bryant does dazzling work, it is the crunch and line of scrimmage hatred that captivates us.
And despite the fact most of these cats play without guaranteed contracts -- unlike baseball and basketball players -- they go at it like gladiators, toe to toe, the magnificent line-of0scrimmage clash yielding ingenious play design and play making.
Football is an R-rated sport, violent to the extreme. A blood sport, if you will. The recent death of Jack "The Assassin" Tatum reminds us why.
And yet the couplet to that unfortunate ending is a gazelle like Jerry Rice entering the Hall of Fame. How did HE escape serious injury as such a coveted, valuable target?
It was his artistry, physical poetry with a juke, a burst of speed, one immaculate reception after another.
God Bless Football.
