Because You Never Asked

    

 

     (This essay was written in the year 2000. I put it up on this website in the year 2006, upon returning from a professional tennis tournament I attend every year. For the first time in the history of the sport, technology was used to verify line calls. As I watched this robotic attempt at perfection, I thought how little fun John McEnroe would have been in such a tin-man-without-a-heart kind of world. But the greater question could be this: is this blind faith in technology leading us anywhere good? This was my take on the subject in 2000.)

 

     The inspiration for this essay was a life size mannequin prominently displayed in the window of a local art gallery. The mannequin was a perfect representation of a National Football League official, duly decked out in his zebra shirt, white knickers pants and high black socks. He was wearing a white cap, which, for the “literati”, reveals him as the “referee”. This means he is the man in charge of the game, generally known as the primary idiot. His underlings wear black caps and are the surrogate idiots.

 

     What made this mannequin worthy of display in an art gallery was the following: instead of the usual whistle dangling from a cord around his neck, there was a miniature TV with a 5 or 6 inch screen. I suppose this was the artist’s rendering of the NFL referee of the future, whose technological arsenal would forever guarantee the proper result when the expansion teams the Dubuque Sadists and the Pocatello Executioners take the field to start the 2010 season. I also suppose the artist was inspired by the sheer stupidity of all this.

 

     For the last century or so we’ve had organized sports with teams, leagues, champions, also-rans, mythical heroes and tragic losers. For almost all those one hundred years, we’ve gone out on the legendary fields of play and competed and officiated without the use of Star Wars technology. We did the best we could.

 

     Does anyone feel defrauded by those one hundred years of techno-free competition? Were the champions of 1952 any less worthy than the instant replay champions of 2000? “But what about that bad call …?” Shut up! Quit being a cry baby. Play like a man.

 

     “Play like a man.” That expression used to mean so much. A real man (or woman playing like one) will never let an occasional bad call beat him, but a loser will always use it as an excuse. What a bunch of insecure babies we’ve become, looking for excuses whenever we fail.

 

     Competitive sport is not an exercise in perfection. When we build an airplane, or X-ray machine, or bridge across a river, yes, then we are searching for perfection. But sport is a physical-intellectual exercise in the unpredictable, in those difficult situations that come along unexpectedly that must be dealt with in an optimal fashion. Sports teach us to deal with adversity, to move on, to overcome it. So you got a bad call and it cost you this or that? Suck it up, work a little harder, be a little better the next time so a bad call doesn’t cost you the game.

 

     Or let’s reverse the situation. Now you are the beneficiary of a bad call; take advantage of it, make them pay, be the good team you are.

 

     “Play like a man!”

 

     The NFL has always been our sporting industry most fixated with technology. It’s their way of trying to convince us that they are the “coolest”. Even the uniforms and equipment worn by the players make them look like some kind of futuristic humanoids from a Schwarzenneger sci-fi extravaganza. The last time I witnessed yet another player being carted off the field, it suddenly dawned on me that much of this wardrobe, supposedly designed to prevent injury, allows the reckless mind set that causes injury. This gave me a clearer idea as to the “intelligence” of the world of pro football.

 

     In a sport whose basic strategy boils down to kicking the bleeping crap out of each other, everyone from the parking lot attendant to the head coach seems to be wearing head sets. This allows them to communicate with allies placed strategically around the premises in an attempt to outsmart an equally treacherous foe. The only employees not wearing head sets are the cheerleaders, who nobody wants to overdress, and the owner, who is off somewhere counting his money. Even our dearly beloved referee, who will soon be wearing a mini-screen around his neck, is wired for sound so that every beer sotted lout from coast to coast can be unambiguously informed as to who illegally maimed who on the last play.

 

     Pro football has become less a sport and more a Nintendo video game.

 

     And now they have expanded technology into the realm of officiating the game. It seems like a no-brainer (thus making it particularly suitable for the NFL), doesn’t it? Let’s get it right. No more bad calls. This is a great advancement for the human condition, like a loaf of white bread riddled with chemical substances that keep it from ever going stale.

 

     A lot of people think this is a good idea because there is a lot of money in play here. Considering what modern America most stands for, this could be looked upon as the ultimate in patriotism. I remind such patriot that the lowest paid player on the worst team is probably earning more than you will logically aspire to. The average veteran player is earning enough in 7 months of work for you and your Wal-Mart family to live lavishly ever after, and the “stars” are earning enough to provide low interest loans to the government of Honduras. Somehow, a bad call which costs one of these carnivores 50 grand doesn’t arouse my sympathies. I am much more concerned with what a nurse earns, or a garbage man, or a school teacher.

 

     Perhaps my scorn for techno-officiating is more emotional than anything else. In truth, there is no Einsteinian equation I can use to refute the use of instant replay, to convince anyone that this is a setback for the human race. It is a visceral feeling, a repugnance that can’t be explained. It is a feeling of impending doom, like when an animal can sense an earthquake long before us rational human beings do. It is something that wells up from my sub conscience every time I witness the idiocy of a zebra clad being disappearing under a camera shield while millions of “fan”atics await his divine decision. All of this, just to play a sport, just to play a game. It makes me feel stupid. It makes me feel as if our version of the Roman Empire is beginning to lose its sense of direction, that the barbarians are mustering their forces once again … or that they are already amongst us.

 

     It frequently makes me shut off the TV and go for a walk.

 

     So here I am, a hypothetical resident of Dubuque Iowa, and a rabid fan of the Sadists. It is now the year 2015, and, remarkably enough, just 5 years after the team’s entry into the NFL, we’ve made it all the way to the Stupid Bowl. We are down by 4 points and there is only time for one more play as the Sadists line up on the defending team’s 1 yard line. The ball is snapped and the quarterback, who is the focal point of 22 steroid crazed beasts coming together in one last colossal scrum, tries to sneak it in. The whistle blows, the dust clears, there is no signal from the official … is there no joy in Mudville? But wait! The referee is going over to the instant replay camera. Time seems to suspend itself, the spin of the planet is interrupted, the proverbial pin is heard dropping all over Dubuque. He finally emerges and clicks on his supersonic, inter-galactic microphone. “Upon further review, the tip of the ball crossed the goal line …” An emotional tidal wave rolls out over the frozen Iowa plains; the Sadists win! The Sadists win the Stupid Bowl!

 

     And now it is 6:30 on the day after, Monday morning. The alarm goes off and the average Dubuque Sadist fan drags his flabby ass out of bed. Blue Monday. It is still dark, it is snowing and an icy wind cuts the air like a stiletto. The traffic creeps along like a crippled centipede in the dreary grey dawn. By 8:00 he’s through the office door and headed for the coffee machine. As he sips the hot brew, one of his workmates mumbles, “how ’bout those Sadists”. He nods and thinks,

 

     “big bleeping deal”.