Put me in, coach. I’m ready to play
by Edd Merritt
1/14/10 page 15

"And let them know why you’re wearing the
crown.
You’re the pride and joy of Illinois.
Chicago Bears, Bear Down!"

– Chicago Bears Fight Song

When I was in college in southern Wisconsin in the early ‘60s, my fraternity was split roughly equally between Green Bay Packer fans and Chicago Bear rooters. The Packer – Bear Homecoming football game was a major fall event at the Beta house. The TV room in the basement was set with chairs for Cheeseheads on one side and Grizzlies on the other. Those of us from neither state could pick our fanhood. My close friends came from Menasha and Green Bay, so, while my girlfriend of the moment was a Chicago suburbanite, when it came to manly things like football, I could go with Wisconsin native Tim, better known as Teela the Baby Elephant. I sat with the northern gang, throwing popcorn at the others and casting aspersions on Bear kicker “Round-Toe” Roger Leclair and Bear thrower Billy Wade.
When the game was over and regardless of the outcome, we’d all head for the pub to celebrate or mourn. Oddly enough, although the school was in Wisconsin, the pub was in Illinois – a very weird occurrence in those days – and you had to have a membership card to the “Italian-American Welfare Society” in order to get served. Welfare, beer and cultural pride – an odd mix but not one that we students ever questioned as we all dutifully paid for our admission sticker.
Sports were fun and games in those days, whether on an intramural level, a small college intercollegiate level, even, although to a lesser degree, at the pro level.
Recently, though, I’ve started assessing the role of sports in our society. Why do they appear to have such an impact on so many people? Hard as it is for many to accept, the game itself is still that, just a game. Oh, yes, the level of skills demonstrated by players in just about every sport has grown dramatically, and strapping on skates or cleats the minute you set foot outside the crib has become a parental obsession that is either painful or comical or both.
I picked up the New York Times several weeks ago and saw a lengthy list of bowl games – 34 to be exact – and there may have been a few played already that weren’t listed.
Now I know there is a financial incentive behind this plethora of punting. But I think it also reflects a society driven by anxiety about the current state of affairs and wishing that its interactions with opposing cultures were as straightforward as football games – numbers on each player, time to talk about what to do next, easily visible enemies (most of whom speak the same language as you), all wearing distinctive clothing identifying their places on the field – yes, even a field rather than a still-occupied home or a bombed-out village full of cars ready to explode at a moment’s notice.
World War II was a football game. The enemy’s helmets had swastikas so you could tell the two sides apart. In Vietnam, things got trickier. You didn’t quite know whom you were fighting. Everyone looked the same. The Packers didn’t have the distinctive “G” on their hats. Viking horns and Cardinal heads and Buccaneer jerseys didn’t distinguish the players.
And the world game itself is also different from what we’d like to see. Sometimes it simply goes on and on, for centuries, without a winner. And winning is a critical factor in America. Maybe that’s why the upsurge in football bowls – to show the world and ourselves that we are a land of winners. But can we expect that wars will ever again be fought by what have been considered conventional rules?
I think we throw up more and more bowl games as a way to comfort ourselves around the notion of conflict. We, the spectators, yell and scream until the final buzzer and then go home. The players shake hands and pat each others’ backs because there’s a fair chance that they will be blocking on the same team at some point in their careers.
How well would the Packers handle the “Al-Quaeda Terrorists” with the Super Bowl on the line? I would hate to referee that contest.
I suspect that the longer our conflicts throughout the world last, the more bowl games we will see added to the slate. We want to be satisfied with battles that have rules, with beginnings and ends and easily identifiable combatants.
Sorry folks, though, that ain’t the way it works in real life. Football in Pakistan is a completely different sport. What do we do now?