It must be a terrible burden on football players to not only participate in a grueling competitive sport, but to provide motivational speakers with a constant supply of metaphors. After all, what is life if not getting the living crap beaten out of you every time you attempt to advance a few measly yards? What is every new venture if not a kick-off? What is every crazy idea if not a Hail Mary pass? What is every setback but a fumble? What is every imaginary psychological roadblock we set up for ourselves if not the line of scrimmage? Okay, perhaps that last one was a bit of a reach, but ‘scrimmage’ is a very funny word and there just aren’t that many opportunities to use it in a sentence.
To continue the self-realization analogies, we can’t “receive” the bounty we deserve until we find ourselves having broken through all our “defenses” to be, at last, “open” to the opportunity that is being “passed” onto us. Yes, this is an unbearably twee set of comparisons to use in relation to an aggressive, testosterone-driven contact sport. I’m aware of that. My penis practically fell off just mentioning this stuff. But trying to make something of ourselves can give us quite a symbolic pummeling, and the bruises we carry from allowing our past insecurities to sabotage our success can be every bit as real as those inflicted by a man the size of an Ikea wall unit whose strategy for preventing you from reaching the 30 yard line is to deliberately shatter your humerus.
One of the options we have to get through the allegorical ass-whooping we call life is to not take it too seriously. Unfortunately, professional sports is now played on such an enormous scale that it would be impossible for anyone on either team to get any perspective on the actual importance of their undertaking. They are not in a position to simply take a deep breath and contemplate that maybe in the vast scheme of things, a loss or victory in this final game of the year will not make even the slightest dent in the cosmic fabric. In a perfect world, there would be a pre-game announcement on the JumboTron reminding everybody that, compared to some of the world’s more pressing issues, there really is very little riding on the outcome of the competition.
Of course, whoever made this announcement would likely be hunted down by all 70,000 of the aforementioned fans and publicly disemboweled. And no one would press charges. Plus, for all my work striving to bring others inner enlightenment, I couldn’t be the one to make that announcement. After all, I, too, am among those who succumb to a near clinical depression when my home team doesn’t make it into the playoffs, even though the home team is made up of a series of people who have been traded from so many other cities that the chances of anyone on the home team actually being from my home is infinitesimal at best. This is the pact we make with professional sports. For a little while, we allow the players to be the conduits of our hopes and dreams. That’s why watching them fight to gain a couple of yards means so much to us. There is a lot riding on it, damn it, and those players are enacting a metaphor for our inner struggle and we don’t mind paying them big bucks to do it.
As for the halftime show, let’s pray for a wardrobe malfunction.
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