The NFL is Absolutely Ridiculous

I just finished watching the final game of the Steeler's season, and I was pretty extremely pissed off during the later portion of the game. It began when James Farrior completed a masterful hurry by driving Bengal's quarterback, Carson Palmer, into the ground (we call this a tackle). Given my sometimes boisterous nature, I started yelling my approval and undying allegiance to James, when I saw the yellow flag fly. I thought maybe it was pass interference, maybe it was holding, maybe Bill Cowher's chin had stuck out so far that they counted it as an extra man on the field. Much to my dismay and undeniable chagrin, they had called roughing the passer on Farrior.

This was met with a slew of obscenities and an all-out sprint down the hall; why I felt the need to run this one off is something of a mystery to me, but it most likely had to do with my mounting frustration that has pent up throughout the season with the new rule that essentially states that defensive players cannot hit the offensive team's quarterback.

What the fuck?

That is like telling Tucker Max he can't be disrespectful to a girl!

It's a travesty, a sham, and a mockery, and I won't stand for it! These are grown men playing the sport of football! The main objective is to hit, or tackle, the opposing team to prevent them from scoring points. Last time I checked, the quarterback was a pretty crucial element in the scoring of points in a football game...now they can't even hit him.

I have been complaining about this unjust rule to my friends and family, or anyone who would watch a football game with me, for the greater part of the season, and today it finally culminated. Without that penalty, the Bengals would have been up shit creek without a paddle, no fuck that, without a a boat! Instead, they get a first down, because someone on the other team did their job.

I feel really angry about this because I spent three falls of my life playing junior high football...as the back-up quarterback. To anyone who doesn't know, one of the responsibilities of a back-up quarterback is to play the position with the entire second string offense against the tenacious, rabid, frightening first string defense. Not only was this not a very prestigious spot on the roster, it was pretty painful. These kids were allowed to hit me as often as they wanted, and when your center weighs somewhere around 96 pounds, and the other members of the line suffer from extreme incompetence, you tend to get smacked pretty often.

Many people might use this opportunity to argue with me something like "Well...those NFL players are bigger and stronger than an 8th grader!" to which I reply "No shit, but Carson Palmer is a lot fucking bigger than I was in the 7th grade too."

Case closed. The NFL would find it in their best interest to change this rule, being that it is extremely stupid. It makes no sense, and there is no point. People that play football should know what they're getting into, and take the hits. If a quarterback gets hit, it's the offensive lineman's fault. It's not fair to penalize a player for making an exceptional play.

The only consolation I can find in all of this is that the Steeler's did end up winning this game, and it was the way in which they won it that I find my solace. The catch and run from Roethlisberger to Santonio that climaxed with a diving leap into the endzone...IN OVERTIME. Maybe the referees had a premonition...

Happy New Year, I'll see you in 2007...

The End of 2006

The year 2006 was an extremely turbulent and (in many ways) unusual year, both world wide and personally. It might have actually been the weirdest year I have ever experienced, and it is at least in the front running with 2001 and 2002, when the world was in a complete state of shock and bewilderment over 9/11. I can't seem to decide which year takes the cake, and maybe they are all tied.

Firstly, on the world wide front I was made aware of something around 1 AM on Friday night when I turned on the television incidentally to CNN: Sadaam Hussein had been executed. This was something that I felt was long overdue, but would never happen; at least not promptly. I don't know how this will affect the insane situation in Iraq, but I imagine it will help in some way. How could it not? If anything could take the wind out of the insurgents sails I'd imagine it would be the death of their leader at the hands of their enemies...or maybe this will just incense them more, and they'll commit more stupid and pointless acts, like blowing up cars and things like that.

There are countless other world topics I could go into right now, but it's New Years Eve and I'm too excited to sit here and write for an extended period of time, so I will advance now to the personal upheavals that I've experienced this year...

I promptly left the world of competitive basketball after starting the season with a college team. It was time for me to stop, because the competitive fire that I'd embraced and even fought against for most of my life just dissipated, and the amazing amount of fun and self-confidence that I got from playing the sport that I love quickly went with it. I'm not exactly sure what made this all happen, but I think that someday I will know the answer; right now, the only way that I can really state it is that I had been concentrating way too much of my life on it for about as long as I can remember, and it had made me a worse person. It was kind of like an addiction or something of that nature, I guess. Since retiring I have become a lot less tense, and maybe even more happy. I only fear that I might start to miss it too much, and then I'll be in quite the predicament, but for now I'm no longer sleeping with Spalding, and I'm moving onto some different things that I haven't really given myself a lot of time to previously experience.

I could go into lots of other personal changes...college, independence, nonconformity, maturity, shit like that, but I imagine that isn't something that you want to read. Maybe all of this was something that you didn't want to read, and if so, I don't really know what to say. Sorry for wasting your time, I suppose. I know this isn't great, but I just needed something to break the ice for this thing. Hopefully I'll get better as I go on, and I will go on.