Tennessee Titans, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Featuring the Fabulous Dadbots: Dave S., Mark M., Mark O., Dennis C., Paul C., and Geoff Carter
‘bots:
A break from the heavy things our conscious requires us to report on. Probably not on your radar, but I’ve been following the US team—Rose Lavelle continues to excel (UW grad)—a wicked left foot. This weekend was the euro cup and (2) great highlights for bloody England below.
First a “heel” kick goal—so darn creative, but wait, she gets it through the #5 hole (hockey term), “too boot”. They call it a “nutmeg” over there (and some here), —etymology is complicated.
And then a Brandy Chastain moment. Watch closely as the lass that makes the winning goal…with but seconds left in extra time. She is just dying to rip off her jersey….so funny, the bell finally sounds and there it is—the jog bra. They have a bronze statue of that Brandi Chastain ’99 World Cup moment on the Rose Bowl arroyo grounds in Pasadena. 87k turned out at Wembley today. The gals have more than earned equal pay.
https://www.espn.com/soccer/report?gameId=621298
-Dave.
Thanks, Dave. This brings the whole specter of modern sports celebrations to mind. We have choreographed team celebrations in front of end zone cameras (something we owe to Covid), individualized mime routines (everything from rowing a boat to the Dirty Bird to jumping on a landmine), Remember the gravedigger?, and, of course, the Lambeau Leap. It almost seems as if the athletes spend more time working on their post-scoring routines than practicing.
It’s fun and entertaining, but to me, old fart that I am, it seems a little over the top. I think back to Elija Pitts scoring and then simply jogging out of the end zone or Mickey Mantle circling the bases and trotting quietly to the dugout. Now we have Giannis (and I love the guy) standing on the court and screaming after an audacious slam dunk or an entire defense dancing together in the end zone after a pick six.
Who was it that said “look like you’ve been there before” after you get into the end zone. When I was coming up, athletes acted like grown men, not excitable children. But those days of restraint and dignity are gone. There’s still a few players who don’t go crazy when they score, but today’s professional athletes never seem to have grown up.
Of course, they never had to.
–Geoff
Stoicism used to be considered a virtue, certainly up through our parents (Greatest?) generation. I think it started to slip as a cultural virtue during the reign of the Baby Boomers. Now, I’m not sure that generations new to adulthood could even articulate what stoicism means. It seems so foreign to the zeitgeist.
MarkO
I remember some interviewer fawning over NBA star Kevin Durant who replied to some suck-ass question about his legacy: “I love what I do, and it’s great to be recognized for it and paid a lot to do it, but at the end of the day, I’m just a grown man playing a kids’ game.”
–Dennis
You know (this is off the subject, but…) some of the ballers playing in these kids’ games are kids. I know the NCAA recently granted earnings to players who can use their name in marketing products—which is a start—but only the biggest names in college ball will be able to cash in. For an industry that rakes in millions, if not billions, of dollars each year, you think that their players would get a livable income besides tuition. It would be fair.
I know some of these athletes are recruited by colleges as early as the fifth or sixth grade, first by high schools, then by colleges. A few of these schools are so eager to get these kids on their teams, they overlook or simply ignore lackluster academic performances. As a result, some of these recruits feel privileged and look at coursework as a necessary annoyance. This is not true of all athletes, of course, but I know (without naming names) of at least three who followed this path. No wonder they act like kids when they score.
—Geoff
Well, I forwarded those videos to share a few gems from the beautiful game….and elevate women’s soccer consciousness….yet…
Surprisingly, me bots turned to a litany of downers… a lament for the good ‘ol days of stoicism, Elijah Pitts…the good ‘ol, same-o, same-o days….no recognition of our women comrade’s plight. Glass ceiling anyone?
Couldn’t keep thinking—me bots!: “this is jaded…turn that frown upside down”. Orwell’s stoic horse in Animal Farm….”I must not complain…I must not express myself… never question authority… I must work harder…the Islam respect for the bruise on the forehead piety” (—that dude we just took out was revered for banging his forehead on the stone—a surgeon from Egypt—interesting to read about his path btw…educated people do things for reasons…), all of this came to mind.
So I think we’d all agree that noble stoicism is to be celebrated—“piety” …Yet blind stoicism, whether it be
- …the goose step march….
- the allegorical worker horse in the capitalistic animal farm
- or the dutiful center in the NFL—former Badger Mike Webster is but one of many ugly stories—big guys blocking for Elijah Pitts—but never getting their due propers and instead suffering early deaths. These manifestation of stoicism need to die, die, die.
I get the disdain for the me, me, me, generation of celebrations, which me bots were quick to rightfully skewer below– unsavory at best…the NFL DB’s throat slitting celebration—100% black was quickly reigned in…yet Packer radio voice Wayne Larrivee’s (100% white) signature “the dagger” remains free from criticism. ??? Is anyone bothered by that double standard?
Personally I like the group celebrations in the end zone since they often celebrate the TEAM nature of the sport….are creative and are short. The Mike Websters and other lineman—subjected to an early death—finally get some recognition. (But if I had to vote I’d be fine with football as we know it being no more—Chris Borland case in point—walked away from many millions—valued his brain. UW and SF linebacker—freak of nature athlete, but also smart.
The degenerative brain disease associated with repeated blows to the head has been found in the brains of more than 320 former N.F.L. players, Waters the third but whose death brought the condition into the mainstream. The group includes at least 24 players who died in their 20s and 30s.
-D.
Good points all, Dave. I can barely contain myself, but I won’t be running headfirst into any brick walls—or 380 pound behemoths—either.
-G.
Grumpy old bots?
I do believe Dave is calling us out as cranky old closed-minded curmudgeons, throwbacks, fossils… Wellllll, I for one like to think of myself as quite open-minded. (Hang on a sec., those goddamn kids are on my lawn again and I’m callin the cops this time.) Where was I? Oh yeah. My open-mindedness, Yes. In fact, I enjoy all three professional sports — Football, Basketball, and Baseball. They are the sports I grew up with and watched on any of three TV channels — ABC, NBC, or CBS. Said channels of which could be found by getting off one’s ass and turning a rotary dial on a black-and-white television set with both vertical and horizontal hold. No goddamned big screen cable/netflix/YouTube/video game remote control crap that all these whiny kids these days demand in their bedrooms. But did we complain? Hell no. We ate our Hamburger Helper and kept our traps shut.
Did we need some fancy-shmancy helmets on our heads to ride our Huffy one-speed bikes? Oh hell no. If we popped a wheelie too far back and cracked our head open on the pavement we just rubbed some dirt on the blood seeping from our swollen head and laughed about how we couldn’t remember our last name anymore.
If we sliced our leg open on the Huffy’s rusty chain guard did we cry and whine? Nosirreee! We sucked it up and rubbed on some more all-purpose dirt. Antibiotics? We didn’t need that crap. If the open wound festered and gangrene set in, we just went to Ol’ Sawbones and had the damn leg cut off while we bit down on a dirty stick.
That said, I’m not sure about this Euro-sport that Dave says some ladies are playing these days. You say they call their strange foriegn game “football”, right? Hmmm. Might be ok — so long as they’re not a bunch of whiners and cry-babies — and so long as they don’t brag too much — and so long as they don’t do silly-ass dances in the Frenchie end zone when they score their Euro-touchdowns. See? I’m open-minded about it.
–Den
Dennis–You forgot Channel 18. Turn the mode to UHF and turn that little dial to 18. So you could watch the other sport:
All-Star Wrestling.
You may need to make allowances for Dave’s wokeness. He grew up in Kenosha, the land of GIANT TV ANTENNAS on the roof of every ranch home. The lowliest factory worker and busboy could pull in multiple stations from Sin City (Chicago, that is). So if Dave’s brain has turned to librul mush, I think we know why. Alternatively, the problem could be that Dave watched too much “Wide World of Sports”, featuring wrist wrestling, figure skating, Grand Prix racing, rodeo, ski jumping, and other pantywaist pursuits.
(Note. I had a few words on this topic in a prior essay. Please exhume my blog post featuring Muhammad Ali.)
–Mark
Exhumation complete. Here is the body….
–Geoff