Con game

Growing up I played football (poorly). What I loved about the game is that it served as perfect metaphor for both warfare and the American experience. The violent aspect is obvious but it’s sometimes overplayed. Yes, people get hurt and ram into each other during a football game but I’ve yet to see anybody get tackled and end up missing their legs. Thankfully, unlike modern warfare, very few children are killed by bombs during a football game.

In terms of the American experience, football is a great learning tool. The game teaches important lessons about life in this country that your fifth grade teacher was too much of a pussy to tell you: Nothing matters but the big play. People are replaceable and only represent a “position” on a team. The players are motivated by empty promises and meaningless words. The Native Americans are long killed off, victims of the genocide that built this country, but we can still make fun of them by wearing their caricatures on our apparel. Pain is part of the equation but it’s mostly dished out to the people in the trenches and all the glory goes to the quarterback who may provide leadership but does the least work of anyone on the field. Finally, you can play a good game, pour your heart out, leave everything on the field and still lose because your opponent is simply stronger, faster or got a favorable call by the officials.

More than anything else, football is a game of hypocrisy. Violence is part of the game but it’s controlled. Rage is demanded but only between the whistles. This kind of socially acceptable fury is what might be driving Mike Tyson crazy and it’s clearly demonstrated in a recent article by The Star. Apparently, Chiefs coaches are trying to coax a middle linebacker Kawika Mitchell into being a meaner guy.

They had him in for regular meetings, and nasty, occasionally hateful things were said. The basic premise was to challenge Mitchell’s manhood.

“When the game’s not on, you can be a nice guy,” Pagac said. “When you’re home with your kids, you can be a nice guy. When you’re between the lines on a Sunday afternoon, I don’t know a whole lot of nice guys out there, particularly at that position.

“He’s our middle linebacker. He has to have an attitude. He has to set our attitude.”

And I think to myself that all football coaches are nothing more than grown men who would like to have been somebody like Hitler. Fostering rage in anybody is malevolent and it never works. Just like a boxer, fury is nearly innate and it can’t be taught. I often made up for my lack of skill, talent, speed, size and strength with my hateful attitude toward humanity. God knows how many thirty-somethings are limping around because of cheap shots by me. I once saw a movie where a football player took a gun out of his uniform and started capping people on the field and all I could feel was envy.

And then we come back to the real world. These people who are encouraging one of their players to drop the nice guy act are also part of the same organization that is shaking down this city for hundreds of millions of dollars. What’s the real world response to that kind of extortion? I’ve known people who were afraid of getting their ass kicked over twenty bucks. In KC, the football players are nice guys who usually lose in the clutch. Seemingly, nobody has a problem with this. The coaches may ask for rage from their players but if more people understood the monumental con that the Chiefs are playing on this city, some real anger would be directed at the habitually mediocre franchise funded by KC’s tax base.