Football
January 17, 2005
I have written elsewhere that I am much more of a baseball fan than anything else, but it is hard to not love watching The New England Patriots, who seem to have exactly the opposite karma that the Red Sox always had prior to this year. The Patriots themselves were always kind of the poor stepchildren in professional football—kind of like the Texas Rangers are to baseball and the Los Angeles Clippers are to basketball. Now they are the team that simply gets it done.
They dominated the Indianapolis Colts last night. I was struck as the game was winding down how relaxed and happy the Patriots players looked on the sideline. They were clearly pleased with a job well done, but their expressions also suggested to me that they hadn’t doubted the outcome at all. This after everyone had picked the Colts to win, and many didn’t seem to even give the Pats a chance. Yet these young men seemed to clearly be signalling that they knew they were the better team, and it was simply a matter of getting the job done.
This speaks to me of one of the differences between football and baseball, though I honestly don’t know enough about football to be confident in my analysis. But it seems to me that in football, there are fewer odd variables to a game. In other words, the better team usually does win. In baseball, more freak things can happen—a rookie pitcher who comes in and pitches brilliantly, the light-hitting shortstop who suddenly hits a three-run home run (Bucky Fucking Dent!), the surehanded fielder who suddenly makes two errors in one inning.
Football has turnovers—interceptions, fumbles. These can make the difference in a game, and often do. But it seems to me that the better football teams are often better in that aspect of the game as well. They cough the ball up less, and they cause the other team to cough it up more.
Anyway, a few thoughts on that. It was fun to see the Patriots win last night. More power to them.
Posted by Bill Trippe at January 17, 2005 2:15 PM
