Football (the last word)

The season has come to an end; I have now watched two whole football games in total after my 15-year absence, and I must say I'm extremely satisfied by the whole experiment.

What I'm interested in is watching great football games, and this Super Bowl was a beauty. I was particularly excited that, after my rant about Cinderella playoff underdogs spoiling the powerhouses from facing off, that the two top-seeded teams made it to the Super Bowl for the first time since 1993. I'd been dying to see a Vikings/Saints game and either a Colts/Saints or Vikings/Colts game all year, and I got my wish. Two unbelievable games, too. It felt worth it to have paid attention to the development of the season and seen the great players and coaching philosophies in effect, even through simple game highlights and sports blogs, so that the final games held so much more resonance. It was more rewarding to see how much the Colts and Saints played contrary to how they had during the season in an attempt to trick the other team into playing the wrong sort of defense, and then the ways in which their trademark big plays popped out from behind the curtain. Very dramatic. I was happy to celebrate in spirit with Saints fans (as they were able to live out the fantasies of 14 other NFL clubs who have been waiting for their city's first Super Bowl win), as well as feel the pain of Colts fans who have to live with that "so close" feeling yet again, dominating in the regular season and but only once pushing through to the Lombardi trophy.

Now I'm trying to decide what to do about next year. Do I need this extra hobby?

This year, during the regular season I mostly caught the highlights on NFL.com each week, then during the playoffs I taped the games and watched them by manually fast-forwarding through all the non-play parts of the game (which sorta mostly worked well) and then actually devoting time to watch the last three games in whole (but I only got to see about 2/3 of the Viking/Saints game because other things were going on simultaneously, and the tape snipped off the overtime period). So on the one hand I feel like I played it smart, and didn't waste very many afternoons on it, like I did with football in high school, and risk leaving Amanda a football widow. At the same time ... what if the Super Bowl hadn't been a great game?

It was still a lot of energy and attention I spent hoping that a three-hour block of time would be worth all the investment. If one team had simply dominated, as often happens in Super Bowls, it would have been a real let-down. It reminds me a lot of how I anticipate a coming movie for months or even a year and then after two hours it's so quickly all over. Or how I attempt to follow politics and learn the ins and outs of issues, but then after an election all the attention is over and the conversation and priorities move onto something else. (Politics more than sports or movies actually have consequences to the results of their big nights, but, as politics tends to be cyclical, one victory or another is never the permanent knock-out blow that each party imagines that each election will bring.) The point is: I experience a certain feeling of stasis, or a holding-pattern, or ennui, when my mind is so firmly entrenched in the future, waiting for that final verdict — and it's something I don't like giving into. It pretty much goes against the belief I have that being faithful in small things is vastly important.

Now, it's possible that football won't have to be the thing that gives. Perhaps it's just the constant checking in on blogs and opinion and pontification that fuels my anticipation throughout the season. (I gave up web-surfing in general for Lent last year — even before I had jumped back into football — and that definitely helped me pay better attention to present moments, to engage a bit more, so I know that information-dependency is a core issue for me.) On the other hand, maybe it's not that I need to cut something out, but need to add something on: a renewed commitment to weekly hospitality, more investment in simple and daily connections, more time for cooking and books and walks and prayer.

Whatever the answer, I just want to not be drifting — not to dwell in those zones where everything interesting is just past or just forward, and I exist only as a precursor to later events. I want to remember that today must be enough for what it is.