Earlier in the fall, I had a whole list of notes for an essay grousing about how I was going to avoid watching football this year. It was motivated in part by watching the kids practicing in the park up the street in the hot August weather and feeling miserable for them. I was also lucky enough to watch one of my baseball teams make it to the World Series (although who showed up on the field is still a mystery), so my sports fix lasted almost up until Halloween.
Among my anti-pigskin arguments were that it’s pathetic to spend much time cheering a local team of pro millionaires when they have no connection with the city, enjoy ridiculously short and painful careers, and have had their jocks sniffed by writers, fans and groupies since they were 15 years old. The owners are so beneath contempt, with their talk about “a public trust” in ownership as they leech public money for everything from traffic policing to new stadiums, that they don’t merit mention. To put it in Oprah-style talk, how much is a fan investing in this relationship, and how much could he/she possibly expect to get back?
But my main argument was, if a guy is paying attention to more than one professional sport, he is wasting his life. And I still believe that.
But oh, there is something about a winning season with the Chicago Bears. Somehow the City That Works (intermittently, haphazardly and sinfully better for some than others) seems to work better when the Bears are winning. There are flags, hats, car stickers everywhere, and somehow the regalia doesn’t reek of marketing and zombified consumerism, at least not entirely. Everyone even remotely interested in sports around here loves a winning Bears season. It’s a combination of history and civic self-perception (everyone likes to feel like a Grabowsky once in a while), or maybe just a diversion as the winter months kick in. But this place must be a football town, because the Bears are simply unavoidable these days.
This doesn’t mean that my arguments against football are invalid. I’d dissuade any boy I know from playing it, because for all the talk about teamwork, there are a hell of a lot more unsung kids playing the line or riding the bench than there are making star plays. And the dripping machismo that surrounds the games and broadcasts? I feel like a pansy just watching the car commercials. Doesn’t it look like a whole lot of overcompensation is going on? I predict an apocalyptic homosexual orgy will break out both in the stands and on the field during one of the next three Super Bowls.
But all that being said, I’m sneaking in Bears games too (to a skilled TIVO browser like myself, the game can be watched in less than an hour, and without the inane patter of the announcers), when my wife and kids will let me. I sometimes have to beg for the time in a Kramden-esque bluff—you know, “I work hard all week, and I have earned the right to watch a little football”—but that’s as macho as it gets. Yesterday, while the Bears-Vikings game was going on in 15 degree weather, I was downtown ice skating with the family by the Bean and having a stupendous time. Then we went home, made chili, bought a Christmas tree that was so frozen you could have mailed it without wrapping, and then I watched the game in the comfort of my basement. It was a perfect, frozen winter day.
And truthfully, I probably wouldn’t be having so much fun if the Bears didn’t have that fight song that’s so damn catchy. (You can hear it played by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Wikipedia HERE.)