Waiting for a Train(wreck)…

I agree with pretty much everything Doug Muir says about American football in this post…

5)  It’s so goddamn beautiful sometimes.

Yes, every sport has beautiful moments.  But football is a violent sport of sudden wild action. So when the seeming chaos on the field suddenly crystallizes into order, it’s just that much more striking.  The pass connects.  The defense swings two linemen like a door, and suddenly the quarterback falls.  The blockers move just so, and a lane is opened, and the runner is through, heading for daylight.  The defense guesses correctly, the cornerback picks the ball out the air, interception.  

If you aren’t interested in opera then it’s just a bunch of people in silly costumes singing in foreign languages.  If you do understand, it can break your heart.  Football is like that, except you don’t need to learn chord progressions or study Italian.  Once you understand what you’re seeing, watching Patrick Mahomes is like watching Mozart.  It’s like watching Mozart if Mozart had to finish his piece before three big guys threw him out of a window.

I could go on, but this is long enough already.  So, TLDR: American football is actually pretty great, and you should give it a chance.  Failing that, perhaps this gives at least some idea why some people in your life may love it so much.

Linking here mainly in anticipation of what I think could become one of the greatest Crooked Timber comment threads of all time…

…BTW good place to add this… I love listening to Smartless, and this has some all-time great exchanges between Sean Hayes and Peyton Manning regarding how football is actually played in the trenches.