This autumn I've been making efforts to get more involved in something that interests the broader public (for some reason, not many of my generation can carry on a conversation about Tolstoy's "War and Peace" or Aristotle's "Rhetoric and Poetics" beyond the open mouth breathing response). While soccer seems like one of those sports, on the northern Plains the majority of the demographic follows the Ice Hockey, or the NFL. After a 10 year hiatus from being a Minnesota Vikings fan, I've returned to following the purple and gold on a weekly basis (the day is usually punctuated with about 5 pitchers of Summit EPA and either ribs or hotdogs). So far, the Green Bay anti-Christ Brett Favre has fit well with the rest of the Vikings ball club. And since pops and I have followed the team from since I can remember, and since neither of us have actually attended an NFL football game, I secured us (and my uncle and cousin) tickets to the December 13th game against the Cincinnati Bengals. Something like row 15, just behind the Vikings bench (I got this lawyer friend who works for the North Dakota AG's office, you see, and he needed to off-load a couple season tickets).
As of 11/15/2009, the Vikings are 8-1-0, first place in the NFC North. But we Vikings fans understand what all this means, so we guard our emotions by not getting emotional about really anything. This hybrid stoicism arguably fits well with our Scandinavian heritage in Minnesota and the northern Plains.
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5 comments:
Skandinavian. Hmm.
The rest of the FCP'ers are so consumed with euro-trash football, though, that I thought I'd bring the Yankee custom to bear on it. AA, WTF do you know about Yankee football? Right, that's what I thought. And one doesn't look at the player. One looks at the uniform in these mercenary professional sports.
The Yankees were great. What's that got to do with football? That game sucks.
Good thing you brought up the Yankee baseball club, JJ: now you're talking about a team that embraces moral relativity in the über-merc sense merely for the bottom line of winning at any cost. Neat.
...and that's pretty much what any of these professional clubs seem to do. But it works out alright: it's amazing how a different uniform can change a guy's mind about a player.
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