What I’ve Learned from Football

Football is a lot like life at large.  Why else would a country songwriter come up with “Kick Me, Jesus, Through the Goalposts of Life”?  So, just as one guy said everything he needed to know he learned in kindergarten (you know, don’t pick your nose while sitting across from the little blonde you have your eye on), maybe a person can learn all that’s really necessary for successful living by watching football games.  I mean, where else but in football and real life can you have a spread between squeaky-clean philanthropists Tim Tebow and Steve Largent and that NFL team which shall remain nameless, that was said not to have put out a press information brochure one season because the press could get all the information they wanted from the local police blotter?

Okay, here’s a summary of what I’ve learned during this past football season:

1.    Woe betide the highly ranked team that comes out flat against an unranked team that comes  out breathing fire.
2.    It is absolutely impossible to teach special teams players that during a runback it’s not cool to push an opposing player between the numbers in the back or grab his arm and throw him down, especially right in front of one of the zebras.
3.    When the aforementioned Tim Tebow loses a game, the next team he faces is in deep cagada.
4.    No quarterback has ever lined up behind the center without first licking his fingers.  The reason for this is lost in antiquity.
5.    Quarterbacks get bad incompletion statistics when they hit receivers in a bad spot, namely the hands right between the numbers, and those receivers drop the ball because they’re focused on that little blonde they liked in kindergarten, who is now smiling at them from the fourth row of the stands.
6.    It is still forbidden for a color commentator to use the word “football” fewer than three times per sentence.  (See my post entitled “I Love Fuppaw.”)
7.    Apparently Mad Ave has discovered that a given commercial will not get through to today’s football fan without his/her seeing it a minimum of 6500 times over a period of five years.  Don’t you just love those that have been on since the Carter administration and inform you that the first one hundred callers will get free shipping and handling?

If you can’t draw lessons from those facts that will enable you to live a successful life, I have no more words for you.