Only a Game. A Hunger Game.

[captainsblog]

It has been a mere ticking of hours since the unthinkable tragedy of events in Kansas City earlier today.  Almost as unthinkable, though, is that any civilized human being would consider going forward with a game on the site of the back end of this day's events.

Yet they are.

One league source in the NFL office said officials were still trying to decide Saturday morning whether the game will be played on Sunday as scheduled. He said his guess was that the game would not be postponed or canceled, due to the complications of when to re-schedule the game in the remaining weeks of the season, or how a cancellation might affect the other 30 teams in the league in terms of competitive fairness.

"There is a ripple effect,'' the source said. "It's not simply two teams affected here. I'm not sure in recent history we've ever just canceled a game. But what's under consideration are all the factors involved if they don't play, when do they play? It's a pretty tight schedule to try and make a game up at some later point. These things have to be thought through. Nobody wants to play a football game right now if you're a Kansas City Chief, but what does that do to the other 30 teams? It gets a little complicated from a schedule standpoint and a competitive standpoint.

What a load. This isn't the Super Bowl we're talking about here- or even a marginally important matchup between teams in contention for a division lead or a playoff spot. These are two teams who, between them, have won exactly four games all season. The only thing keeping it from a unanimous "dog of the day" designation is that the Bills are hosting the Jaguars tomorrow.  The only people with a legitimate interest in the continuation of this gladiatorial combat are sports bookies and emergency medical practices. 

Yet I am totally not surprised that Carolina has been ordered to get on a plane to the site of the second death, and that they will almost certainly be compelled to hit and grunt and satisfy the bloodlusts of those in the stands and in the two television markets that are likely the only ones assigned this dog.  (Then again, this is a Fox game, so I wouldn't be surprised if they show it to more of the country just for the watching-NASCAR-for-the-crashes crowd.)

For this is the National Football League, home of America's most manly, manly men. Men!

It's a league where coaches coach, days after burying their own children. Where players are condemned for taking a Sunday off to attend the birth of their own children- in a sports culture where many baby daddies run an out pattern as far as they can get from the depositories of their sperm. Where they play in the rain and the hurricane before disrupting the mighty machine of network ratings and incessant gambling.

I know, the league is opposed to anybody betting on the outcomes. Officially. And yet they provide comprehensive injury reports, and stagger start times, all for the benefit of the billion dollar industry that it sends its 20-something man-children to perform for.

Many years ago, before the AFL merger, the National Football League named its divisions alliteratively rather than regionally. The West Coast teams were in the Coastal; the current NFL North comprised the Central; Giants and Browns competed in the Century; and, most to the current point, the rivalry of the Eagles, Redskins and Cowboys was contained within....

the Capitol.

Yes, Vince Lombardi and Pete Rozelle had foretold the future coming of the Hunger Games.  These Tributes are slightly older, but they, too, are drafted into combat, equipped with the deadliest of weapons and made up in a controlled season-long Arena to attract sponsors.  They do not literally fight to the death, and only one has ever died on the gridiron, but plenty of others have been paralyzed, near-paralyzed, concussed into permanent punch-drunkenness, and, at least twice now this year, killed by their own hand.

Eleanor cannot stand the sight or even sounds of the sport. Emily's been to one game with me and cares about it today as little as she did in that pouring-rain pigmess of a Sunday. I follow the Bills, in recent years mostly out of that same NASCAR-for-the-crashes fascination, but if they go forward with this meaningless combat on the literal grounds of a suicide, I don't know if I will ever be able to stand another of their games, or any game of the sport, ever again.