So I've always liked NFL. It's fun to watch. But I used to love to watch NBA as well. I used to watch all the big games in both sports, as well as Tennis, and of course the sport I can never get enough of--soccer, i.e. the real football. In the early '00s, we got a cable package with, thanks to a tip from my Dad, Fox Sports World, as it was then called (now Fox Soccer Channel). This meant I could watch a fair amount of soccer on TV, and time became short for watching NBA. At the same time, the NBA started to become uninteresting. There was less of the plays and intricacies, and more and more of ridiculously gifted athletes taking turns running across the floor then dunking. Fun for a while, but after a while, you watch one game, you've watched them all. WNBA is actually better, because it involves so much more of the sort of play NBA used to offer.
The interesting thing is that the folk American complaint against soccer--that there isn't enough scoring, is precisely what makes it interesting to those of us who can't get enough playing and watching the sport. It's hard to score in soccer. Sure it takes supremely talented individual athletes, but it also takes a lot of teamwork, and a lot of clever play-making. The plays are intricate, and the variety is infinite. English Premier League is a completely different beast than La Liga (Spain) or Serie A (Italy) or Bundesliga (Germany), and when teams play one another in European or world club competitions, the contrasts of styles, and the drama and atmosphere is just irresistible. I should say that except in the World Cup, national soccer is rarely as good as club soccer, which sucks right now since this weekend is the international break, and national teams are all that's on display. Anyway soon my TV routine was soccer on Saturday, soccer and NFL on Sunday, Monday Night Football (i.e. the British football version, on Monday afternoon U.S. time) and then Monday Night Football (i.e. the American football version). That sounds like a lot of TV, but I'm pretty creative about managing how much of my actual non-disposable time it takes up. And then something happened. Over the years, I started watching fewer and fewer NFL games. Really the same thing was happening as with the case of NBA. A lot of the passion and unpredictability was ebbing away. One culprit I can pinpoint is the New England Patriots. If there is a less watchable sporting event on earth than an NFL game that includes the Patriots, it must be on a Baseball diamond (sorry, but that's how I see it). It's all so button-down tidy, and all so utterly joyless. And since they win, everyone copies them. And the joylessness spreads. This year I've surprised myself. I haven't yet watched a single, full NFL game. I've watched snatches of games here and there, but it's getting so my heart's not in it. One of the things that's happening is that now that I've figured out even more ways to watch even more soccer, there is less and less time for NFL. But I wouldn't mind a spark to enliven American Football for me again. Could it be the A-11?
Wow. That's one heck of an electric jolt. I mean, forward-pass type revolution. Even the description of this formation gets me excited, and I've found some video clips, and I what wouldn't I give to see it in the professional level? It would be like going back to the Warren-Moon-led Houston run and shoot which was one of the things that really captivated me about NFL when I first returned to the US as a tween. That is, until defenses found out how to smother it, in a trend that kept on growing in its funlessness until it became the awful cover-2, which made enjoyable offense pretty much suicidal. Is it possible that the complete chaos that the A-11 opens up could be exploited by a good (and rootin'-tootin') coach with an abundance of NFL-class athletes? It's probably wishful thinking. Simple risk analysis means that despite any innovation defense always comes on top in any sport (just ask those of us who can't stand joyless Italian soccer and had to watch Italy hoist the last World Cup). But the A-11 could give us a few years of a truly explosive game. Couldn't it? Couldn't it? Well, the first problem is that the powers that be in football don't seem to like it. Everyone seems to be in a hurry to ban it. Joyless punks. Too bad. It looks like the A-11 requires a soccer-like level of intricate team play-making. Ah well. I can't dream, can't I? At least in this one weekend when the soccer on display is not quite up to snuff. Probably by next week, when the Arsenal take the field again, you'll ask me and I'll say "A-11"? Who's that? Adebayor with the wrong number shirt on?