What ball game?

XKCD gives me the intro:

super_bowl

Be sure to check out the image caption by hovering over the image with your mouse.

My hobby results in conversations similar to this:

Someone: What did you think of the game?

Joe: Which game?

Someone: The Hawks.

Joe: Is it the Sea Hawks? [If I could pronounce it differently I would say “See Hawks”.]

Someone (hint of confusion in their voice): Yes.

Joe: They play football, right?

Someone (they get a shifted eyed look, perhaps looking for an escape route): Yeah…

Joe: Good! Glad I got that right. Do they play with a spherical ball or the funny oblong one?

Someone (grim look): [Crickets]

Joe: I missed that game. I was probably shooting, having sex, or doing something else fun or productive. Was the game on Sunday? There seemed to be a lot of woman interested in me the other day.

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11 thoughts on “What ball game?

  1. Wait, who’re these Seahawks and Patriots jokers that people keep saying are playing in the Superbowl? Everyone knows that the real game is Budweiser vs Coors vs GoDaddy vs Ford vs GM vs Honda vs Toyota vs Old Spice vs et ceteras vs ad nauseum.

    The Superbowl is the Thunderdome of ad agencies! It’s a knock down, drag out fight on the national stage to see who is going to command the biggest premiums and snag the biggest clients for the next Superbowl.

    They’d make more money if they shortened up those intermissions between the commercials where they fill time showing boring footage of big guys in body armor very very occasionally moving quickly on artificial turf.

    • I like the commercials. They typically have far more thought, planning, creativity and resources behind them than the so-called programming.

      That and they’re more representative of current culture (or they try to be) so they make a decent “weathervane” of societal conditions. I like watching that aspect, and discerning how well, or poorly, they’ve served that role. My conclusion there from is that there is a LOT of opportunity that remains un-tapped. That may seem a bit contradictory, but there it is.

  2. My last company would buy a row of seats at Fenway park and have free admission to a Red Sox game for all employees for a few games a year.

    HR: “So, you going to the Red Sox game this weekend? There are still some seats left!”

    Me: “No thanks, I can be bored at home just fine!”

  3. I thought like you for many years, Joe, but my wife is a total football geek. She even won something or other for most correctly predicting the outcomes for a season, and was given an all expense paid trip to some big meeting in Seattle. She knows the histories of all the players of the various teams, their current stats, healt status, blah blah blah etc.etc. and SO I occasionally sit and watch with her, and even sometimes find it interesting.

    One of the interesting aspects of the game is that, in my estimation, at that level where you have the best of the best, it becomes as much, and very often more, of a psychological game. A couple of Hawk games back, I could see that the opposing team was defeated before the game even started. Their body language was exectly like the guy I watched on the highway (Lewiston Grade) next to a burning motor home. He had a fire extinguisher in his hands. He had fetchet it with purpose, and like lightening, but once he had it in his hads the prospect of actually fighting the fire sunk in, and there was no way he was going near that motor home. That whole team had the same look before kick-off, and they never made a single touchdown the whole game. Same look as Republicans have most of the time also. They have all the tools and resources, but just can’t make the leap into fighting and winning mode. You learn things watching that stuff.

    The last Hawkes game, anyone looking at the score, the time left, and history of that game would have bet a million dollars against the Hawkes. But only if they didn’t know the spirit of the Hawkes under the current coach. And so they never left that fighting and winning mode, and so they pulled a miracle out of theit buts and won. They won against a superior team, I believe, that is if you look at consistency, “professionalism” as most people define it, and physical skill, but they won a psychological battle that the opposing team wasn’t even fighting.

  4. Darn it, Joe!

    You are going to RUIN my usual fall/winter Sunday routine if the feets ball watchers start to question where their wives actually go…

  5. In Oregon, especially around the Portland Metro area, “the game” could be a number of things, and “The Hawks” could be either the Seahawks or the Winterhawks (Portland’s NHL team).

    You have to be a bit more specific! 😉

    • I only attend the football games I am paid to work at- And there, I watch the scoreboard, not the game.

      Also often the opening & halftime events… Because those are my cues for pyrotechnics.

      The game itself is about as interesting as watching paint dry. Even more boring than sitting through 30 or 40 performances of the same theatre event!

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