I’ll start with this.
Trump gets massive cheers at the Super Bowl while Taylor Swift gets booed. –
The world is healing! ?? pic.twitter.com/JXAGmTMoiC
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) February 10, 2025
The world may be healing, but is it too late?
I don’t generally watch football. I got tired of the Antic Stupid™ which has animated it for so long.
I tuned in to see some of the game. The Chiefs were being slaughtered in the first half (UPDATE: and then in the second). There was the half time show. I don’t believe I understood 10 words of the “lyrics”, a most inapt descriptor in this case. Lyric? THAT is “music”, as in something that relates to the “muses”? I was not amused.
The commercials are of great interest to many, and sometimes for good reason. I saw a few commercials early on which greatly exalted the values of parenthood. That surprised me. Maybe the world is healing. Too late? Hey, it’s a win and I’ll take it.
There was a commercial after the half time show in which the NFL promoted flag football for girls in high school. All the bad was white male and the intelligent and with it was black female. It was a bad commercial well made for an okay game. Nothing wrong with flag football. I guess. It isn’t exactly real football. Is it the Novus Ordo of football?
I am not a huge fan of football, but there is no question that countless young men have benefited from the experience of discipline, training, coaching, teamwork and desire. It corresponds to what men are hardwired to do… except perhaps for the perpetual committee meetings. That’s why it is so disgusting when players are prime donne.
Just this morning I read a piece at The Catholic Thing by Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. It is entitled: “Football and the ‘Aura around Divinity’” Engaging. From the onset he recounts the war on football by the woke. The ball snap of it was this. Football isn’t going to go away, but it might not make it in the rarified form it is today. Consider that it football is driven out of high schools, there will not be feeders for colleges and then the pros.
Frankly, I suspect that the NFL would create junior leagues or some such. There’s too much money at stake in bread and circuses. Ironically, there was commercial which suggested with more than tongue in cheek that football was originally invented in order to sell the sort of food people today eat when they watch football. Football’s causa finalis is Buffalo chicken wings. Panem et circenses…. a sort of hunger games for the masses. Get it?
Novus Ordo football for the masses and Novus Ordo Masses. Real football to be suppressed like the TLM? Small games of contact ball in odd locations and odd times.
Back to the Super Bowl NFL’s commercial about Novus Ordo football. The NFL knows what’s up and they are positioning themselves to run the option play.
A couple more thoughts.
The evolution of football has been such that maybe it has to topple, like the top heavy Tower of Babel. The TV commentators of the game remarked that the Philly (I think) front line was the heaviest in total weight in history. Then they compared it to the total weight of the front line in the 1st Super Bowl: something like 100 pounds per player, if I remember correctly what they said.
Physics and basic biology don’t lie. Force equals mass times (not “Mass times”) acceleration. Human bones and flesh are only so resistant, flexible and resilient. Get hit hard enough and, even if you are the same size as the hitter, stuff will break. Except in movies.
I redirect your attention back to efforts to wipe out high school football.
(No more uplifting high school football movies? Really?)
The problem may ultimately rest in the exaltation of sport, and the passing (see what I did there?) over spiritual values. There is nothing wrong with the pursuit of excellence. However, even the pursuit of excellent has to be in moderation. Too much of a good thing is too much. Gotta WIN! Do ANYTHING! Gotta be a STAR! I like the kicker for the Chiefs, by the way.
Even the TV coverage of sports is a symptom of what’s wrong. In the technical advancements which permit ultra-slow replays which allow you to see the stitches on the ball and specks of dirt, there is no mystery remaining. That’s what they tried to do to the Mass in the Novus Ordo, with versus populum and vernacular: diminution of mystery. In order to unveil something, it has to be veiled first. (Cf. marriage)
A return to basics seems to be in order.
In the Italian novel by the relative of St. Giuseppe Maria Tomasi di Lampedusa (that abused island, that intake of woes), about the changes to Sicily wrought by the forced unification of Italy by Garibaldi, the old Duke’s son nephew Tancredi utters prophetic words:
“Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga com’è, bisogna che tutto cambi.
… If we want everything to remain as it is, then everything needs to change.”
Football will survive I suppose, perhaps in the Novus Ordo form of flag football. The Church will survive too, though it didn’t in Turkey and North Africa. There are no promises for these USA, either, or Europe, which is worse by far.
I have an idea about what would help to revitalize Christianity in society, but we will have to wait a while before we might get some with the courage to try. I’ll bet you know what I’m thinking.
Am I wrong?
In any event, we are seeing some wins right now. No men in women’s sports. That’s a win.
UPDATE:
I just learned that, now, you can’t onside kick except if you are behind in the 4th quarter. WHAT?!? And there’s a designate hitter in the National League, too.
It may be too late, but I did like that Christ was praised at the end by the winning coach.
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