It's a topic oft-beaten like the proverbial dead horse or rented mule or some other unfortunate ungulate, but I'll return once again to that well in search of some sort of purgative satisfaction. I watched a fair portion of a game of hockey between the Edmonton Oilers and the Florida Panthers.
Let's address the points one by one.
I have nothing against the poor schlubs who play for the Florida Panthers. They are doing a job and they are being paid handsomely for doing the thing that they love. I'm sure that workers at the factories that produced Zyklon-B in the 1930s and 1940s took that same job satisfaction home to their families. In fact, I feel very sorry for them. They were even more depressed and unhappy than the Oilers, who were forced to play in front of their illustrious forebears of 35 years prior who conquered all before them in ridiculously awe-inspiring fashion. Quick note - the team of 1984-85 had three players who scored over 100 points (Gretzky, Kurri, Coffey). Those three won the Art Ross/Hart, Lady Byng, and the Norris Trophies, respectively. The team also finished the season with 109 points, despite only clocking TWO shutouts. In an 80 game season, they scored over 400 goals meaning that they averaged FIVE goals per game.
The present day Oilers can't measure up against that. They are a faint echo of nigh-godhood. The league is prejudiced against them. The city is fighting through a deep financial ambivalence about the new arena. Much sadness. The Panthers are much worse off.
League prejudice is off the intercoursing hook. There was one brief tableau in the game when all of the Oilers players stopped playing and gesticulated at the nearest official. There are four of them on the ice, for those that have stopped counting. In the first period, the Oilers were penalized for having six (non-goaltending) skaters on the ice, for which Darnell Nurse served a two-minute penalty. When the Panthers committed the exact same offence later in the game, it went unregarded by the aforementioned four officials, despite the pleas of the legal five skaters for the Oiler team. I get it. The NHL wants teams in big money, large catchment American markets. The recipe for making Americans pay money for things they don't understand is to advertise aggressively. Advertising in the United States is built on exceptionalism - we are winners, be a winner, join us. Add them together, and you have to give victories to teams that need exposure, not those that earn wins through skill, endeavour, or tactical acumen. Any sort of merit, really, other than the potential to earn money.
Further to the above point, it is nice to see that ice hockey is getting more television airtime. There seems to be a game on every night. Unfortunately, those games invariably feature one of three teams - the Tampa Bay Buccalightning, the Florida Trail of Tears, and the Las Vegas WrongMetal Knights. (for those not keeping track, Nevada is the SILVER State.) Those three teams get inordinate media exposure as per the All-Star Game, as well as disproportionately favourable treatment from the league and the officiating crews thereof. The Mickey Mouse team from Anaheim received the same treatment when it paid in its huge franchise expansion fee. Money talks, and athletic sportsmanship walks.If you've got a half-billion dollars to throw at Shorty Halfman, you too can have a WINNING (though not necessarily successful) NHL franchise.
Too long; didn't read: as soon as Quebec or Winnipeg didn't make the numbers, the NHL shut the doors on them. But look at the numbers for Arizona, Florida, and Carolina according to ESPN. They suck worse than the Canadian franchises ever did, but they get bailed out like the bloated and irresponsible Wall Street institutions that have morally bankrupted the... whoop, getting off topic.
Before I cut to the musical interpretation bit, I want to stress this one point. I feel sorry for the poor bastards that play for the Florida Panthers. They play in an empty mausoleum of a building in Florida filled with empty corporate banks of seats and pensioners that want a coffee in an air-conditioned building. When they are on the road, their relatives are too ashamed to cheer when they score a goal, so all of their accomplishments may as well be performed on the dark side of the moon during something that really captures the American public's attention, like a fidget spinner or a new iPhone app that defines pronouns.
So the game last night had lots of goals, including one from a penalty shot. Whee. The Oilers were just trying to show the legends in the rafters that they had graduated from juniors, and the johnny lunchbucket that scored a hat-trick for the SwampGator Seminole Killers got as much applause as Harvey Weinstein at a #MeToo luncheon. Florida scored seven goals. Seven. Three for Johnny Lunchbucket. The lads on the bench could barely raise their gloves for a celebratory fistbump because they were so busy calling their agents and screaming "Trade Me Right Fucking Now!"
Conclusion
So what? Who cares?Answer: because every once in a while, there is some asinine pillock who will assert that, because he or she has met a professional weasel-fondler once, that the experience has given the person the authority to dictate that spectators cannot influence sports.
"It doesn't matter how loudly you shout at your television, it won't change the game."
You've heard it. You may have even said it. It's still wrong.
If a tree falls in a forest and no-one applauds it, facts A and B are disconnected and unrelated. Human emotions are not so easily categorized and dissociated. If you win a gold medal at the Olympics and your mother cries when you wave to her from the podium, you may as well ask that tree to replant itself and fall all over again for all of the good an analogy will do.
If you don't think that the fans can help their team, fine. The Toronto Maple Leafs haven't won a Stanley Cup since 1967, and they've sold out every game for the intervening fifty years. Newcastle United haven't won the English top title in over ninety years, but they routinely sell out an enormous stadium with a capacity of over 52,000. The argument can be made that goodwill and passion are meaningless when faced with those examples. If one accepts that argument, then human achievement is equally meaningless.
Plato reduced humanity to needing, reasoning, and esteeming. Freud rephrased that as the id, the ego, and the superego. The conclusion is the same - you need to eat, breathe, drink, stay warm, etc, to live. Yay. If you don't meet those criteria, you're not reading this and I don't care about you because you're dead.
The reasoning or ego bit is a little more complex. HOW do I get food, build shelter, drink non-contaminated water, avoid death by predators, etc.? If you have parents that held more than a passing interest in you, these are not that complicated. Some people have progenitors that never had a pet and always wanted to name something LeDaDawnequisha. We all have our crosses to bear.
The Superego, or as the SPA (Socrates-Plato-Aristotle) would call it, the thymos (θυμός) is the WHY. An accomplishment is not an accomplishment if it is not praised or esteemed as such.
I'm sure that lots of homo sapiens sapientis ran a lot. Some of the footprints are still immortalized on the Eastern Cape of Africa. But we don't know who did it. Identity becomes important when we consider Pheidippides. Who is he? He ran the first marathon.
Go run 26 miles and 385 yards. Maybe you feel happy. Maybe you get some serotonin happening in your system. Run the same distance in Boston on the third Monday in April, and a different thing happens.
Bottom line: humans are social animals and we need to feel wanted and important in one another's estimation. If you think that athletes are any different, you are either a sociopath or fast on your way to becoming one.
Shower Songlist
- Big Love, by Fleetwood Mac
- Misty Mountain Hop, as performed by Dread Zeppelin
- Drag City, by The Beach Boys
- Nkosi Yamakhosi, by Labysmith Black Mambazo
- Hey Little Girl, by Bad Manners
- Memphis Tennessee, as performed by George Thorogood
- Theme From Something Important, by the Traveling Wilburys
- Tubthumping, by Chumbawamba
What are the thematic conclusions that we can draw from these songs? Hurm. There are a few that seem to deal with female children, although in profoundly different ways. "Memphis Tennessee" is a love song from a father to his daughter, while the others deal with romantic sorts of attachment. As always, I would really appreciate any sort of interpretation.
That's it for now. My medication schedule is in a tizzy, and I need to do some medical paperwork. And thus, until later, I bid thee a fair adieu.
Goodnight England and the Colonies,
—mARKUS
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