Oh yea, back to football. A lot of my friends don’t understand my passion for football [of the American sort]. Some of them watch it, others even follow a team or two, but most care not to “lower themselves” to view such a primitive spectacle. I say that pretentiously here, but I do understand their view. By all rights, football is the war replacement that feeds the public’s need for resolved conflict through some kind of mock-violence. I get it. And I don’t care, because that kind of sociological crap works well on paper, but rarely in practice. Plus, it’s boring and no fun.

Growing up young, I was always pretty athletic, a bit of a natural at a lot of things to do with physical coordination. By the looks of my trophy case, I’m a natural born basketball player, but the reality was, and still is, that I loved football with every bone in my body. I wanted to play. My grandpa was a star quarterback for his high school, even made his high school’s top ten athletes of the century. My dad, also a quarterback for his high school. He taught both my brother and I how to throw a pass. We watched college football players like giants, and their coach a god. Every game I watched either televised or in person was the biggest thrill of the week, and perhaps some of my happiest memories were of large come-from-behind-down-to-the-last-second victories shared with good friends and family.

But that’s not the real reason I love football.

In seventh grade, there was flag football. I was a star. Running the option with our star quarterback, we went undefeated. It wasn’t uncommon for me to have 2-3 touchdowns a game. But then came 8th grade. Pads. Helmets. The whole outfit was cumbersome. I was small, quick and nimble. The once perfect model for a flag football player, now the bottom-of-the-barrel tackle football player. But that was good. That is where my love for football starts.

I had no chance to make the A squad. Since last year, it seemed like all the players were now a full foot taller and I had shrunk. Peering out my helmet, I could barely see past the linemen hunched over the line of scrimmage. So I settled into my spot on the B team. I played defensive back and returned punts for the first half of the season. It was alright, but what I really wanted to do was return to my halfback spot. It was a different animal. The option [pitch pass left or right from a quarterback roll-out] was no longer in our repertoire. We had to hold onto the ball. In practice we ran drills for this kind of thing. Two of our gnarliest linemen would stand on the 2 yard line, stomping their feet in anticipation of the next in line. I wanted it. My heart is racing just thinking about this while I write. The coach handed it off to me out of the blocks and i barreled through them, fighting and pumping my legs, never quitting. I didn’t make it into the endzone, but be damned sure I wanted to.

I did it again. And again. I didn’t stop. I loved the challenge, the odds stacked against me. The coach recognized this and he pointed it out to our A team that practice. My fellow teammates knocked me on the helmet in celebration of my perseverance. That is why I love football. The bonds it can form, the character it builds and the lessons it teaches to those who give in to its greatness. From this one season, I gathered a sense of duty, accountability, work ethic and discipline that I would have had a hard time finding elsewhere. Few other places is this offered than in the competitive war-zone of American football.

Now. If you’re too old to play football, or just not impressionable enough. To understand the beautiful things that this sport can offer, I recommend going out and watching the movie Rudy. It is the only movie that I have ever actually cried at. I’m not trying to be macho here, other movies have choked me up, but Rudy made me weep when I was 11 years old [prime number].

What does this have to do with game design? Have you lost it?

~confused reader

Well no, I haven’t lost it. I was thinking about all this in terms of what it is I want to players to feel/come away with from playing a game. Then I got to thinking about football due to my wounds from a recent game, and thought: “Well, what did I learn from playing football?” Well this is it. But video games these days don’t attempt to instill honor and sacrifice into the latest version of Madden do they? But why not? I’m guessing if people played a game like that, they’d love football quite a bit more and probably would start a petition to ban any and all half-time shows full of glittered bimbos and pop-stars for the sake of the integrity of the sport, but that’s another post…

Within the cheap metal frame held a series of inspirational quotes from Vince Lombardi. I was raised on football and basketball as a fan and a player. In junior high I was too short to contend with this new fangled “tackle-football” but I tried my damndest which is what I guess I love so much about the sport. Its unyielding demands on the players, their will and faith in themselves. As a youngster I vividly remember tearing up watching Rudy alone on our living room floor one Sunday afternoon. The values embedded in that film, and inherently, in all of the great tradition of football struck me as pure.

These values have unknowingly been strung throughout my life, and I think Vince, perhaps one of footballs greatest coaches of all time, puts them into words that ensue that same sense of chills that I would get after killing myself on the gridiron against giants I had no ability to fell.

Success is like anything worthwhile. It has a price. You have to pay the price to win and you have to pay the price to get to the point where success is possible. Most important, you must pay the price to stay there.

~Vince Lombardi

I’ve never known a man worth his salt who in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn’t appreciate the grind, the discipline. There is something good in men that really yearns for discipline.

~Vince Lombardi

Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.

~Vince Lombardi

Individual commitment to a group effort-that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.

~Vince Lombardi

Now, this isn’t my manifesto or anything, but this spirit lives in a part of me. On the other hand so does the whole “strive to not strive” Tao.

ps. Pro football and neo-college football sucks [to be continued...]