Pigskin Playbook

Let me open with a few disclaimers:
1) I am a football fan. Not sure how that clashes with my imposed self-identity as an outsider, counter-culture, anti-mainstream whatever. But there it is.
2) I have never played football, making my comments on the sport either a) unbiased observation or b) full of crap.

For my undergrad years, I attended a Division III school, meaning that athletic scholarships were not allowed, and therefore the football skill level was shaky, at best. Oddly enough, despite decent successes within the division, Trinity students as a whole were not football fans, especially odd since the campus biased towards conservatives and Texans, both firmly entrenched in the Football demographic.

Now that I'm studying in a very different environment, an "East Coast" "Ivy League" school, I was very curious to see what this would entail in the gridiron dimension. So last Saturday I braved the elements to attend the final home game of the year, Columbia U Lions vs. Cornell U Bears.

It should be noted that Columbia has, even among the Ivy League schools, a notoriously bad football team. As overheard from a radio broadcast of their previous performance, "Coach, what do you think happened today that allowed the Lions to lose to one of the only teams they were expected to beat this year?"

It's New York, so the stadium is nowhere near campus. Instead, it's perched on the northernmost tip of Manhattan Island. How far north? Have a look yourself, it's visible via Google.

So after a subway ride, I got to pick my seat thanks to the 3/4 empty bleachers. This clearly is not Texas A&M!

The field play itself was sadly much was I was accustomed to from Trinity. Simple run plays, lofty passes, and lots of turnovers. But the crowd, essentially equal in size to the the Trinity crew, and of similar composition (mostly alumni, some team parents). One interesting addition was a Harlem youth program, who apparently came to see their first live football game ever. They were a mixed blessing, filling the seats, but cheering exclusively for hard tackles, regardless of which team.

What stuck with me was the Columbia 'pep' band, known (entirely to themselves) as "The Cleverest Band in the World." Cornell had a full marching band in standard regalia - hats, military-style vests, flashy instruments and - I think - feathers. Columbia, the home team, didn't exert itself so much, with the entire band wearing (dirty) white and blue polos. And in this instance, performance followed presentation. Cornell played more difficult material, more often, longer cuts, and more convincingly.

But what Columbia lacked in style, professionalism and talent, it tried to make up for in wit.
This is an old equation I'm familiar with, we even tried (unsuccessfully) to adopt it at Trinity. You admit the obvious - that you aren't very good at X skill - then you emphasize how pathetic X skill is, and how you're superior Y skill totally negates or even explains your X-deficiency.

When Trinity pulled off the Missippi Miracle last year, the team suddenly gained national attention for what was an isolated event. In joking about the incident, and implying the team's lack of skill was offset by their theoretically higher academic standards, President Brazil joked, "That's the great thing about Trinity students - they can run a play Exactly as you draw it out for them." The punchline works, knowingly, in the absurd.

And it's clear Columbia has a long tradition of a similar effort. Lead by the pep band, who does considerably more cheeky banter than inspirational playing, the small crowd of die-hard fans run through a host of set and improvised cheers, usually involving at least one reference to a classical philosopher, and at least one innuendo that the other team (all Ivy Leaguers themselves) can't keep up off the field.

But perhaps my favorite was the self-aware post-modernism of the band. In total and intentional disarray, they practically snarled not at the other team or spectators, but mostly at the opponent's band itself. For every traditional football fight song played by the other team, they had a known responsive cheer of utter derision. One such transliteration: Da-da-daaaa-da-da, Hey "Highschool fight song"

I'm still coming up short of a salient point, but there is something here - that in our society where the most successful/powerful people are not necessarily the ones possessing the most physical prowess, we have created an attitude that extends far beyond the football field. It's not just arrogance, and it's not simply valuing intelligence over brute strength. I think it's clear that in these examples, we're using knowingly exaggerated characteristic to compensate for our feelings of inadequacy. If we really weren't bothered by someone else being better at football than us, why would we bother to rebut? Somehow, losing at football still suggests to us that the other team is better than us - in a full meaning of the term - and so our only response is to downplay the significance of the defeat, and insist upon our superiority in another, untested, field.

I could go on, but we both probably have more important things to do.

Weber
::(lame) Texpatriot.