american football is the world's coolest sport

over the past NFL season i've been rapidly getting more and more involved in the excitement that is american football. i've never been very interested in sports, perhaps predictably, but for some reason this game feels different than all the others i've ever seen or paid attention to.

american football is not really comparable to european team ball sports like association football, basketball, volleyball, or handball. these games are what i would consider chaotic — since the plays are so long, anything that happens drastically changes the course of the play, and the skill of the players comes from their ability to think quick and expect the unexpected for long stretches of time. they are astronauts on the field, calling all the shots as they see fit, and hoping the rest of the team is on the same wavelength. not so with american football.

american football is more effectively compared to a game like Warhammer 40,000. it isn't exactly novel to call football an RPG, but the truth is that it plays almost exactly like a real-time strategy game: a play is called, it either works or doesn't, and then it ends and the next play is considered. of course the players are still required to think fast, but that aspect is overshadowed by intense theoretical strategising and planning.

coaches and players alike are given the time to consider all aspects of the current play — down, distance to first down, distance to end zone, etc. — and from there figure out whether they want to pass, punt, kick, or run for it. this paradigm allows for more sophisticated thinking, and makes good plays seem clever as opposed to just lucky. one can look at a punt fakeout into rush to first down and understand exactly why it's smart, not just that it worked out.

in the few association football world cups that i've watched, there were numerous instances of someone getting the ball and just running around with it aimlessly and without interruption for twenty seconds. this is boring. basketball doesn't have this issue because the court is much smaller, but it makes movement a lot more constrained. american football fixes this by only caring about the game ten yards at a time, so that every yard matters.

to the nerd in me, this is the perfect game. whenever i play Hitman i only care about getting Silent Assassin. for years i've lamented over the lack of heist movies where everything goes right. i love hard sci-fi and books that don't shy away from "working the problem". i assume not being american and therefore not having this game shoved down my throat for my entire childhood helps, too, but i've been obsessed with this game for the past two months.

for a while i didn't have a team i felt like rooting for, but i quickly realized that isn't a necessary part of enjoying the game, as the league has so many interesting stories and narratives everywhere:

there's fun for the whole family. i've grown to like the Bears, because their story is the most interesting to me, but i can't overemphasize how it doesn't matter at all. i keep up with news and scores and stories and highlights through watching Hivemind Cheap Seats, the football side-show of an absurdist comedy music show that i like. experience everything, and see where the football winds take you.

i don't really know what my goal is with writing this post. part of me wants to tell nerds that football is actually a really cool game for folks like us, and indeed, if it made you consider getting into it, i would be so happy. but a larger part of me just wants to share in this new excitement that i found, this new world i've opened my eyes to, this new thing to be autistic about. this is the coolest XCOM larp ever. Go Bears!