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Around the time of the biggest holiday of the year (and I'm talking about the Super Bowl) I like to take a moment to reflect on football trends of the last number of months.
New football in Jacksonville and Carolina (wherever it is they play), the cheese-headed fervor of the Packer fans in frigid Lambeau Field, the San Francisco 49ers having to resort to a wildcard entry and not getting much by way of home field advantage at Candlestick. I refer to Candlestick Park by it's pre-sell-out corporate sponsorship bullshit name, which is something like Dot Calm Park or some such nonsense, rented by and from soulless ad men squeezing the last drop of gilt from the turnip of fan loyalty and tradition. It is still, and remains forever, Candlestick Park for me. Ever since the days I gritted my teeth at yet another failure of my Boys in Blue to defeat the dreaded Juan Marishol, who beat the Boys of Summer something like 24 straight at a cold hell-hole with swirling winds called Candlestick Park.
The City of Los Angeles doesn't currently have an NFL franchise to call its own. The Raiders, like a flatulent guest who stayed too long, finally went back to Oakland where they belong, and The Rams, who we begun to wonder if they're really still in the NFL rather than some semi-pro league, had actually abandoned LA years before to play in the shadow of the Materhorn that Mickey Mouse built, then stole out of Anaheim because the owner (Georgia Front&Reary) whored herself and her team to some St. Louis Johns with the idea that tax dollars are better spent lining the old bag ex-chorus girl's pocket, rather than increasing the literacy rate in East St. Louis for the Wham-Bam thrill of getting to watch those lambs get slaughtered most every Sunday of the season.
A word to the true LA football fan...STOP THEM! STOP THEM NOW! Stop them before they wreck your fall Sundays from now until the new team again re-locates (this time maybe to Trenton). Because, I'm never jealous of LA. Never. I lived there for 24 years and outside of the friends and family left behind, I miss nothing about it. Not the smog, the freeway traffic, the paucity of culture and dearth of interesting discourse. I don't miss the LAPD, gang violence, car culture, racist separation, sprawling chaos, Hollywood fakery, real estate bust, Aerospace layoffs, single industry movie town where every fast food server has done a film, or at least appeared in Baywatch Nights.
I live in NYC and yes we have our own problems that I'm sure I wouldn't miss were I to re-locate once again, but there is now, finally, after a number of years, one single thing that I am jealous of LA for. And I come in Peace. I issue this warning to my sports minded brethren, because LA fans currently reside in Nirvana, and NY football fans inhabit the fifth circle of Hell. So, whatever you do, maintain the status quo. Do not invite the Seahawks, Saints, Bucs, or Colts to repopulate some now-empty cavern in your midst because the Alarm bell from this coast sounds like this: THE GIANTS AND THE JETS! WARNING! WARNING! OH MY GOD! THE GIANTS AND THE JETS! Every Sunday except for the rare grace of scheduling, whereby one or the other is granted a bye week, NY Football fans wake up to the NY Giants followed by another lousy game featuring the NY Jets. Of course half the time it's the other way around, but the torture is identical. One of the games is always presented in the same ugly turf-laden stadium on the swamps of the New Jersey Meadowlands. They both play at Giant Stadium, a mammoth cookie cutter structure, where the most interesting thing to happen in the past two seasons is a fan was banned for life for throwing snowballs. Banned for Life! Wow.I'd love to be "banned for life" from something. p.s. the same team that banned the fan is about to offer a second chance to a Nebraska repeat offender named Christian Peter (see The Rant: The Littlest Peter). Forgetting for a moment that the NY Jets haven't played a meaningful game past Oct. in the past five seasons, the thing that really eats my patience is that we get no double header game. Week in and week out, while the rest of the country has the opportunity to get Cowboys/Packers, Chiefs/Broncos, 49er/Steelers, and the LA market, with no conflicting home team screwing up the works gets All the good games. All of them that the TV contracts allow. While that's going on in Los Angeles and most of the rest of the country puts up with one home team a week, I get to skip The Giants struggle with the Arizona Cardinals, and then the Jets get their helmets handed to them by the New England Patriots. I find myself tuning in, hoping for a quick series of MacDonald's Game Breaks so some Fox Broadcaster can update me on the contests I'd really like to be viewing. Meanwhile, you LA fans get the most important game of the TV viewing week, every week. Week in and week out. Packers/Broncos? Not in NY. 49er/Panthers for first place in the division? In my dreams. My friend Dave and I trudge uptown to a college bar with the promise of all games on satellite dish, and sit for 3 1/2 neck-cracking hours, drinking watery beer, munching greasy fries, getting bombarded by annoying fans at closeby TV sets root-root-rooting for the fuckin' Dallas Cowboys "America's (most wanted) Team", while listening to the only game with the sound turned up, that Jets/Pats debacle. Don't let this happen to you.
Beware the politicians. Beware some crafty owner looking to do you a favor. They're taking away the best thing to happen in a sports town. They're sticking you with a franchise that will cost too much and that will lose. For every politician trumpeting this cause, there is always some challenger you can vote in instead. Every tax referendum has a no vote. Keep LA stinky football free. The Jets play on a landfill in a swamp. Even so, there is no confusion as to where that smell on Sunday is coming from. There ya go. Thanx.
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