Football, Video Games, and Lockouts…Oh my!

Cincy
September 17, 2012
Filed under Sports Minute

I love a good sports video game. Sit me down with some friends, nothing to do for a day and Madden 13 on my Xbox 360 and we’ll have a good ol’ time with some virtual football. One thing, I can get kind of heated when I play. Not that I’m yelling at my friends or anything so much as I am yelling at the game. You see, when it comes to Madden, I don’t make mistakes. I always call the perfect play, on offense and defense, and I always execute it to perfection. The problem is, the game has it out for me. It knows I hate losing, so it makes me lose. Ok, I’m not that thick, but I do get heated about a loss in video games, kind of like Tom Coughlin did at the end of the Giants/Buccaneers’ game. The irony of it all is that the reason Coughlin got mad at the Bucs and the reason I get mad at Madden carry a similarity: they don’t make a shred of sense to anyone but the two of us, especially because Coughlin’s team just won.

I’m pretty sure my roommates feel the same way the Giants’ players felt when reporters bombarded them after the game with questions only concerning Tom Coughlin’s overreaction to the last play of the game. If you see the video, Eli Manning was taking a knee to run out what was left on the clock. The Giants’ offensive line really didn’t need to block for this, so they were on their heels. The Buccaneers’ defensive line pushed the Giants’ o-line back so much that one got pushed into Eli Manning and he fell. SO what? What’s the big deal, right? Not to Tom Coughlin. He has got to be the most annoying coach. At the end of the game, when the opposing coaches meet at the center of the field, Tom Coughlin looked like he was trying to tell off Buccaneers’ coach Greg Schiano. Schiano sloughed out whatever it was Coughlin said, just as my friends shake their heads as I toss controllers across rooms and yell unspeakable words at a television that neither listens nor cares. Tom Coughlin needs to check himself before he wrecks himself.

Side note relating to the NFL: disregard all panic from first column about Trent Richardson.

Anybody seen the news about this NHL Lockout? I’ve got an article coming out in the next issue of the paper on why the word “lockout” should give us all reason to love college sports more. But let’s look at what this lockout entails here. Now I know I might have lost some readers simply by saying the word “lockout.” All we heard last year on ESPN was “lockout.” NFL lockout, NBA lockout, blah, blah, blah. I promise I won’t say lockout anymore, but seriously, all we know is these players in (place professional sport here) don’t feel like they are being compensated enough, which is a hoot, and their employers feel they are being compensated too much. Something’s got to give, right? Well, Gary Bettman did what the other two commissioners did, he locked out the players. Whoops, I just said it again, promise that’s the last time.

Group all three sports that have endured/are enduring work stoppages together for a moment. Do we, as the American spectating public feel as though there are viable reasons for these men to make more than the President? Regardless if you like the President, you have to agree that job requires more than a football or basketball player. Ok, I’m not telling you how to feel about this, but look at it. According to Forbes, Peyton Manning is the highest paid NFL player. Including endorsements, he makes $42 million a year. According to numerous links on Google, the President makes $400,000 a year. Peyton Manning plays a game for 4 hours, give or take, once a week. The man who is elected President must not only win votes through campaigning, but also train himself to not sleep or have a personal life for the next 4 years. The discrepancies here only continue, and yet as recent as last year NFL players felt they needed more money to play a game. There are many angles you could argue with this, but it all boils down to a bunch of dudes playing a game for us to watch. If you think about it, if we stopped watching, why would atheletes make money? Just asking, not that I’d actually do that, sports are kind of my life.

Email me your thoughts on this, I’d love to hear from you. Put Cincy in the subject line. Cincinnatikid333@gmail.com