Football really is a miraculous phenomenon. Where else, after all, can you get such a high on something as trifling as a ball being brought from one place to another (of course, except cocaine)? Where else, after all, can you find millions of people cheering and shouting to the point of gutting their own vocal chords, all for an amalgamation of cells that brings an amalgamation of atoms from one location to another? Where else can you find people of wildly different backgrounds, Democrats and Republicans alike, who don’t even know each other, gathering together in communion and camaraderie, celebrating their team’s victory through buffalo chicken wings, pizza, nachos, and a little (just a little) bit of beer?
To be involved in football is to be involved in something greater than yourself—a higher purpose: the purpose of your favorite team winning. It is to recognize the frustrating contingency of life and to resist and rebel against that contingency by having something to hope for: your team winning. In other words, to participate in football is to be human—as well as your team winning.
Well, in fact, I never really felt any such humanity in football. In fact, I felt football to be distinctly alien. In the days of yore, while I was still in my diapers, I would look on at football fans on my iPad, one finger in my nose, the other prodding the screen; I would see the tears in the fans’ eyes when a touchdown is scored, hear their screeching shrieks and cheers, smell the smell of buffalo chicken fart, and think to myself, “What weird creatures these are!” with eyes wide open and curiosity thumping in my heart. I even thought of some experiments to test on these football creatures: how would they react to the verbal stimulus “The Steelers are just the Browns with better PR and an old towel fetish,” to the visual stimulus of a Terrible Towel being burned on a stake?
Perhaps it might be honey to your ears to hear that I never conducted those experiments, but that curiosity remained. And so I decided that on a Friday night on the 12th of September, I would attend the football game between Ligonier Valley and SSA to experience for myself the spectacle of spectator football—to see for myself what it means for football to be uniquely human. And really, what was stopping me? I could no longer make the excuse I’ve always made when it came to having fun: that I had to finish my 6-month overdue US history paper. I could no longer make the excuse that none of my friends were going there, because everyone was going there, even that kid in the back of the class who never talked and was always working on their US history paper (not me). So why not just listen to Sam-I-Am of Green Eggs and Ham when he says that “You won’t know until you try it!” and have some fun?
So it was that when the clock hit 6 o’clock and the clock tower rang six times, denoting the six hours and 20 minutes that passed between 12 PM and now, I pulled myself up from my ivory armchair on which I pondered the metaphysical nature of the universe and exited Rowe Hall, heading for the Michael J. Farrell stadium. It was a clear day, not a cloud in the sky, with warm light streaming through the expansive atmosphere, full of amber and ruby as the sun began to set behind the Hillman. Already, I could smell the faint, fragrant scent of football fun, wafting through the air from the tailgate party in the Hillman parking lot like the delectable scent of gourmet beefy macaroni being prepared in the McCune Dining Hall. I could hear the faint chants and cheers of the cheerleaders off in the distance, premonitioning a night full of excitement and hype.
I stopped for a moment at the stairs beside the Hillman terrace to look back for a moment before stepping into the unknown world of football—look back at this familiar world of musty old books and papers fresh from the printer—at this familiar constellation of buildings orbiting around the ivory tower that is the flag pole. I looked back on Rowe, the bookish scholar of this ivory constellation, standing at the center of all attention as waves upon waves of students pass through him everyday to be tweaked and tuned—a screw there, a bolt here—into academic weapons so sharp teachers can assign reading quizzes knowing full well that these weapons would easily cut through them because they all clearly did the reading. I looked back on grand old Hillman, the conductor of this symphony of buildings, holding up a great bank of lofty philosophic thoughts on its massive colonnades, which no one ever visits for a withdrawal. I looked back on poor McIlroy, the cold-heartedly objective, rational scientist pushed off the top of this Mount Olympus for having thoughts too practical and down-to-earth. I looked back on Benedum, that artsy professor whose poor old inedible paints are overshadowed by massive McCune’s delectably irresistible fodder (“Can we get out early to get lunch,” says the student in Benedum). And then there’s Rockwell, and… well… he’s not in a great condition to say the least.
Once more, I looked upon all these buildings and bid them farewell. Farewell Rowe! Farewell Hillman! Farewell McIlroy! Farewell Benedum! Farewell McCune! Farewell Rockwell, and I hope you feel better! I’m going on a journey to discover a new world! I’ll be leaving soon. I’ll be going away and away to a faraway place. Tears streamed down my face: I wouldn’t be seeing them again for three whole hours—ten thousand eight hundred whole seconds of my life. I didn’t want to leave. But I had to.
So I turned my body back toward the stairs and stared down the long path. I let the loud and rowdy Cotton Eye Joe playing at the tailgate fill my ears to the brim. Choking down tears and sniffling throughout, I sang along to distract my woeful mind: “If it hadn’t been for cotton eye joe *sniff*, I’d be married a long time ago *sniff*, where did you come *sniff* from, where did you *sniff* go, where did you come from, cotton eye *sniff* joe?” I wiped my tears and took a deep breath. It won’t be so bad! I’ll get to know someone new, and isn’t encountering new things the spice of life? I’ll finally get to know that rowdy cowboy neighbor Farell who can’t seem to stop yeehawing around, even when I’m trying to study! I’ll get to know him real well!
My mind calmed down, and so I walked down the steps. Slowly but surely, excitement began pounding in my heart stronger and faster the closer I got to the tailgate—it was like going through a portal into a mysterious fantasy world, like opening your small closet to find a giant, wonderful new world hidden behind it. There were cheerleaders that chirped like magical birds! A field of children and students like no other played, laughed, jumped, dumped in the street, swayed in the wind like the sweet grass in an enchanted meadow! And there was… a long line, and 15 dollar pizza.
OIANSODINAOISOIW RUN. SCRAM. SPLIT. FLEE. WTF IS THAT CREATURE!?!??!? ##!**$*###! BACK TO THE PORTAL! BACK TO THE PORTAL! ###$$!$! RUN HARDER! RUN HARDER! ##!#!##@$@
Ah, final– fi– finally– Hold on, I– I need to– catch my breath………… Whew! Finally in safety! That was close! That pizza truck really thought they could catch me in their trap and force me to pay them 15 whole green bills for mere pizza! Hah! Think again pizza suckers! So I just went to McCune to eat my dinner.
Ok, let’s start this over again.
There it was, the portal to a new world, and I was standing right in front of it, with my friends Steven and Ryan. I could already hear the announcers announcing the SSA football champions that would lead this great school to victory—champions announced and praised like the great olympians that, with their immense power, control the gears and switches of this world. With a deep breath, we lifted our feet and dived into this new world—a new world full of feetball.
It was a very warm night, full of heat and excitement. The sun was finally settling down, relinquishing his control over the world and transferring control to us paltry little humans. “Make good use of these powers—and don’t abuse them,” says the Sun. But of course, us being humans, we just threw our responsibilities to the side and started partying as if nothing else in the world mattered. Who cares about the world when we could watch FOOTBALL!?
Reaching the stadium, we could hear chants from the cheerleaders and my fellow students. Me and my friends squeezed in between the rank and file students, standing like soldiers ready to move right into battle—or rather move into a chant with the smoothness and synchronicity of a goosewalk parade. I looked around at who was there. There were philosophers, historians, artists, scientists, writers, essayists, tech bros, economists—every breed and species of the creatures of the Ivory ark that weathered the antediluvian flood that wiped out the sinful unbrainy humans. There was a theological philosopher, an aerospace engineer, including Leonardo Davincki himself! (Yes, Leonardo Davincki!) And all these brainy people were gathered together to delight in the social phenomenon that is cheering for your favorite football team. It was certainly a brainy crowd! And to see all these ivory academics dressed in T-shirts, in party glasses, in USA-representative clothing and singing along with Party in the USA—it was certainly a sight. Everyone was wearing USA-themed clothing to honor their veterans, absolutely everyone including my friend Steven who was wearing a Canada T-Shirt that says “Not for Sale,” because we all know that Canada is just the 52nd state of the glorious USA.
Oh, and did I mention that the theological philosopher lost his keys? He came up to us—me and Steven and Ryan—and asked to find his keys. “Yo yo my boysss,” he said, breathing in air through his teeth, “can you just slide on over to those girls over there to rizz them about my car keys? Like, I skibidi need those keys rn, no cappp.” What an ethical dilemma! What an ethical pickle he is in! To have to decide between finding his car keys and losing his spot in the front row! There’s no egoist pickle like that! “Pleeeaaase,” he begged, putting his hands together as if praying to us like gods—but wait, wouldn’t that go against the commandment Thou shalt have no other gods before me? Oh what shall he do? Break Adam Smith’s law of self-interest or follow the utilitarian commandment to get the keys himself so as to impart as much utility to everyone as possible?
“Just get it yourself bro,” me and Ryan replied, pointing our arms to the right, indicating that we have freed the space for him to move over there. So this theological philosopher suffered the pains of Christ (that is, get his car keys himself) so that everyone else would be freed of their sins so that they could watch this amazing football game and participate in mob culture.
It was certainly an American football game: there were pizza boxes littered everywhere—under the bleachers, on the bleachers, next to the bleachers, within the bleachers themselves. Dropped like the crumbs of donuts, muffins, cake that litter the school every Tuesday when the legions of snack-bringers bring edible delights for their advisory to eat. They were littered around like little M&Ms someone accidentally dropped from a tube while running around and going absolutely frantic with the tube. I couldn’t believe how much money that pizza food truck stole from the school—it could probably have paid for the full tuition of a single student, which is certainly not little. I could just imagine the food truck counting their mountain of cash—or digital bits because money is all digital nowadays—stuffing it all into their prodigious bellies and caressing their bellies as if to say, “I’m full and bloated.”
I joined my compatriots in cheering, in the mob culture that is football games. Because, if you really think about it and reduce spectating a football game to its essential details, it is nothing more than a mob sport: cheers and chants start up much like how a mob starts as people suddenly get the impulse to join up; and the chants have a great auditory similitude to the chants and marches that occurred in a very German country in the 20th century…
Chant and cheers started up and died down, but through it all, I couldn’t help but feel the insincerity of it all, as if all these students were thinking “oh, if only I could use this time for some pondering on the Malthusian principle of Darwinian natural selection.” They were all in two places at once, straddling the line between them without ever crossing over in either: they were in the depths, the ravine of intellectual thought; meanwhile, they were in this phantasm of a football game that impinged on their little ravine like the loud music of an apartment neighbor. It was as if the students were all tied to an ethereal monkey rope that pulled them back every time they got too far into their cheering, too absorbed in the football game. For what happened was that the cheers and chants started in waves but quickly washed over us. Constantly, there was this undulation of enthusiasm—the students constantly running and scuttling between the football game and the depths of their minds like a poor old parent forced to go up and down, up and down, on a rollercoaster their child forced them to ride; constantly forced to run back and forth so much that it’s almost dizzying and some students even vomited by the end of the game. Like Goofy, they gulped.
In the middle of the game, in an absolute lull as the ligoniers were strategizing and planning before starting the game again, everyone waiting in anticipation for the game to start up again, quiet and still as the stone hendge standing there ominously and silently, there it was: the paltry, heart-wrenching, tinny sound of the Clash Royale intro jingle. “BOOOOO!” the entire student section yelled as they ripped the poor guy’s phone out of their hands, disconnecting him from the one and only drug that can stand them through such a hype and academic football game. “AGHH,” he screamed like a baby having his umbilical cord cut for the first time. Poor guy… He only wanted to play a little Clash Royale so that he could keep his thousand day streak and earn a 1-star Lucky Drop™. Now he’s just looking at his empty hands in sheer amazement and wonder—oh, look at that! He’s crying! Golly me! Someone get him a little candy and a pat on the back! “Don’t worry little bud, you’ll survive the first trauma of your life.”
Almost suddenly, without any premonition at all, the cheerleaders started in a dance routine, chanting something along the lines of “Bulldogs get rowdy, get argh oh doublu dee why.” It was an enthusiastic chant! Chanting with exuberant smiles! The student spectators were so wrapped up in the vortex of emotion—of rowdiness—that they all just stood there, stone-faced like the moai statues of Easter Island. “Let’s get rowdy, get argh oh doublu dee why! Let’s get rowdy, get argh oh doublu dee why!” sung the cheerleaders with melodious melody and stirring, evocative rhythm, meanwhile the academics looked on . There was a real party in their heads, I bet. Because, certainly it is the peculiarity of the academic . “Life of the mind,” is certainly not false in this instant, because there must’ve been such a lively party in their heads, with monkeys swinging all around in their heads as if it were raining bananas. Don’t worry, the behavioralists were wrong and cognitivists were right! Things do happen in the mind even when it doesn’t result in physical action. And in no world is this more true than the world of the academic! They certainly don’t say “life of the mind” for no reason: because all their
After the cheerleading routine ended with the cheerleaders and their pompoms exuding sheer brightness and fun, while the academics just stood there with darkness surrounding them. The cheerleaders in poses as sweet as cotton candy and full of joy as joyous as Christmas time, while the academics stood their in languish like extinguished Christmas lights. There it was—a slight nodding of the head by one of the cheerleaders as they broke out of their exuberance as if their monkey rope pulled and their mask of exuberance just fell off, expressing disapproval at us. Like an insect crawling across our hearts, shame came crawling in with the music “when the Saints come marching in” playing in the background of our minds, because we all looked at each other, and it somehow came into our minds to sing “Party in the USA.”
And so, like a bunch of austere friars forced into a karaoke venue, we sang “party in the USA”. And we got really rowdy. Imbibing the alcohol of rowdiness and hype, we sang with all our might and all our soul. It was a tidal wave of emotion, which we expressed in our cheering and exuberance. It got so rowdy that the entire front row held each other in their arms, swaying left and right and left and right like a metronome: “So I put my HAAAAANDS up, dey’re playing my song, da butterflies fly awaaaaay, nodding my head like yeaaaah, movin’ my hips like yeaaaah.” Except that all that rowdiness was merely in the lives of their minds. Because if you were one of those poor cheerleaders gutting their vocal chords out by the sheer loudness of the chants that they have to yell, you’d see a student section jumping up and down like criminals in a full-body straitjacket, jumping as if they were little birds chirping to their mama “me! me! me! me!” eager for food, while they sung like a nursing home chorus. One could just imagine the scene with Beethoven’s Ode to Joy played in the background as the chorus sung the lyrics of Party in the USA along with the melody of Ode to Joy. This wasn’t just a party in the USA, it was a party in the mind!—just as Ms. Yam would always say after giving out a math problem, “keep the party in your mind.” And then, suddenly, as if all the air had blown out of a balloon and suddenly stopped right in its tracks after flying everywhere around the room, all the students stopped singing, and just stood there, erect as the greek columnnades.
And then, there was a football play like no one had seen before. Like lightning, some random player on the SSA team broke through the ligonier defense line with the football—”Oh, OH! GO LITTLE ONE! GO!”—brought the football up half of the field (OH MY GOD!!!!) into the touchdown area. “WOOOOOOOOOOO!” everyone yelled and screamed and jumped and FLIPPED AND STRIPPED—wait, that didn’t happen. “THERE NO FOOTBALL PLAY LIKE THAT!!!! OH MY GOD!!!!” THE GUITAR SOLO OF FREEBIRD WAS PLAYING IN THE BACKGROUND, THE GUITAR STRINGS PLUCKING ALL OF US INTO THE SKY, TURNING US ALL INTO FREE BIRDS SOARING IN THE GREAT EXPANSE, FEELING THE SHEER FREEDOM OF OUR FLIGHT—OUR HEARTS WERE LIFTED UP INTO THE HEAVENLY SPHERE AS WE EXPERIENCED THE SHEER EUPHORIA OF IT ALL!!!!!!! “WHO IS THIS GUY?” I YELLED AMIDST ALL THE YELLING AND CRYING THAT TOWERED OVER AND OVERPOWERED ME LIKE A NEW YORK SKYSCRAPER STANDING RIGHT BESIDE ME!!!!!!!!!!! “I DON’T KNOW BUT– WOOOO! THAT”S MY GUY! THAT’S MY MAN!!!” SO WE ALL STOOD THERE CHEERING FOR SOMEONE WE DIDN’T EVEN KNOW!!! 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥CHEERING AND CHEERING AND CHEERING and then it just deflated. Everyone became taciturn once again. The cicadas started humming again, filling the sheer void of sound that the cheering left… “Those cicadas were certainly enjoying their time,” I thought. It was stone hendge again.
“HE’S A FRESH MAN,” clap clap clap-clap-clap, “HE’S A FRESH MAN,” clap clap clap-clap-clap, “HE’S A FRESH MAN,” WE CHANTED AS YET ANOTHER BALLER JUST SCORED A TOOOUUUCHDOOOOOOWWWWWN!!!!!!! 🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️🔥🔥🔥”WOOOOOOOO!!!!! LET’S GO MAN!!!!” WE CHEERED ON OUR FELLOW CLASSMATES BECAUSE DAS JUST WHAT YOU DO TO GET SOME SCHOOOL SPIIIIRRRRIIIT!!!! WOOO– and then it just deflated. “𐎫𐎮𐎮𐎪𐎠𐏂𐏂𐎧𐎤𐎬 𐎼𐎧𐎠𐏂𐎠𐎱𐎤𐏂𐎧𐎤𐏀𐎤𐎵𐎤𐎭𐎣𐎮𐎨𐎭𐎦,” the crickets and cicadas said to each other, looking toward us as if we were curious biological specimens.
“GET YOUR HANDS OUT OF YOUR POCKETS!” Noah, the finance bro, yelled at Steven like a Ligonier coach yelling at player 22 for fumbling the ball. “STOP PUTTING YOUR HANDS YOUR POCKETS EVERY TIME THE BULLDOGS THROW THE BALL! YOU NEED TO GET HYPE.”
“Dude you literally have your hands in your pockets too,” Steven complained like whiny player 22 who always fumbles the ball.
Noah stared at him like a dolt, and kept his mouth shut. Yet another touchdown was scored and everyone was cheering and Noah just stood there staring intently at Steven, who just shrugged and turned around and cheered. You could just imagine what was going through his head: “How could this kid just disrespect me like that… Doesn’t this kid understand the principle of capital preservation? This clown’s shorting my credibility, nuking my brand equity, and triggering a vibe liquidity crunch. Bro, it’s a catastrophic mispricing of social risk premiums.”
“Guys, we have to get a bit more hype. Let’s start a chant: when I say bull, you say dogs, does everyone hear?” Mark, the businessman, said, rallying his fellow entrepreneurs and academics onto this new R&D venture called “team-building”—the theory being that when people do things together and get hype, they create these things called connections, which is a biological and socioeconomic indicator of enterprise-level value-chain stickiness; the leveraging of which as a key performance enhancer can unlock unprecedented ROI on morale, catalyze multi-channel synergies across human capital portfolios, and engineer a paradigm shift in hype-based deliverables, positioning the team to operationalize joy at scale, monetize camaraderie through disruptive engagement architectures, and future-proof its culture via continuous innovation in the hype-to-productivity pipeline.
“Alright, bull,” he said.
…
He was pushed to the side off the bleachers.
And then, pulling the dusty “Gold dogs bull dogs” routine off the shelves of their repertoire and loading the routine into their brains, the cheerleaders’ bodies suddenly started whirring like a VHC tape, launching into yet another routine. “When I say bull, you say dogs,” the cheerleaders’ tinny voices filled the air, “bull.”
“dogs,” everyone said back.
“bull.”
“dogs.”
“bull.”
“dogs.”
“When I say gold, you say dogs. gold.”
“dogs.”
“gold.”
“dogs.”
“When I say bull, you say dogs. bull.”
“dogs.”
“bull.”
“dogs.”
“wooooo,” everyone cheered.
And then the cheerleaders all in a synchronous movement returned to their original starting positions before whirring down and turning off.
But once again, things whirred up again, because WE JUST SCORED ANOTHER TOOOUUUCHDOOOOWWWN, WOOOOOO!!! I LOOKED BACK TO CHEER EVERYO– AOSJDNBOBWUIB WHERE IS EVERYONE!? Looking back, the entire rows behind us were gone—the sheer vacuum of which pushed me off balance, sucked me into it as if it were a breach in the hull of the international space station. It was like looking into a massive chasm, a chasm as big and empty as the Grand Canyon—it was like looking down the edge of the Canyon cliff, seeing the sheer height and emptiness of it all, palms sweating and all as you think of yourself falling over the edge as the ground rapidly rises up to you just to splat you to death. I turned away from the vacuum so as to avoid getting dizzy.
Soon, it was halftime and everyone left. I stayed there for a bit with my friends to watch the Ligonier marching band perform their little halftime show, with their grand total of around ten members. It was certainly a deflationary show to say the least. Like rusted old machines sputtering and puttering as they try their hardest to perform whatever task it is they were made for, the band hiccupped along with their little tune, which they played with so much emotion that I was left completely unravished and stone-faced. The performance could have been a mere recording that they played on a massive screen wheeled in from the side of the stadium without us noticing. The band stood absolutely still as they played from their sheet-music holders attached to their instruments, while the color guard performed a little dance, slightly off-sync with the music as if they were constantly trying to catch up to the fast-running instrumental band flying far away into the great horizon. Ravishing as this performance was, we decided to leave after a few minutes.
Well, that was certainly a deflationary experience. I walked back up the Ivory tower, rising in the loftiness of thoughts with every step I took. I walked up the hill leading up to bastardly McCune, which was the stairwell up into the ivory tower. The night was quiet and cool away from all the tinny shouting, the made-in-China cheering, the symphonic dancing. The intercom came on while I was walking, “so, uh, if anyone sees any Toyota car keys under the bleachers, please come to the press box. Faaris Kamal needs to find his Toyota keys. Faaris Kamal needs to find his Toyota keys.” Poor guy.