04-24-2023, 03:47 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-27-2023, 05:23 AM by Aneeqs. Edited 1 time in total.)
It's been many years since I paid any attention to football. I haven't participated in the sport in decades. There's a commonly held belief that the older the sport goes, the longer it's been since a player was active and now, the faster, stronger, and better players today are by comparison. Well, after watching Week One of the current ISFL season, I'm here to tell all of you that is complete malarkey. Players nowadays are slower, less agile, weaker, and softer than they were back in my day, and I'm going to complain about it. What are you going to do about it, stop reading?
When I was playing, nobody would be caught dead doing such things as huffing oxygen on the sideline; we didn't have fancy shmancy drinks to help us rehydrate, we had to just drink water. To say nothing of how the steroids players are on nowadays are so much better than the sheep testicle and testosterone supplements I had to use back in my day. Even this isn't enough to get the players to be stronger or faster than I was at their age! I would literally run circles around all of them! I probably could outrun a sizeable chunk of players nowadays, even, and I need a cane!
But players being worse now than they used to be is not the thing that annoys me the most. What annoys me more than anything else about the sport nowadays is how much easier everything is for the players. Why are the sidelines just a white strip of paint, where's the electric fence, or if you were particularly unlucky, sheer cliffside for the out of bounds section? Why does the game stop when someone gets a penalty, instead of continuing with an item given to the fouled team?
Not to mention that players are allowed to hold the ball in their hands now! I thought that was just something we allowed my idiot nephew to do because he was too dumb to do otherwise. Well, also the other guy who does it, but it's not like we were ever going to get him to follow the rules. If we tried to keep him from using his hands, he'd just try and break the rules even harder, and when he breaks the rules even harder, he usually did things like break players. Or the field. Or the stadium on a couple occasions.
It's a sad day when football players can't take a body slam, when the only stadiums people play in don't have everyone's favorite hazards like giant fireballs, lightning strikes, or flying tractors. It's a poor sport when there's no fear of chain chomps falling on people's heads, or giant shells freezing players instantly, or banana peels covering large sections of the field of play. And it's disappointing when I don't see a single player grow to giant size, or breathe fire, or even just hit the ball so hard it turns into 6 different balls. Suffice to say, football has really gone downhill over the past 50 years.
I suppose not measuring up to me isn't the worst thing in the world, but it is still somewhat disappointing as a longtime fan of the sport of football.
The opinions of this article are those of its author; they are not endorsed by the New Donk Times.
About the Author:
Cranky Kong has been a contributing member of the paper since 1994; his cunning wit, dry humor, strong opinions, and willingness to call out failure and imperfections where he sees them have made him a constant part of the New Donk Times Op-Ed team. His favorite food is, of course, bananas.
When I was playing, nobody would be caught dead doing such things as huffing oxygen on the sideline; we didn't have fancy shmancy drinks to help us rehydrate, we had to just drink water. To say nothing of how the steroids players are on nowadays are so much better than the sheep testicle and testosterone supplements I had to use back in my day. Even this isn't enough to get the players to be stronger or faster than I was at their age! I would literally run circles around all of them! I probably could outrun a sizeable chunk of players nowadays, even, and I need a cane!
But players being worse now than they used to be is not the thing that annoys me the most. What annoys me more than anything else about the sport nowadays is how much easier everything is for the players. Why are the sidelines just a white strip of paint, where's the electric fence, or if you were particularly unlucky, sheer cliffside for the out of bounds section? Why does the game stop when someone gets a penalty, instead of continuing with an item given to the fouled team?
Not to mention that players are allowed to hold the ball in their hands now! I thought that was just something we allowed my idiot nephew to do because he was too dumb to do otherwise. Well, also the other guy who does it, but it's not like we were ever going to get him to follow the rules. If we tried to keep him from using his hands, he'd just try and break the rules even harder, and when he breaks the rules even harder, he usually did things like break players. Or the field. Or the stadium on a couple occasions.
It's a sad day when football players can't take a body slam, when the only stadiums people play in don't have everyone's favorite hazards like giant fireballs, lightning strikes, or flying tractors. It's a poor sport when there's no fear of chain chomps falling on people's heads, or giant shells freezing players instantly, or banana peels covering large sections of the field of play. And it's disappointing when I don't see a single player grow to giant size, or breathe fire, or even just hit the ball so hard it turns into 6 different balls. Suffice to say, football has really gone downhill over the past 50 years.
I suppose not measuring up to me isn't the worst thing in the world, but it is still somewhat disappointing as a longtime fan of the sport of football.
The opinions of this article are those of its author; they are not endorsed by the New Donk Times.
About the Author:
Cranky Kong has been a contributing member of the paper since 1994; his cunning wit, dry humor, strong opinions, and willingness to call out failure and imperfections where he sees them have made him a constant part of the New Donk Times Op-Ed team. His favorite food is, of course, bananas.