Francis Fukuyama and the forward pass

Last night I was lucky enough to watch the ND-BC game. Not only was I reminded of how much I miss watching football, but I realized how I had forgotten that I prefer to watch any type of football that does not involve Notre Dame. Whenever I watch An offense run by Charlie Weis, I find myself getting bored faster than someone watching a David Cronenberg film. In fact, the two are pretty similar. Cronenberg makes movies about deviants, drug addicts, and extremely violent people. You get really excited that you're going to be stunned, but then when it comes time to watch the movie, you're ultimately disappointed because Cronenberg thinks he's so smart that he overwhelms the audience with tedious technique and overt symbolism that creates one long, boring, contrived work (see History of Violence). The same can be said of Charlie Weis' coaching. He has four super bowl rings and gets the credit for Tom Brady. Everyone calls him (or used to call him) an offensive genius. From such a genius, you expect big points, aggressive playcalling and high quality talent on the field. Instead you get the same damn play called over and over again (screen pass) with the occasion 2 yard off-tackle. There is no risk whatsoever in a Charlie Weis offense. The supposedly high profile recruiting classes he brought in clearly have no idea how to block. Either they are poorly coached or he can't recruit. And just like a Cronenberg movie, by the end you're saying to yourself (To paraphrase Fukuyama), "Sure, I see there are a lot of fancy bells and whistles to it, but on the whole it's rather boring." Maybe sports and movies, like history, are coming to an end. But then again, Fukuyama was wrong about history.

But to tell you the truth, I miss watching American sports. Rugby, hurling, and Irish football don't do it for me. Maybe for me to get excited about a sport I need to know that men on the field are making more money than the gross national product of Moldova. True, college football is more exciting than the pros, but if I know anything about the dirty world of the subdivison formerly known as division I, even Florida Intrernational's longsnapper is making more than the average Eastern European.

By the way, I don't know if I've mentioned this, but if there is one person who I can't stand more than Bernie Miklasz, it might be Peter King. Whether it's standing on his moral high ground, pontificating about what is decent and indecent, or salivating over Tom Brady, Peter King always manages to irritate me. That's why I read his column. He's not that smart or funny; I just really enjoy how he thinks whatever pops into his head is relevant to the mostly monotonous work of a pro football writer. During his weekly pick 'em column Peter demonstrated once again why I don't like him. Here's what he wrote about the Jaguars-Texans game:

"We're getting ready to face an extremely physical team," Houston coach Gary Kubiak revealed to me exclusively this week. In other news, I ate breakfast this week.

There are three ways to interpret King's remarks here: (1) He is making a sly commentary on sports journalism by pointing out that people like himself report on football so much that they overload coaches with questions, they inevitably receive non-answers to question like this one. (2) Peter King is once again delving into his irrelevant comments that he's known for. Much like his propensity to tell the world how much he loves coffee, or about that one time he met a guy going to Iraq. (3) Peter King is an asshole. He asked Gary Kubiak a stupid question, to which Kubiak gave a stupid response and thus forced Peter to come up with his own analysis of the game, which in fact is his job. In order to get revenge on Kubiak, King chose a forum in which the coach could not defend himself and make fun of him. My guess is number 3 is closest to the real story.