Delusion Tube
By
The Doorman
A few years after my football career ended, I found myself playing linebacker
in a recreational flag football game in Long Island’s Eisenhower Park. This is
rarely ever a good idea.
Now, if you’ve ever played flag football on Long Island – or anywhere else,
for that matter – you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about here. For some
guys, most of whom have never played a down of football that counted, Sunday
morning flag games are their Super Bowl. They play dirty, they talk way too much
shit, and the obnoxiousness factor is so far over the top that most games
eventually devolve into absurd exercises in Al Bundy-ism.
In one game, the opposing team’s offense ran some kind of iso series where
their “fullback” kept coming through the line and cut blocking me. Yes, you read
that right: I had a fullback taking dives at my knees in a Sunday morning flag
football game. I repeatedly said something to the guy, but he wouldn’t stop
doing this. I eventually had to take matters into my own hands.
About midway through the game, the guy who’d been cutting me had the ball,
and I had a free shot at him. I took it, nailing him with a textbook – albeit a
little high – decleater. I’ll be honest here: I tried to take the guy’s f-ing
head off. I followed it up with some talking of my own:
“You want to know how it feels? THAT’S how it feels, motherf----r!!!”
Of course, you can’t do this in flag football, and my little attempt at
cleaning up the game had consequences both that day and afterward. Things
started out stupidly, and they got stupid(er) as the situation went on. I’m sure
you can figure out what happened next. The point here, however, is that even
though I wasn’t the greatest football player in the world, the chasm between a
“guy who actually played” and a 45-year-old gym guy wannabe is pretty damned
wide when it comes time to demonstrate a set of skills one guy (me) had been
practicing for the majority of his life.
In any case, I was thinking about that game today while watching random
training clips on YouTube. I do that a lot. I think we all do. We’re all
pleasantly amazed when we stumble upon a clip of some kid nobody’s ever heard of
performing a 93” box jump, then doing a backflip off the platform and landing in
a handstand. We see stuff like this, and we say, “Holy shit! That guy belongs in
the NFL!”
We look at clips of “streetball” basketball players, and we’re amazed we’re
not seeing these guys playing in the NBA. Sometimes when I check out these
clips, something will happen that’s so amazing that I say, “How could anyone
possibly be better than this guy?”
I’ve even gone so far as to share the indignation expressed by the people
posting the videos. “Wow,” I’ll say. “They’re right! This guy’s skills are so
astonishing that it’s really unfair that he’s not getting his shot. Professional
sports is all politics, man.”
You know what, though? The secret to keeping a level head about this sort of
thing is to spit out the Kool-Aid and do a little reality check when you’re
cruising the internet looking at this stuff. The reality of the situation is
that professional athletes are really, really good at what they do.
Maybe you went to high school with a guy who ended up playing a professional
sport. Do you remember what he was like back then? Do you remember how he was
twice as big, strong and fast as everyone else? Do you remember batting against
the guy who’s pitching in the major leagues now, and how you couldn’t even see
the damned ball? I was dunked on once in a high school basketball game by a guy
who went on to play ten years as a wide receiver in the NFL. I tried to take a
charge (it was my only option), and he simply jumped over me.
Well, despite the proliferation of YouTube, those guys are still like that.
They’re still way better than you, they’re way better than me, and they’re miles
better than the junior college kid from Montana who can bench 600 pounds
blindfolded with just his left hand.
We’d love to look at someone we know, or train, or see on the internet, and
say they’re among the best in the world at what they do, and in some cases maybe
they are, but there’s a proving ground for that. It’s called professional
sports. There’s a reason some guys get paid millions of dollars to do what they
do, while others occupy themselves by throwing clips of backyard box jumps on
YouTube. It’s because the guys making millions of dollars are simply better at
what they do. Remember that the next time you’re fooled into thinking a snappy
set of pistol squats entitles you to a multimillion dollar contract.