SPORT DEFEATS SPECTACLE


Funny thing about history...

It seems so fragile at times, like not a day goes by without some athlete breaking some record, passing some milestone, achieving some great feat that has never before been achieved. The most fundamental nature of sport and competition, in fact, is predicated on "making history"-- the idea that someone will eventually run faster, jump higher, perform better than the person before him.

But last night history said No.

Maybe it was because the New England Patriots were so damn easy to hate: the cocky coach who gets caught cheating, the pretty boy GAP-model quarterback who dates movie stars, the frustratingly talented wide receiver who "only plays when [he] wants to play." Not that their adversaries were any great underdog. It's difficult to imagine any New York sports team playing the role of giant-slaying David (especially one ironically called the Giants).

Sportswriters don't merely want to write the sports page, they want to write the history books as well, the scripts and stage directions from which Fate and Destiny read and recite. The ESPN pundits, in all their meager worth and relevance, would have glady given away the Lombardi Trophy in mid-September. For months now, the media has fueled an unmistakable sense of inevitably and entitlement; it was only a matter of time before the Patriots "made history."

But history clearly does not like being told what to do.

These men grossly overestimated the regularity of the universe in which we live. If last night's game proved anything, it showed that a considerable amount of truth remains in that old sports cliche, "That's why they play the games."

No amount of hype, hoopla, and hyperbole could decide the outcome. Last night served as a stark reminder of why we fell in love in professional sport. We do not watch because of overpriced ads, over-the-hill halftime performers, or overly dramatic studio-produced graphic interludes. Those things are simple sugars and makeup which do nothing because mask and distort the real reason why we watch-- because not even the pens of Euripedes or Shakespeare could craft anything more captivating or cathartic than good old-fashioned chance, contest, and competition.

Napoleon once said that "history is a fable often told." Jack climbs up the beanstalk and the giant tumbles down. Little Red Ridinghood outsmarts the vicious wolf. A handful of Greeks topple the mighty Trojan dynasty. And, of course, the little shepherd boy and his slingshot slay Goliath. I do not know what degree of truth exists in these stories. Cynicism leads me to suspect that they are mere fictions invented by man to console himself upon realizing that he is small and the universe is large. These stories are limited in their inspirational quality by the fact that they may be false.

But one thing is certainly true: last night, the New York Giants denied the New England Patriots perfection and immortality. Sport triumphed over spectacle.