Daily Archives: July 22, 2012

When you stop to think about it, sports are totally ridiculous. And I don’t just mean the obviously weird ones like chessboxing, which, incidentally, was inspired by a comic book. And which the RZA is a big fan of, despite his song, “Da Mystery of Chessboxin’,” not actually being about this particular iteration of the sport. I’m talking about mainstream sports.

Take football, for instance. (Just to be clear, the American brand, not that other game that actually uses feet. Which I think is called “handball.”) It’s one of those things that just make no sense. Why are there so many positions? How come you can’t throw the ball to the beefy guys up front? How come if you kick the ball between the uprights, it’s three points, except after you score a touchdown and it’s one point? What the heck is a “line of scrimmage”? Is there any reason why there’s one guy called a “cornerback” and one guy called a “safety” when they do they same exact thing? Why is there also a play called a “safety”, and why is it worth two points plus possession for the scoring team? Why are the people on defense not the same people on the offense?

It’s like a game where the rules are intentionally obfuscated so that anyone who has a passing interest gets a headache within five minutes. And it’s even more baffling when you realize that the rules of American football were codified by the best and brightest minds of the Ivy League.

It’s crazy. It’s nonsensical. And, if you’re a sports fan like me, it’s just another thing to embrace as part of the mystique behind it all. The sport behind Tyson Hesse’s Boxer Hockey, one of the very few sports webcomics in existence, is even more weird and inscrutable as, say, grown men in their undershirts tossing a big rubber ball inside a peach basket … but, hey, give it twenty years and perhaps we’ll look back at it as some sort of beloved past time.

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