@Ragman,
Not bad Rago.
You will no doubt remember from your English Literature classes that Theseus, the hero of that piece of magnifence known as A Midsummer Night's Dream, had a splendid capacity for enjoyment and classed together as one soul the lunatic, the lover and the poet. And thus is Shakespeare himself. And all the world's a stage and all.
And grand as Theseus was he was not above conflating the highest and the lowest representations so long as they set the mind of the spectator to work. He graciously allows himself to be amused and has no time for unmannerly rebuffs to those painstaking craftsmen who labour to please him. It is the business of the dramatist, the NFL administrators in this case, and the performers, to prod the imagination of the spectator and the spectator who lets himself be prodded is necessary to the performance. The QB who throws an interception which results in a defense touchdown knows very well that a close-up of his face will be on millions of TV screens and if he kicks over the bin containing the used plastic cups on his way off the field so much the better.
An NFL game, and this applies to all the popular sports covered by modern TV productions, is like A Midsummer Night's Dream in the sense that it is a performed phantasmagoria full of shadows and fleeting images, marvels, surprises, splendour and grotesqueries of joy and agony.
Rigged or not is of little consequence. It's great. Poetry in motion.
I owe John a debt of gratitude for introducing me to this wonderful spectacle.
