Football and My Crisis of Faith.

[Chiefspants]

The Patriots "win" today may cause me to reexamine my love for the game. I have never seen the officials to blatantly give a team the victory as the refs did for the Pats today. Sure, there have been questionable calls in the past, (i.e. "the tuck rule", phantom holds, etc). But each I had seen contained acceptable amounts of grey area for me to believe that the destiny of the game was still in the hands of the players.

The referees gave the Patriot players and fans the win today, and unfortunately, I do not imagine these occurrences will cease anytime soon. When I was five years old, I fell in love with the gritty, ugly, and unpredictability of the game. The meaning of "Any Given Sunday" kept me occupied as a fan for the past fifteen seasons. However, it now feels as though the NFL has subverted its unpredictability for the benefit of its celebrities, marketability and narratives that allow it to create "must-see-TV".

Today the fans of Cleveland were robbed by a league that has turned its back on "Any Given Sunday" for the sake of the bottom line (though I imagine that Browns fans are already quite accustomed to this feeling).