Some Perspective Regarding the New NFL Season

The spectacle that is the National Football League was on display in a Wednesday night opener with the Dallas Cowboys, who failed when it really mattered in the last game of last season, won vs the defending champion New York/New Jersey Giants. Last season, the Giants won when it mattered and won the title despite a (9-7) record.

I have mixed feelings about the Mara family (co-owners of the Giants) but certainly the late Wellington Mara deserves credit along with George Halas (owner of Chicago Bears) and I believe Dan Reeves (owner of the Los Angeles Rams) for sharing the awesome television revenue throughout the league which created the marriage of television and football. Another time, there will be talk of not  a “mistress” but an equal even a more important third entity in the “marriage;” and that is gambling.

Many things go through my mind including an excitement that football season has arrived. This has been the case for me and millions of others for a long time. I can separate myself from that excitement, to a degree. I know the NFL is a big, big business with at best, a history that has coincided with greed. I can address the current situation with the officials or the fact that players like John Unitas and Jim Otto had trouble even walking due to their years in football. Their pensions and “thanks” for the years of toil more resembled Otto’s “double zero” than any significant financial compensation. Hopefully the millions who will mainly “tune in” but also attend, drink, eat, root, and wager all in fierce connection with football will have some perspective. It is a perspective that I am still learning and to which as Mildred Dunnock said in both the movie and stage version of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” “attention must be paid.”