An All-American Weekend Part 2

My first American football game resulted in my deciding that American football is actually bloody boring.

Basically, American football is a form of bastardised rugby (either that or rugby is bastardised American football - you decide whichever one you like). The idea of the game is to race to the opposing side and score a touchdown, which is just crossing the touchdown line. You get 4 attempts to move the ball 10 yards, and everytime you move the ball 10 yards, you reset the play and the same game repeats itself until you either fail to move the ball past 10 yards (which results in play going over to your opponent, where they'll try to do the same shit to you) or until you score a touchdown. That, in a nutshell, summarises the game.

It doesn't sound so bad but every time the play stops, there's a series of ridiculous interventions, tactics, switch of players and whatnots. Tonight's game, which had 4 quarters of 15 minutes, took over 3 hours to complete. That's right, 1 hour of game time but 3 hours of real time. Unless you're used to 5-day cricket matches, this is perhaps the least dynamic game EVER.

Collegiate football, however, is also striking in the amount of commercialism that goes into it. A standard ticket to the game costs US$40 (UVa students get in free). That's right, an inter-college game costs US$40, and the stadium is packed. According to Pepsi, the official attendance for today was 61,134. Pepsi sponsored the Game Stats for today's game but this is advertising at its least relevant. What does making a bottle of soft drinks gotta do with counting people in a stadium?

Oh, you get video replays too on the big screen here. It's all sponsored by just about every other company that wants to sell junk to UVa kids and the nearby community (which is actually a lot of companies - UVa is a relatively rich school). You know those plastic foam hands you use to gesticulate your support? Those are sponsored by Alltel (I ought to get myself one of those). The level of commercialism to this whole setup is mind-boggling, but you start to get an idea why it is possible to pay a football coach over a million a year and to build a stadium that's 70,000 in size. Cripes.

The evening ended with a screening of "All the President's Men", the story of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein reporting on the Watergate scandal, which subsequently led to the impeachment and resignation of Nixon. It's actually a highly riveting film, with the exception of it having the most anti-climatic ending sequence in the history of cinema. The movie reaches its peak about 2 hours and 15 minutes into the show and ends about 2 hours 16 minutes into it. WTF.

But on a more contemplative note, the whole movie really set me thinking. There are often times when a lot of us Singaporeans mock the way America can be (inefficient, stupid alcohol laws, amazingly obese and unhealthy food, hot lasses wearing too many clothes) but perhaps one of the great things about America is the independence of the press and the 4th estate in general. There are days when I wish Singapore had the same kind of journalistic maturity, where members of the mass media did not have any pressure to act as an extension of the people, and as a "bridge" between people and government. Certainly the government of the people in SG is doing a decent job (all things considered) but I don't believe in the system of self-checks. In all honesty, when you look at the political landscape in Singapore, how much check and balance do the people really hold in terms of being able to hold the government to task? Short of the elections (where over 40% of the people don't actually get to vote) (and also in a system with marked cards - serial numbers on your voting cards!), there really isn't an avenue to which we institute the checks and balances that's necessary for a strong democracy. Certainly not all in America is admirable but when it comes to the ideal of the freedom of press, that was perhaps one of the best Amendments ever made to a Constitution.