When Roman gladiators entered the Colosseum to entertain the roaring crowds,
they would address their audience by saying,"We who are about to die salute you!"
In the title of this posting, I have changed one word of that declaration, in order to
create an appropriate greeting for the NFL teams owners to use, when they open their
annual, college, players draft. The 2023 draft has just wrapped up in Kansas City.
The acquisition of the new players was a three day spectacle of noisy, frenzied fans,
making themselves look as stupid as possible, in order to demonstrate their
everlasting loyalty to the surrogate warriors of their tribal cities.
Popular entertainments, including ball games, have always been loud, crude
and simpleminded, so it was not unexpected that the three hundred thousand fans
who showed up here, to cheer for their teams, would make quite a show of it.
At times the draft resembled some kind of a blend of a ritualized slave-auction
and the presentation of a new crop of Marvel-comics super-heroes. All of that
only shows how little we have changed over the past several thousand years and
more, into history. The recorded history of ball sports extends back through
countless cultures. From American-style football games in ancient Greece, to
Harpastum in Rome, to Cuju in Ancient China, to field hockey sports in Medieval
Europe, ball sports have had a presence in almost every continent at some time.
No doubt when those athletes of old, finished their games, they had plenty of
avid fans waiting outside the gates to get something in the way of an autograph
or perhaps something more from their heroes.
What the big show of the draft comes down to in the end is money. Put on
a big enough, glitzy production to create excitement for the fans, and reap the
rewards of increased profits from the publicity and sales of expensive tickets
and all of that new NFL team-merchandise. Are you ready for some football?
Eugene P. McNerney
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