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I read this Slate review of the movie Crooked Arrows, which is apparently a fairly predictable movie about lacrosse. I’d never heard of it till I saw the article. But from this review, it seems that it simply reinforces what I’ve said before about sports movies being dull and predictable.

I still like my idea for a movie about a super dominant team that destroys their plucky opposition. I envision a football movie, about a team on a quest for its second undefeated season in a row. I’m thinking it would be a musical, with the big number sung by the half-Lombardi-esque, half-Belichickean head coach. (I’ve thought about this too much.)

Even that would just be a satire of the sports movie genre, though. It couldn’t be a lasting formula for films, just a one-off. The problem is that sports are dramatic affairs themselves. And they’re more dramatic than movies, because they are harder to predict. If Hollywood had written it, the Cardinals would have beaten the Steelers. The Giants and Patriots wouldn’t have even been in it last year in the movies. The unpredictability is what makes it good.

I think the best sports movies are the ones that involve rigging and corruption in the game. That way, the drama of the game is subjugated to serve the larger drama of behind-the-scenes machinations. Political issues and sports might work, too. I’ve never seen all of Invictus, but I’ve watched some scenes from it, and it seems pretty good because of the larger political issues at stake in the movie. The outcome of the big game doesn’t even matter to the real point of the movie, because it’s more about what the South African rugby team means to the country.

Figures I’d have to find a way to work conspiracies and political intrigue into my sports movies, doesn’t it?

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The tragic death of football great Junior Seau has caused even more discussion over the danger of the game, and what, if anything, can be done to make it safer. Slate is hosting a debate on whether the collegiate game ought to be banned. One of the participants, Malcolm Gladwell, has also written an article comparing football to dogfighting. It’s an interesting comparison, but to my mind, the central and very significant difference is that dogs don’t know what’s happening to them. They can’t agree to fight or not. They’re trained for it and they don’t why. Football players are human beings who can make an informed choice.

There is also the oft-made comparison of football players with Roman gladiators, but I believe that many, perhaps most, of the gladiators were captive soldiers from armies the Romans had defeated who had been enslaved and forced to be gladiators. Again, they had no choice in the matter.

But, you may say, it does not matter whether the fighters are man or beast, slave or free; the problem is in what such a violent sport means for our society. What kind of people are they who watch a violent game, with the participants suffering awful injuries, for entertainment? As Gladwell observed, it is the support of millions of fans that makes the choice to play pro football so appealing.

For myself, I never watched football for the “big hits” or anything like that. I watch for the strategy and the fun of seeing how teams use schemes and planning to foil their opponents. But it’s true that hitting hard is a key part of the game. It is well known, for instance, that a key part of New York’s ability to stifle New England’s offense is that they are able to hit Brady and throw him off his game.

And the violence and the injuries do create a conundrum for the well-meaning fan. No one wishes such ill on another person who is, after all, just someone earning a living. But there is still the inescapable truth that if a star on your opponent is unable to play, it makes it that much easier for you to win. And winning is “the only thing”, at least according to the great football coach Vince Lombardi. It was this unavoidable system of incentives that led to the Saints’ bounty scandal. It is also what makes people concerned that such a violent game is so popular today.

I don’t think anyone can ever ban football entirely–it would confirm the worst nightmare of every libertarian were the government to do that. The government would, however, be entirely within its rights to ban minors from competing in it, which I think would cause irreparable harm to the college game, and probably change the pro game quite a bit.

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I actually think hockey is a better sport than football. It’s faster-paced and more exciting. But I don’t follow hockey the way I do football. Why not? Well, because they play way too many games.

These playoff series that are going on right now are ridiculous; they devalue any one game. Imagine if in football they played a best-of-seven series. The Colts would probably have beaten the Jets 4-1 in the series in 1968, and the sport would be robbed of one of its iconic moments.

In hockey, you can have an awesome, brilliantly played game that ultimately means nothing in the championship. You could say this means the most consistent team wins, but that makes the sport much less dramatic to watch. I think the fact that it’s physically impossible to play such a series in football contributes more to “parity” in pro football than the salary cap or draft order.

(And yeah, I know I’ve blogged about this before, but it still annoys me.)

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I, Mysterious Man, do solemnly swear that I will not write another post about Tim Tebow after this one until he does something of note on the gridiron. After the conclusion of this post, the name of this ridiculously over-hyped athlete shall not appear in these pages again until he performs some feat of either remarkable skill or ineptitude at the sport he is paid to play. I have already spent too much time writing about him, but I just had to say this.

While reading about the Tebow to New York trade, I have observed that people seem to feel one of two ways about him. Either they think he is a sanctimonious jerk with a cult of insane followers who is not fit to play professional football, or else they think he is a Great American and an inspiration to children everywhere whom John Elway and the liberal media have cruelly mistreated–dare I say “martyred”.

The anti-Tebow forces believe his fans will destroy the Jets by clamoring for him to play. The pro-Tebow people think he will win the starting job and go on to win 15 championships.

These views are both wrong. First, let me deal with the anti-Tebow group.

Yes, I think Tebow is sanctimonious. Yes, I think Tebow loves being a celebrity. He is not so different from guys like Chad Ochocinco or, to use a Jets example, “Broadway Joe” Namath, although he goes about building his brand in a different way. That’s my assessment of him, although I can’t be sure. I’ve never met the man.

But it doesn’t matter; I don’t want him to be my friend, I wanted him to play quarterback for my team. His personality isn’t that relevant.

People keep saying that his rabid fans demanding he play now will make Sanchez uncomfortable. So what? If Sanchez can’t play well enough to shut those people up, that’s his problem. And like I thought when my fellow Buffalo fans said Tebow’s apostles would put pressure on Fitzpatrick: the coaches make the decision; not the fans. Coaches are supposed to be smart enough to make decisions based on a calculation of what’s good for the team, not emotional stuff. The fans always want the backup quarterback to go in unless the starter is already an all-star. Coaches know to ignore that.

On the face of it, it looks like madness on Denver’s part to trade a second-year quarterback who turned a team around, won the division, and won a playoff game. The only reason people can excuse it is because Tebow has the most abysmally bad throwing motion that has been seen in the pro game in years. In terms of almost all other factors, he looks like a good prospect.

Personally, I would have rather had Tebow than Manning at quarterback. Obviously, Manning was once great, but he’s getting old and injury-prone. Tebow has a lot of potential and is still young.

As for you Tebow fans: quit acting like your hero has been punished and humiliated by the Denver organization. He’s being paid millions of dollars to play a sport and live in New York City. That’s not really a terribly bad situation for a young man starting out in his career. I am not feeling sorry for him. If anything, the Denver fans are who you should feel sorry for.

Furthermore, there is not a media conspiracy against him. I know many of you somehow believe he is being persecuted for his religion, but the fact is that he was endlessly hyped coming out of college. And if he is perhaps being unfairly criticized for his lousy throwing mechanics now, it’s only because nobody dared criticize him for it in college. I remember in the SEC title game in 2009, he threw one of his dreadful passes into the endzone, where a defender intercepted it. And his receiver was open on the play; it was entirely due to his inability to throw properly. But no one at the time said, “that was an awful pass”.

Tebow is a pretty good runner and a lousy passer who has the potential to become a pretty good starter. There have actually been lots of guys like that throughout the sport; it’s not that unusual. The rest is just kind of a proxy battle in the alleged culture war.

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The Mario Williams signing is great, but my thoughts on trading for Tebow remain the same. Now that Manning has signed with Denver, Buffalo has a great opportunity. Apparently, management in Denver thinks Tebow is practically worthless, so they should be able to acquire him cheaply.

Do it.

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To whom it may concern:

I have followed this team for years, and I will continue to do so. In all my years of following, I have never seen you make even one playoff appearance. I remember all the attempts at rebuilding, the subsequent tearing down and rebuilding again.

I believed in 2010 that you ought to draft Tim Tebow. Instead, you drafted a running back who you almost never use. Whatever. But rejoice, for Fate has granted you a second chance! For some reason, John Elway doesn’t like Tebow, and is trying to get Peyton Manning or Brandon Weeden.

While I have long thought that Tebow is highly overrated as a quarterback, and the phony religious war that the press tries to create around him is quite tiresome, I nonetheless think he is exactly who the team needs.

This is because he has an indefinable quality–charisma, you might call it–that attracts attention. And attention is what you desperately need as a ball club. Nobody even talks about Buffalo, or if they do, it’s to talk about how lacking it is, both as a city and a place of sporting success.

So, that’s why you ought to trade for Tebow. Trade them the first-round pick if they want it. You probably were planning to use it on yet another running back, anyway. Or, even worse, some overrated wide-receiver. And if they still won’t make with the Chosen One, give them C.J. Spiller. He was effective at warming the bench behind Jackson, so he’s more than qualified to warm it behind Moreno.

It is true that Tim Tebow cannot throw a football correctly. (Personally, I have long suspected that he isn’t really left-handed.) But he has some sort of miraculous ability to excite people beyond reason, and besides that, he has a knack for winning in the 4th quarter, which is something that this team hasn’t had since Frank Reich left.

If Denver signs Manning, get Tebow. If they don’t sign Manning, get Tebow anyway, since they’ve demonstrated they don’t have faith in him. You say you’re committed to Fitzpatrick, but a little competition never hurt anyone. Well, except the loser, but do you really want to be a haven for losers?

Get Tebow. I don’t know if he’ll continue his habit of pulling out miraculous victories, but at least he’s theoretically capable of it. And even if he doesn’t, people will at least pay attention to the team again.

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The New Orleans Saints are in rather a lot of trouble for their recently discovered “bounty” program, in which defenders were paid to injure opposing players.

Unsurprisingly, lots of pro players have said that this sort of thing goes far beyond this one team, and is quite common throughout the league. I can readily believe it.

It’s rare for a game to go by without hearing some analyst say “they must rattle the quarterback”, or they must “apply pressure to the quarterback” or something like that. Well, that means they need to try really hard to hit the quarterback. Because he’s an essential player in a team’s offense. That’s an accepted piece of strategy; and how much of a stretch is it from that to paying bounties to injure important players?

The reason New Orleans got caught, I suspect, is that they were too obvious about it. The institutionalized nature of the system was what exposed them. I bet the investigations will discover that such programs exist on other teams, but are less regulated and probably involve less tangible benefits as payments.

Even if the league managed to curtail all forms of material payment for these things, there would still very likely be an unspoken respect for those players who knock out and opponent’s star. It seems, from my outsider’s perspective, that it would be practically inevitable, given how the game works.

Suppose they hadn’t had a bounty system, but had just, in the course of the game, injured Brett Favre anyway in the Conference Championship two years ago. How bad could you feel about it if you were a member of the Saints? I mean, yeah, it would be a shame to hurt a fellow player, but the inescapable fact is that it makes achieving the goal of winning a championship significantly easier.

In criminal cases, the old trope is that the perpetrators need “motive and opportunity”. Well, clearly the motive is to win ball games. And because of the nature of the game, it’s remarkably easy to injure the opponent without appearing to mean to. In fact, it’s a requirement that you take actions that might well injure people to play the game.

Consequently, since all the incentives are there, and since it’s extremely easy to do, it would be kind of surprising if this didn’t go on. Highly lamentable, but not surprising.