Tomorrow is the Homecoming game, and I hope you all are as excited as I am! Actually, based on my previous football game experiences here, some of us are probably a little too excited. Therefore, I would like to offer some advice for those of us not able to keep our football enthusiasm in our respective pants.
Although when I say "us," I really mean "all you freaks," because I have never had this problem. That is probably because I come from Brockport High School, the football powerhouse of Western New York (population: 38). I don't think we won a game in all my four years there. This always really surprised me, because our football team certainly had more than its share of large, violent people. I don't think we understood the concept of teamwork, however. Violent teamwork is what is needed to make it to the NFL, whereas violent individualism lands you in jail.
So my high school experience, combined with living 40 minutes from Buffalo and watching the Bills lose the Superbowl like every year in a row, prevented me from having a healthy American level of football enthusiasm. Don't get me wrong, I sit there at Dartmouth games in the marching band section, play all the songs and am enthused and what-not, but some things are more important than football.
Although obviously not to some people. Last year during the games, Adam, one of the trumpets, always had the band spell random bio major words. One time, after we finished "deoxyribonucleic," ("Give me a D!") this guy started screaming at us about how we should shut the hell up and we were there to play football and don't do that again, dammit.
He weighed maybe 110 at most. The only way he was "there to play football" was if they upholstered his ass with leather, laced him up, and threw him up and down the field.
Rabid enthusiasm is cool, though. At least your heart is in the right place. What I hate is when Dartmouth starts losing by like one touchdown or something, and everyone starts with the advice. "What kind of pass is that! You call that a block? You all make me sick!" My feeling here is that you can start being negative when you personally can do any better, which is never, since most of you who yell like that weigh about 90 pounds. I watched my high school lose four years in a row, and we didn't yell at the team that much, although honestly my friends and I probably could have played better than the team, since we would have at least tried to throw the ball to each other and stuff like that.
So this year let's try to keep a little perspective, people. Yes, it would be very cool to win the Homecoming Game, but cosmically speaking it would not really be that big a deal to lose. I always marvel that sports assume such huge importance anyhow. I mean, Brett Favre may throw a football with godlike skill, but where did all the food come from that he had to eat to get that big? Who provides the surplus that allows grown men to dedicate their lives to tackling each other in the mud? Some farmer has to grow or raise the food, some trucker moves it, and some factory worker packs it all up. I will be proud of American culture when I turn on the TV and see the Farming World Series. "And look at Jebediah with that outside move on the John Deere! That's what I call spreading manure!"
Speaking of spreading manure, that new ten foot inflatable moose thing is pretty cool. It is a vast improvement over previous mascots, in that it can almost move its tyrannosaurus arms to catch a football, and sometimes it doesn't go flaccid at half-time. Plus, the word around the locker room is that the moose is hung like a ... well, you know.
Nevertheless, I really don't like the whole moose thing that much. We are the "Big Green" (well, unless you write for the Dartmouth Review), and as such I think we should celebrate our Big Greenness. Yale has its cute little bulldog, and it even pays some guy to be the bulldog's keeper. The Big Green is somewhat less tangible a concept, but I think we are collectively intelligent enough to appreciate it, despite its lack of antlers. Like Yale, we could even hire a Big Green keeper -- we could get a philosopher to maintain the abstraction that is the "Big Green." For you "visual learners," we could also have pipes under the field that would spray out green fog at half-time.
Despite our mascot difficulties and those of you who are crazy, I think it should be a good game. I would definitely join in the fun, but I think I am going to go cheer at a Wheat Reaping and Thrashing competition over in Vermont.
