Football Bombs and Nuclear Bombs

Without question, the most incendiary, explosive story of the last few days was the appearance of Ahmadinejad at the UN.   His timing was very interesting.   First, it occurred less than 2 months before our national election.   Thus, supplying fertile ground for both the incumbent President and the Republican challenger to create a sea of relevant sound bites.

The September choice of the Ahmadinejad visit was also ideally timed as his repudiation of Israel became the topic of many discussions in synagogues across the country during the Yom Kippur holiday.  And as expected, much of the conversation turned political as many debated the current state of U.S. - Israeli relations.

Needless to say, for all these reasons and more, I expected the media to own this.   By media, I refer to all of it.  Bloggers, newspapers, websites, TV and radio.   It's individual relevance is meaningless compared with its collective tsunami of influence.   Did I see a few stories here and there?  Absolutely.  Did it seem to move us in any actionable way?   Not really.   And the reason?

The media had a bigger story on its hands.  One much larger than the potential for Iranian nuclear bombs.   This bomb had to do with football.

That's right.   On Monday Night, a pass was thrown into the end zone at the end of a game.  Instead of calling an obvious pass interference penalty, the offensive team was awarded a touchdown.  Big deal, right?  But wait.   There's more.   There's a current referee dispute in the NFL, so the officiating is being done by replacements....or temps.

OMG.

The NFL is ruining Monday Night Football!   We won't stand for it.    So the media jumped on this story instead.   TV and radio stations that don't specialize in sports made it a lead news story.   Newspapers drew caricatures of refs wearing sunglasses and a walking stick to represent blind men.   Why?   Because no one messes with our football.

Seriously, what's wrong with us?   Even when you put politics aside and just consider that a country in the Middle East is building a nuclear weapon, do you think that should trump a football game?   Even you don't buy that argument, just do the math.   They play football twice a week.   Iran is building a nuclear weapon every day.  Including weekends.

But we casually pass by it on CNN, then race to another station so we can watch the same replay from Monday's night's game.   This time from a different angle, with an analysis from a different commentator.

The fact that our minds move to football before national diplomacy says a lot about how we think.  You see, most of the news isn't good.   And there's only so much unemployment disappointment, oil price gauging, and stock market swoons we can take.   So, we move to something else as a defense mechanism.   In this case, football.   Fantasy leagues, Sunday parties, and tailgaters swallow up what little time we have left to think about anything else.  Pretty soon, the most important thing in our lives, after our families, is football.

I don't know what the future holds in Iran or in the NFL, but I do hope for one thing:

Let's get the real refs back on the field.