Week 12 Cartoon Bets! All Hail the Snow Globe Game
There are people (I call them dome dopes, I’ve also seen someone joke that they are Indoorcels) who think every stadium should be a dome. They want their football pure and unaffected by the elements. Bad weather affects games and generally makes the play worse all around. I get the perspective, I really do. I refuse to agree. Firstly, this perspective comes with the flawed premise that the football will be inherently better in a dome: this is simply not true. We get shit football in domes all the time. Bad football comes regardless of weather. Secondly, bad weather adds an element of chaos and unpredictability to an already volatile sport. Yes, it will reduce scoring, but it evens the playing field in ways that other things cannot. Weather can bring out the weird shit. Can you imagine living in a world without that one punt in the Steelers/Dolphins game that just stuck itself in the turf? It can also be beautiful. Steelers/Browns was a good game but it was aesthetically beautiful in a way few games are. I never want to be robbed of snow games because of a bunch of fantasy-brained purists who demand points.
Anyway I had a good week.
also, bonus doodle of Amon Ra St Brown. Praise the Sun God
If you made the discord drop the link please football discourse getting unbearable
I plan to get it set up for the weekend so I hope to have something ready for Friday’s comic
Are you going to have moderators? You need those to avoid it becoming a cesspit.
I’m going to likely try to make it private and keep it intentionally small to avoid that problem as best I can. The first weekend will probably be a test run and if it goes poorly, we out
We need less domes, not more. Even if it does help warm weather teams like my Dolphins, whose to say that will help anything. Even with warm weather teams, domes can be soulless. The black hole was a dump from the moment the Raiders moved back there in 1995, but the psychos made it their hell house. Now with the roomba, there is no soul. Most of the old domes (Silverdome, RCA Dome, Georgia Dome, etc.) were soulless dumps anyways. At least crappy outdoor stadiums had something to them.
Fewer, not less. You’re welcome.
hmm, couldnt you phrase that in a fewer rude way?
I could care fewer…
Steelers Browns made me nostalgic for my old RCA TV and attendant rabbit ears. A different kind of snow, but still similar enough visually.
its worse than i could have immagened
\[T]/
Since I feel so attacked, I would like to offer a viewpoint on the dome thing.
I am one of those people, however, my belief doesn’t come from a fantasy perspective. Or less, or more scoring, or whatever. My sports worldview is that I want sports to be as fair as possible, with both teams having the fullest chance to execute what they do best.
Weather imo inherently makes a game imbalanced because it closes the skill gap between two teams in an unearned manner. I hear everyone going “but they both play in the same conditions!” I get it, but weather limits what both teams can do esp on offense, and that can affect teams in an unbalanced manner. If you have one really good offensive team vs one really good defensive team, the offensive team is going to have a way harder time doing what they do well (moving the ball), vs the defensive team who doesn’t have to worry about that, while the defensive team already sucked at that and isn’t as affected. I think it sucks watching things like a sudden gust of wind veer a perfectly good kick off course, or watching a player slip and fall due to an unpredictable puddle of water on the field killing a potential great play.
If a team is superior to another, I just want to watch that play out free of any external factors. I am 100% the guy that turns off injuries in games because I view them as unfair (which I get is not the same thing as unavoidable.) I want to see each team at its peak, good or bad.
since I can’t edit, I also wanted to say that I feel playoffs are unfair as well. Team spends all season owning and then loses a fluke small set of games and their season’s a failure. It’s just another thing that really says I don’t care about sports for what people find the most exciting, because I do get that these things exist because they’re zany and exciting. But I just don’t care about the same things as most people, I value different things in my sports.
I respect the opinion, thanks for having the bravery to share it. However, I still need to firmly disagree with you. The NFL is about overcoming unexpected adversity, on the field, off the field, and everywhere in between. In that regards, natural weather is no different than injuries, as you concede.
Phil Simms going down in 1990 and Jeff Hostetler coming in to carry the team was unfair, it was a fluke. But the backup QB who was on the verge of retiring suddenly getting shoved into the limelight and then performing is what made that year so memorable for me as a Giants fan. If that fluke injury didn’t strike, and things played out exactly as they did otherwise, I’d argue we’d lose a little bit of greatness, especially because the Giants succeeded DESPITE the unfairness.
How do you feel about the other inequities inherent in the system (beyond violence, Dennis)? Some coaches suck, others are great. Your QB is better or worse than my QB. All of those situations create an uneven matchup in the same sense weather does. Is it not equally unfair if your team has a better coach than mine does in the same way it’s unfair that your defense can handle snow better than mine can?
So then even in a dome, it’s not a “fair” game. The quality of the turf will trip or injure players no differently than a puddle of water, you’re just watching a much more monotonous presentation where every game location becomes the same interchangeable boring sludge. Should we eliminate crowd noise so that both teams can operate in perfect silence? What if the guy picking out my cleats isn’t as good as the guy picking your cleats, or my dietician isn’t as good as yours, and my play is impacted from an inferior meal… I’m being a bit silly, but there are dozens of ways to continue drilling into how unfair NFL games are regardless of the weather.
If every week in Green Bay there was a blizzard, ok, then yea, that’s not cool. But Seattle has their 12th man, Tampa has excruciating heat, Chicago has wind… it gives each team a particular flavor. Imagine Street Fighter, but every match is the same exact generic location. Yuck.
Well said Blueberries, fully agree
The way I see it is, there is a certain level of adaptability that should be reasonably expected by human beings. Things you can predict, and things you can actually adapt to in the moment are 2 different things.
Take rain in football for example. You can plan and practice gripping and throwing a wet ball. You cannot plan for or practice happening to step in a puddle or other spot that essentially randomly causes you to slip and fall. You can plan for a windy day, as a kicker. You cannot plan for the completely random gust of wind that blows at the worst time and throws your kick off the mark.
Teams with better or worse coaches, or players, etc, got those by the fruits of their labor (or negatively, poor planning). I’m not saying the better team on paper just deserves to win every game because they’re better, a team still has to make the right plays and decisions to earn the win. But what I want is for each team and players in-game decision making to be as free from unplannable elements as possible. It’s a lot more intricate than just saying “it’s raining, and you should’ve practiced in rain.” There’s specific elements in every…element, that you just cannot plan for or adapt to, in the moment, no matter how skilled you are. It’s unreasonable to expect a RB for example to be focusing on hitting a hole but also looking at the ground and making sure to avoid any puddles.
I understand that some things like injuries are just literally impossible to take out of the game. That doesn’t mean I really want to just deal with inequalities that I think can be fixed. Again though, totally recognize I’m in the vast minority and that it would be taking away something people like about the game, my opinion is no more valid than any other.
I’d like to give you a lot of credit. You haven’t changed my mind, but you’ve explained your view well. So much that I can aalllllllmost understand where you’re coming from, even if I don’t agree with it.
If I think about a professional poker game taking place outside in a rain storm, and the players have to worry about their cards being washed away or blown off the table, it would shift away from how well you play poker and turn it into a weird game of who can best shield their hands from the elements. From that perspective, I can respect where you’re coming from, and wanting the teams to match against each other without the chaos weather can bring.
For me it comes down to what you gain vs what you lose, and then where you draw the line. Putting every game in a stadium might take away the moment-to-moment randomness of the weather, but it would greatly damage the variety of games on offer. And more importantly, where do you stop? Even with your clarification, there are still a nearly-infinite number of random things, such as the subjectivity of refs, or someone’s foot randomly jutting in front of a RB while they’re hitting the hole, a visiting team with an unexpectedly large fanbase creating noise when the home team is on offense… I appreciate you acknowledging that even if you can’t fix everything, you still fix what you can, I just think the gains are minimum compared to what you end up losing, and the grey areas are way too grey. Especially when you factor in that weather has been an active component in football games since the inception of the sport, and I would argue an essential element of it.
I’m not even kidding when I say that if every game was played in an indoor stadium, I’d get bored and stop watching altogether. Even games in the sunlight with no wind or rain can provide a nice visual changeup from the harsh lights of a dome. BUT – again, to your credit – you’ve talked me down to the point where I wouldn’t smack someone on sight for having this opinion. Good jorb!
“Is mayonnaise an instrument?” – Patrick Star and Will Levis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5jnftBQw2U
Bears at Vikings, 3rd December 1972 at the old Metropolitan Stadium. -2F with a wind chill of -19F. I was there, 12 years old and dressed with so many layers that I looked like the Michelin Man. No modern fabrics to protect me back then, just thick wool and heavy cotton. Vikings won 23-10 but when I got home, I discovered my socks had been insufficient protection and had frostbite on my toes. My mother was furious with my father and me. It was very bad in particular on my little left toe and I eventually had to have it amputated. My mother didn’t speak to my father or me for a month, a period we later called “The Happy Times”.
52 years later, still a Vikings fan who prefers open stadiums and foul playing weather. I think about it every morning when I get dressed, grateful to my father for taking me and for one fewer toenail to trim.
Do pinky stubs accrue to the next toe or do you have fewer or are they less painful because they hit a different spot?
I don’t stub my toes too often but when I do, it’s usually the big or second toe. My left foot is more comfortable in shoes though, more room to move about.
Damn, I thought I was the old guy here, but I was almost 11 months old then. Ku-toes to you, P.U.R.P.L.E. man.
This may be the only legitimate argument in favour of domes.
From not quite 11 years ago:
https://www.thedrawplay.com/comic/snow-football/
I still have fond memories of that game. It was just fun watching it. (Maybe not so much playing in it.)
I wish I’d watched that Steelers/Browns game. I’ve watched so much less football than usual this past year with how bad the Giants are playing.
When the only thing I have to look forward to is next years draft the fight for playoff spots and positioning is much less compelling.
I’m just not invested in regular season games the way I was when potential playoff teams were the competition and how that competition was playing seemed important.
I really appreciated Jamie’s Winston’s reaction cus I feel the same way watching snow games.
Snow games are awesome. The unpredictable elements and zaniness makes it so fun and interesting. How can you not like massive linemen doing snow angels?
Pickens’ press conference after the game was the best “I don’t think the Cleveland Browns are a good football team” yeah, that y’all just got beat by! then going on to blame “the conditions” as if both teams didn’t play in the same awful conditions
has-lame better not move the team into a dome
I thought it was on this forum that I read it, maybe I actually heard it on the radio or something, but someone pointed out that when you get a good snowfall on the ground, you’ll see children or grown-ups acting like children outside playing some football. I’ve not seen kids running out to play baseball or basketball or soccer in the snow. Most of CONCACAF shrivels up and turn into somehow whinier little b-words if a snowflake even touches them.
Playing football in the snow is a fond memory of my childhood (and parts of my adulthood where I was acting like a child), so watching snow games is comforting and a reminder of a more innocent time, like hot chocolate or Three’s Company reruns.
I think what sets football apart is the ball spends most of the game in the players’ hands so it doesn’t become unplayable when it’s wet.
My only problem with the snow game was the virtual yard lines — ruined the aesthetics for me.
(and yay me! I spelled aesthetics correct on the first try…)
*correctLY