FanPost

Meaningless football? Not to me.

One NFL week removed from relinquishing the last of their unlikely playoff ambitions, the St. Louis Rams collectively face a work ethic challenge. At least ostensibly, their job requires that they play the brutal and demanding game of football to the best of their abilities with the most important goal now a mathematical impossibility. When I try to find a suitable ‘corporate’ analogy, I find myself at a loss. Imagine, though, competing with fifteen of your colleagues (NFC teams) for three available promotions (one division champion and two wild card slots). You decide that this promotion is your personal goal and your work serves the sole purpose of establishing your suitability for the promotion. You’ve just been told that you’re no longer in consideration for the position, but you must still report to work and finish your projects. You’re acutely aware of your own shortcomings. Things haven’t been easy the last few years. Your grades in college were inconsistent, for instance. However, you’re also sure of your talents. You would have been perfect for the job, but the opportunity has vanished. You’re cognizant that now is the time to start getting in good habits for the next time the executive board opens its doors, but you’re disheartened at the thought of another jerk from the Seattle office taking the job you really wanted.

Rams players and fans are staring into a two week abyss of ‘meaningless football’. Attainable goals have been whittled down to the decidedly uninspiring causes of developing young talent and keeping the Seahawks out of the playoffs (though at this point, simply beating Seattle in week 17 does not guarantee we have the opportunity to do that). The case against playing quality football seems to be stronger than the case supporting it. There simply isn’t enough meaning.

Well, I disagree. You see, the upcoming game against the New York Giants will be my very first Rams game, and I couldn’t be more excited.

The last few years, I’ve been walking the ‘broke college student’ line, as most of the money I’ve made working has gone to rent, tuition, groceries, and similarly boring necessities. If you were at Friendly’s or IHOP in the corner of Connecticut that I call home at the right times, you may have had the distinctly unpleasant experience of having me serve you food. Last summer, however, I got an internship that paid more per hour than both of those jobs combined and multiplied by two. Once I caught up on my bills, I had a little extra to buy something nice for myself. After about forty five seconds of internal debate, I booked airfare to St. Louis, and bought a ticket to the game. I became a Rams fan in 1999 at the tender age of nine. Since there was no way to watch games in the early years, I was left to ‘watch’ through crude play-by-play internet apps and detailed post-game descriptions. Computers improved, and so did internet connections. Streaming games meant I could actually see the team play, even if I could barely distinguish the pixelated players during the plays where the connection was solid enough to actually function. Streaming has become a far more coherent way to experience games, but it falls short when the only proof I have that the Rams actually exist is a series of ones and zeroes. Basically, it’s about time I go see a game.

My dad and brother are big Giants fans, and I’ll admit the Giants are my ‘other’ team (maybe some of you guys know what I’m talking about there), so I convinced my pops to join me. I’m pretty stoked, guys! Even if some of the players I thought I’d see at the beginning of the season won’t be playing, and even if the game can’t be important in the context of this team’s history, it feels pretty special to me. When I return to the laptop for the week seventeen matchup against the Seahawks, I’ll be able to say I saw the guys on the computer screen in real life, and it was awesome. In the past, I’ve talked about ‘playing for the fans’ as some kind of abstract noble principle that I had no real claim on. Now? I certainly hope they play their hearts out. Maybe it’ll be terrible game. Maybe it’ll be an edge-of-your-seat thriller. That’s part of the crapshoot of buying tickets to sports games. I expect these guys, though, to leave it all on the field and play their best possible game, even if that somehow equates to a loss because I’ve spent fifteen years watching this team from afar. For all I know, it’ll be another fifteen before I can see them again. At the end of the day, what’s the point of big contracts and huge stadiums if not providing a good experience for the fans?

I hope the Rams players and coaches don’t consider this game meaningless because I definitely don’t. And I’ll make sure I’m the loudest fan in the dome so they know it.

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