Friends meet and walk off, dogs scurry by, students gather and gossip, musicians sit down to strum a melody.

The table is tagged with graffiti and often sprinkled with fall leaves. But a sweep of the table is all you need to make it playable.

And playing there, well, playing there is among the greatest pastimes in the world. Let the great world spin- you will care only for the motion of the small ball. It’s harder to push in the open air, with even slight breeze affecting its transit. So you play it safe and rallies abound. The games expand and excite. They are far better than indoor games.

The world becomes a blur that becomes a powerful sensory game plane. For you can smell the trees and the grass, and you hear dogs yelping at play, and kids squealing in the playground.  But you cannot notice them lest the spell break and the game fail to be all-engrossing. For against and within the life of a relentless New York, the ping pong game becomes something else at that stone table in Tompkins Square Park.

Play, Johan Huizinga once wrote, is older than human culture because animals have not waited for man to teach them to play.  All great games rekindle this essential truth, for in play, an absolute freedom and single-mindedness emerges. Play, at its best, collapses us into a primal self in which we are not lost to irrationality, but allowed to revel in the co-construction of joy and purpose.

There is a magic ping pong table in Tompkins Square Park, where playing transforms the players. And all you need is a small ball, two cheap paddles, and a half hour. Nirvana is a racquet game.

There were 36,218 people in a stadium East Hartford, Connecticut on May 25th, 2010. It was impossible to park, as thousands arrived with hours to spare before game time. Inside the stadium, almost everyone in attendance was wearing some form of official apparel. Jerseys, t-shirts, scarves, and goofy Uncle Sam hats attired the crowd to look something like a Memorial Day cook-out on Long Island. And when the first goal went in, off a corner kick in the 17th minute, there was no mistaking the deafening chant of an eager fanbase shouting USA! USA! USA!

This is what international soccer has become in the United States. Just four years ago, writing my second assignment for the Mercury, I traveled around Newport asking if bars, cafes, and restaurants intended to broadcast the upcoming World Cup tournament. Many of them told me no. Several mentioned that they would show the games only if there was not something else on: something like the Red Sox, or College Baseball. As a concession, some bartenders told me they would show the final.
Four years before that, I was in eighth grade. The tournament was being hosted by Korea and Japan meaning game time was only a bleary eyed 2 am. To make matters worse, few American channels were willing to broadcast the games. So I got up, at 2 am, and watched the World Cup on Telemundo and Univision, loosely improving my Spanish while watching the United States advance further than it had ever gone before. I could not afford a jersey, and even if I could, there was no one to purchase one. Falling asleep in class, my teachers demanded an explanation. When I told them I was up late watching the World Cup they either laughed in disbelief or asked what it was. Out of patronage, I printed a US Soccer shield and laminated it at a hardware store. I pinned it to my t-shirt every morning exhausted from watching soccer all night.
Eight years later, and the long promised enthusiasm for soccer has finally arrived in America. ESPN has promised unprecedented American coverage of the tournament, and I have countless chances to buy a US National Team Jersey. I bought their blue Away kit, the handsomest Jersey the team has ever worn, and wore it to East Hartford on May 25th.
I was not alone.
The first sport my parents ever let me play was soccer. Baseball happened two years later. Basketball happened a year after that. Like millions of my peers, soccer is neither odd nor foreign, but refreshingly familiar. On the US Men’s National Team, Jay DeMerit, Landon Donovan, and Clint Dempsey are all men of my generation. They have all played in Europe, where the competition is highest, but unlike previous generations they do not believe that soccer in America is an oxymoron.

And why should they?

When they scored in East Hartford on May 25th, a full stadium rose to salute them.
Shouting the name of the nation, these fans let the world hear that America has come to play soccer.

0-0

f that.

1-0 Eng

we have learned nothing. england is supposed to win. they get it done. but there is nothing that says May Day for Team USA. a totally acceptable result.

1-1

american soccer ain’t nothing to mess with. prepare to see the british press start panicking. capello will call it a hiccup, and the english will crush the next game, but the us will be looking into the round of 16.

2-1 ENG

the most likely result. the three lions will have some confidence but the us will feel vindicated. nothing is in disarray for the americans. now they just need to win the next two.

2-1 US

totally possible. and it would be so glorious. the brits would start re-thinking their defense. maybe a goalkeeping change will be in order. and the pressure would build on the english. the americans meanwhile will have something to hang their hat on.

2-2

damn that would be a good game. i’d love it to be a 1-0, 1-1, 2-1, 2-2 progression. everyone (fans, players, coaches, pundits) would be content.

3-2 ENG

mmmmmm good. and acceptable for everyone. scoring won’t be the problem. the americans will be thinking about defense and endurance. so will team england.

3-2 US

capello will be flipping out. america will have some new offensive hero (even if it’s donovan/dempsey again). ratings for the rest of the american world cup games will be out of control.

ENG victory by 2 or more

ummm, ok, maybe england is a legit contender. everyone in the uk’s gonna be getting STOKED on that kinda result. buy your rooney jerseyz now.

US victory by 2 or more

england in roo-ins. the british press corps are about to go CRAZY. america will never let the british live this down. f*** bp. REVENGE OF THE GULF! t-shirts. tattoos. monuments. ESPN will be calling it an instant classic. i will call it SARATOGA 2 or SARATOGA IN SOUTH AFRICA.

3-3

well boys, that’s what we call soccer (unless ur british in which case that’s what you call football).

At a recent Philadelphia Flyers game, in which I saw no less then eight goals (and no more than four fights) I came to the conclusion that not all sports are created equal. In some, scoring is something routine and expected, something that defines the pace of the game. In others scoring is something extraordinary, inspiring, and eventful, something which provides landmarks for the story told by athletes in each game. In these sports, the scoring moment becomes a moment of salvation or damnation, a critical juncture through which the passion of the athlete is bound to that of the spectator.

This why I will always be fan of soccer and hockey over sports like basketball. Basketball suffers from the plight of long distance racing, the only thing that really matters is the end, and on the professional level, teams are rarely out of winning distance by the fourth quarter when the spectator really starts to care. At any instance during the rest of the game, one can get up, hit the bathroom, pick up some popcorn or make a phone call, confident that no single action (save a catastrophic injury or ejection) will alter the course of the game. Instead, baskets will be exchanged, runs will be made, and feats of expertise demonstrated.

But there will be no goals.

The goal is the greatest concept in sports. It is because of the goal, that any minute of a soccer game or a hockey game becomes pregnant with potential to alter the course of the game. Any fan of soccer knows that a game may finish with no goals, so it is a great gift (or horrible calamity) when a goal occurs. It is history, and it always feels like it. A single goal may be all that occurs. And that goal may occur at any moment, creating a sense of time in hockey and soccer that is unique- a sense of time in which virtually all time is equal in the possibility of achieving or witnessing the scoring miracle.

This has always been the attraction of soccer, and conversely what makes it impossible for the American sports fan to understand about the sport. In the US, sports must serve always serve entertainment and leisure over devotion, which means that American sports must create space within the game for concessions to be purchased, reflections to be made, bathroom facilities to be visited. Baseball has nine innings, with breaks between every half inning for the small things that Americans like to do at sporting events. At soccer games, people only leave during the half. At hockey games, people only leave during intermissions. At least every pitch in baseball (for it is the pitch that defines the pace of baseball, and thus the amount of time between pitches is policed by baseball leagues) comes with the promise of a hit, a play, an out, a home run. In basketball, by contrast, no event can take place in any one possession that ensures a victory. In basketball, there is only time and the score to play against.

It has been said that in soccer, the goal is an orgasm. The goal is a climax of exchanges and progressions, and true soccer fans “feel” the game in a way that betrays a certain sensuality. Because the only way to win is to score, teams become unified organs pulsing with passes and possessions leading toward that overwhelming conclusion.

Hockey proves more fascinating than soccer percisely because it complicates the idea of perfectly equal scoring time with strategic advantages and disadvantages- the power play. With an extra man adding advanatage to a team, hockey creates a time schema not unlike that catholic christianity, which divides the year into ordinary time (in which any team may score with equal potential) and extraordinary time (wherein a goal becomes even more likely). And yet goals are still ever present in hockey, and because of the sport’s speed, we are always just seconds away from the next one.

And then there’s the goalie. Between the goal and the play, he is the mediation between one man’s jubilation and another’s defeat. He’s not quite the anti-hero but he’s close. Because he makes “saves” and “saves” are actions of heroic proportions precisely because they are anti-goals. The goalie is the foil for the goal-scorer, who is always the hero. Except when he’s the villain.

I’ve decided that sports with goals are better. Because you can’t walk away from them, because they don’t have situations like two men on with no outs, or first and goal. Because they are always too dynamic to fall into situational rhetoric where one can distinguish between the importances of moments in a game. Some sports build towards a moment where you know something has got to give, it’s either a field goal for the win or a miss for the loss. That’s cinematic bullshit. Real sports are as organic and unpredictable as life itself. And that’s the way I like them.

They announced that Boston would be hosting the 2010 Winter Classic back in April. I was ecstatic. Never a fan of hockey in high school, a few years of intramural ice time at Brown has made me a devoted fan of the sport. I have gone from hating hockey in every and all permutation to actually catching Bruins games whenever I can. I saw my first B’s game with my Dad just 3 years ago, and even got gifted some tickets from Professor who couldn’t make a game this past November. That game turned out to be a 3-0 upset of Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins.

There was no way I was going miss the Winter Classic. I grew up just a mile from Fenway, and from my Dad’s house you see the lights of the park. I entered the lottery for tickets, not that I could afford them, remembering all those times my Dad and I had managed to get tickets off scalpers. When I finally got a chance to bid on tickets the only ones left were … expensive.

But it was all good. Cuz as a college kid, wandering around the park on game day is often enough to get me stoked for the competition. And that’s what I did for the biggest game in Bruins history ( I mean attendance, of 38,000 or so, but also in terms of prestige and national visibility). On New Year’s Day, I woke up in Boston and headed down to the Park with my friend Ryan to take in the festivities. We wandered around the park, shooting photos, thumbing thru the memorabilia, and scouting out bars. When we finally got to Jillian’s on Lansdowne we knew we were in the right place- no cover, no line, and hundreds of TVs greeted our entrance.

We picked up a prime spot at the bar and watched the first two periods. We winced at the Flyers goal, which was clearly a result of Tim Thomas’ over-anxious check and failure to watch the puck, and applauded the fight. We sat on edge with our Winter Classic souvenir cups praying that Tim Thomas’ miraculous skills would stop the constant Flyers’ threat. And our prayers were answered.

When Recchi scored the game tying goal with 2:31 left, Jillians went crazy. Across the street we could hear the 38,000 at Fenway even louder.

A few minutes later, when Marco Sturm scored the winner, we went absolutely ballistic. Pouring onto Lansdowne, we joined our jubilant Bruins brethern puncuated only occassionally by a Philly fan or two who were taking the loss pretty well (see photos).

While looking for this awesome commemorative hat (which I did not find and cannot find anywhere) I followed the advice of a fellow fan and actually walked into Fenway. I was looking for a souvenir shop, but finding it lacking my desired hat, simply continued down the concourse into the heart of the stadium. There was no one there to stop us, so we walked out into the grandstand. And there was the rink, perched in a stadium of snow, looking like magic.

Hockey has never looked so beautiful.

i hated lacrosse in high school, but its become a lot more fun in college. maybe its because i no longer have to deal with the lacrosse players (who were the reason i disliked the sport) or maybe its because i’ve just started liking sports more. (i also hated hockey in high school, but now i play intramural hockey and love watching it live).

in any case, brown had a great team this year. they beat cornell (then ranked #5 in country or something) at home, and i saw the first three quarters of the game. i only left because jack nicholson was speaking on the main green, and that’s a little more of a priority for me.

early this afternoon, brown took on johns hopkins in baltimore for the first round of the ncaa tournament. for those who are unfamiliar with college lacrosse, johns hopkins is historically the most successful team in the sport, winning 9 national championships since the tournament began in 1971.

brown, an at-large for the tournament, played a damn great game, fighting back from 3 goals down to tie the game with a knock-in goal with just 8 seconds left to play. unfortunately, hopkins rocked brown with a single shot in the sudden death overtime.

still, it was a beautiful game, and i’ve got take my hat off to some kids who had to balance finals period with playing for a national championship in their sport, and almost taking out the most storied team in the sport at their home.

Canada is like a popular American movie remade by amateurs with French subtitles.

You recognize certain scenes, and the plot feels familiar, but somehow the whole thing is off.

Not that this is bad thing.

Indeed, I rather like it.

Valentine’s Day Trip

A recent jaunt up to Montreal for a weekend both confirmed everything I had ever remembered liking about the place, and introduced wholly new things to enjoy.
Back in the day, I had remember being kinda turned on by the whole speaking-French thing. It was like there was this truly foreign country right above Vermont that I’d never been to. It was like another dimension. And I really mean a dimension distinctly different than the rest of Canada where English is the primary language. For all intensive purposes, Toronto is an American city. Montreal on the other hand is the second largest French-speaking city in the world. After Paris.

Just above New England, it seems, there is the ancient, forgotten kingdom of Noveau France.

The Quebecoise (or Quebecers, as I saw them identified in some Anglophile magazine) love two things: hockey and beer. They also have a penchant for friend foods, winter sports, and sparsely-clad women, which seems all the more erotic to the Quebecoise men given the temperature. Sacrifice, as always, is the root of sexiness.

Hockey

In order to get the real Quebec experience, my girlfriend and I snuck out of the downtown hotel-bar-nightclub area of the city to attend a Junior League Hockey match. Junior League Hockey is something of a cross between Minor League Baseball and Division I sports. The athletes are young, and in development, but they are also professional athletes, aspiring to the great NHL. Even though the NHL has only 6 of 36 teams located in Canada, Canadian players outnumber Americans in the league. Which can probably tell you something about the quality of Junior League Hockey on a Friday night just outside of Montreal proper.

We sat in the bleachers, high above the main action, because it was cheaper. But that didn’t mean that suggestively-dressed “beer bimbos” (my sexist term) weren’t cycling around with cups of beer for $4.50. I had two, one for each of the first two periods, and then tracked down some nachos. The scored was tied at 0-0 through the end of two periods, because the goaltending was outstanding. Only late (5:30 left) in the third period, did the visiting Quebec (City) Remparts get on the board with a top shelf flick in goal.
When the Montreal Juniors pulled the keeper a few minutes later, Quebec put the game out of reach when a bad pass was converted to a long-range empty-netter.

And that was how it ended.

Hockey Culture

Perhaps more interesting than the game itself was observing the Canadian culture surrounding the game. Alongside the “beer bimbos” a host of other erotically charged young girls did everything from monitor the VIP Section (Salon de VIP) to shoveling the snow off of the ice during media timeouts. These girls, the much-beloved “Cintron Girls” wore the most interesting outfits of any of the women, and were met with standing ovations every time they got on the ice. The man in front of me, at the game with his wife, was reprimanded silently by his spouse after whistling enthusiastically when the “Cintron Girls” arrived on the ice.

Next door to the main rink was a second, smaller rink for local play. Though it was 11:00 on a Friday night, some local game was in full force, with teenage boys eagerly passing across the ice and taking crack shots on goal.

When we finally got back to the hotel, we were greeted by further hockey. The Canadiens (the single most beloved thing in Montreal) were tied with the Colorado Avalanche until a breakaway goal gave Montreal the win.

Brutalism

Brutalism is the dominant mise-en-scene of Montreal. Which compliments the icebound feeling of the city quite well. Because of the way the city expanded, with its major construction projects happening in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, there was really no way for the Quebecoise to dodge the architectural cast-concrete bullet that is brutalism. Everywhere you go, from the metro system, to the Olympic Stadium, to the highways and national theater is brutalist beyond belief. No windows. Lots of rough, corrugated cement. Stiff corners and rigid angles.

The only redeeming thing about this widespread use of brutalism is that it manages to give the city an amazingly aesthetic cohesion. The kind of cohesion that most American cities can only have in their historic sections, which are harmonized by colonial and federal stylings. That this cohesion happens through brutalism however, does give some cause for fear and dystopian aesthetic nightmares. The whole time I wandered through the underground city (tunnels connecting corporate buildings and metro stations) I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was in the setting for some awesome cyberpunk movie I’d yet to write. It was also a little bit like being in the contemporary mines of Moria, as vaulted ceremonial halls opened 100 feet underground from thin, cold tunnels. What a strange, advanced Northern civilization Montreal manifests. It is like visiting a city of great industrial strength that is constantly at war with the natural climate it is entirely dependent upon.

Ice

After a stunning breakfast, made virtually free by travel vouchers for a Chef’s Special at La Belle Province (later described by locals as the McDonald’s of Montreal) the girlfriend and I wandered over to the Vieux Port, which was said to be picturesque and historic. What that meant, was that it was the only section of the city that wasn’t explicitly postmodern or brutalist. In the place of those revered local styles, everything from traditional French limestone housing to Belle Epoque apartments could be found jumbled together.

This was disappointing.

The Quays of the Old Port, on the other hand, were not disappointing. Most unfortunately, we managed to find ourselves between two winter festivals, and as such the Quays were largely empty. I say largely because there was of course, a ton of ice. Also to be found were large coal ships and container vessels which appear to have been intentionally left icebound for the winter.

All around them, as endless as the horizon, was ice.

Between two wharves, a large section of ice had been marked off as a skating area. After getting a good look at it during the day, Colleen and I returned after dinner for a wonderful late evening skate. Rentals were $7. Tickets to Skate were $5. It was a wonderful way to spend evening, particularly as we had busted out our snowpants, just in case it got a little cold.

Which of course, it did, but we didn’t care. We were wearing fucking snow pants.

Real ice, frozen as this was from the surface of the Saint Laurence River, is much rougher than rink ice. Not that we cared. In fact, we were more than disappointed that the staff wouldn’t let us skate around the large track outside of the designated skating area, that had benches and other fun things to explore, and certainly stretched about a half mile in total.

Still, skating seemed a perfect compliment to the hockey of the night before, and though we didn’t actually take advantage of it, there was a “winter bar” that was accessible from the skating area, just in case.

Beer

Beer was the only more ubiquitous in Quebec than Brutalism. Everywhere you turn, every restaurant you go into, every pharmacy or bodega you shop at, is selling beer, and not just the Canadian standards of “Molson’s” “LaBatt’s” and “Moosehead.”

No, the Quebecoise have discriminating tastes, and as such have developed a rich microbrewery tradition. All around the city, “Trois Brasseurs” can be found selling the microbrewery experience as a eatery/bar. This was the first place we ate in Montreal, and the food was excellent, as was the beer (Which was apparently made right next to the bath room, which seems gross, but only encouraged me to drink more everytime I had to go to the bathroom).

The “Trois Brasseur” people make a deadly compliment to their beer. It is called “Flamm” and it is a bizarrely wonderful thin-crust pizza that is built on salt cream and goat cheese, and includes options for pesto, chicken, tomatoes, and bacon. It is absolutely delicious, but is entirely too little to sastify any appetite. Which is why we had two.

The next night, we hit the other Quebecoise chain, “St. Hubert.” Though they didn’t offer any in house beers, they did make a great sandwich, and complimented it with a local microbrew called “Keith Alexander.”

Which was middling.

By far, the best microbrew had to be “Blanche de Chambly,” a Hefeweizen-like wheat beer with a floral tang. And despite being good, it was also damn cheap, especially when purchased at the incomparably-budget “Peel Pub.” Though we didn’t spend nearly enough time at that particular bar, it was certainly a wonderful place to drink.

Blanche de Chambly proved so good, we bought a bottle to take home. We also brought back some Boreale, which my brother (having himself visited Montreal recently) told me was top stuff.

I would have to disagree, but his point was good. Beer in Montreal was damn good, and don’t those frozen Canadians deserve it.

Bottom Line

I can’t wait to get back up to Montreal. It was the most fun I’ve had in a long time, and being a college student, that means something. Just cause it’s cold up there now (and is definitely COLD) doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go up. In fact, it’s all the more reason to go, because this is when you see how Canadiens really live (hockey+beer+ice+brutalism) and why they haven’t moved to Miami.

yet.

In the pouring rain, one can barely see the field anymore. But it’s there, and the crowd is fixated on it as the fourth quarter comes to a close, and Harvard University’s football team lines up on the one-yard line. If you can make out the neon-electric scoreboard, you will see the reality of the situation illuminated: BROWN 24 HARVARD 22 1:03 QUARTER 4. Seconds earlier, Harvard’s Quarterback Liam O’Hagan managed to find Matt Luft at the back of the endzone. It marked the penultimate play in a three minute march down the field at Brown Stadium, a drive that threatens overtime and perhaps a Harvard defeat averted.

I am disoriented by my presence at the Brown-Harvard football game. I am looking around at the “stadium” at the people, at the flags on the other side of the field, at scoreboard, and recognizing ‘I am not familiar with this place.’

The bathroom is are even more disorienting. No door. Four walls of open troughs where I suppose the men of Brunonia and their enemies have micturated side-by-side since the place opened. A smell of new paint tries to cover up the smell of decades of use. And a leaky sink with rust deposits running down the porcelain. And a single stall (if you ever, god forbid, had to use it) with a paper towel dispenser that has been exhausted. They all feel like the would-be quirks of a familiar destination, but for me they are empty, strange, disorienting.

It’s not like I’ve never been here. I came freshman year, sat out in the sun for a quarter with my Dad and watched Brown score at will on Cornell.

I also decided to trek out to the Stonybrook last weekend, because the weather was fair and it felt like a collegiate thing to do. Nobody scored for the half hour I sat on the aluminum bleachers, but I took the long way going back to campus and felt like I’d gotten to walk with Providence and see how her east side was doing.

Why I go to the football games, I don’t really know. My friends don’t come,; in fact, they look at me as though I were attending an NRA meeting or going to Church. But I go anyway. And I feel alienated by a place not yet familiar, and feel alienated from the friends who can’t understand why I’m going.

***

Harvard is lining up on the one yard line even though they’d scored from the three. Moments after firing the ball to Luft, Harvard’s O’Hagan took a hit from adrenadline-addled Brown blitzers, and was rewarded with a ‘Roughing the Quarterback’ penalty. Half the distance to the goal-line. The one yard line.

In football, a team is afforded two choices after scoring a touchdown. They may elect to kick a field goal, from the ten yard line, and procure an extra point. Or they may attempt a two point conversion, wherein the offense must will the ball across the plane of the goal-line to secure two extra points.
Another look at the scoreboard reveals the necessity of the conversion attempt. Harvard must go for the two. They can tie up. The game can into overtime. This doesn’t have to be the end.
But it might be.
***

When I get out of the bathroom, I wander for a few minutes under the shell of the stadium. The signs, long meaningless, point out the student section and general admission. There’s a carnival trailer underneath a section with a sign marked CONCESSIONS.
With heavy rain falling, the space under the distressed concrete feels like a grotto. I shuffle around, looking for something to engage with before a roar from the crowd above me jerks my head back to the game. Through a narrow walkway in the concrete shielding around and above me, I can see the field perfectly as the Crimson line up to take another whack at the Brown defense.

***

In 107 meetings, Harvard has defeated Brown 77 times. The Bears have won 28 times. The teams have tied twice.
When the Brown Stadium opened in 1925, Harvard defeated the home team by a field goal. 30,000 spectators were in attendance.
Since 1999, Brown has not recorded a win against the men from Cambridge. Last year, the Harvard team went 7-0 in the Ivy League to secure the Ivy Football Championship. Brown lost 31-21 at Harvard in the Crimson’s first ever night game.

But this game, at halftime, Brown is ahead 14-13. The rain has slackened if not stopped, and the Brown Band is preparing to take the field from their Harvard counterparts. As tradition states, the away team was given the first opportunity to entertain their fans during halftime. The home team’s band gets to stoke up its patrons’ moments before the game resumes.
Earlier in the game, the Brown Band handed out pins to commemorate the game:
It’s not the size of drum, it’s how you bang it.
With the Harvard band playing their fight song and marching in step back to the visitor’s sidelines, the Brown Band careens across the field, though some of its members are stopping to roll in the mud in the endzone.
When the antics finally subside, the band forms a misshapen oval and begins to play the 1973 Kool & The Gang classic “Jungle Boogie.” Earlier in the game, Harvard had played John Williams’ “Imperial Death March” from Star Wars as the Crimson threatened to score.
The contrast could not be more stark. The Harvard band, like the college, seems a disciplined corps of order-followers. They know their place: they’re Harvard. But the Brown band, rolling in the mud, playing disco, feels gimmicky. Like kids who act out in class, wanting attention, wanting someone to say we see you, we understand.
I can’t understand them.

In trying to describe the Brown Band, I was challenged to not use terms I felt ‘adequately’ identified the organization, but were really no more than a string of insults. In almost encounter I’ve had with the Brown Band, I’ve found them to be silly, annoying, stupid, inside-joke-obsessed, and generally, out of touch with reality. Like the time they decided to march through Keeney playing the Brown fight song on Parents Weekend freshmen year. That was fucking idiotic.
The button thing, the tradition they’ve made of pressing new, unique buttons (with strange, I daresay quirky, statements) for football games is hard to explain. Nowhere in the Encyclopedia Brunonia, or in conversations with Brown Band members could the origins or purpose of this tradition be related.
But it keeps going. Despite no clear reason to persist, the buttons continue to be made. And every game, like the ubiquity of the buttons they produce, there is the band. A bad penny that just keep showing up. A sign that’s lost it’s meaning, and acts out to be reassigned an identity. Maybe if they’re just crazy enough, they’ll be something.
And maybe that’s why it’s wonderful. At the very least, I appreciated seeing Harvard fans practically barf when the mud encrusted Brown Band decided to play disco.

***

Brown-Harvard football is the Ivy League brought back to its origins. The Ivy League was (and still is) the name for an athletic conference rather than a the informal collection of culturally respected northeastern American colleges. In 1945, the presidents of eight colleges, (Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, Penn, Yale) inaugurated a formal football league that would regulate player eligibility, scholarships, and postseason play. The league was never called the “Ivy League” except in newspaper articles, and in sports pundits’ re-hashings of the games. According to Encyclopedia Brunonia, until 1956, the schools represented by this league were only required to play each other once every five years.
Today, however, one can make out the words “IVY LEAGUE” spray-painted into the grass at the Brown Stadium. Through the rain, one can make out the banners of seven colleges flapping in the wind over the stadium’s north stands. And it’s in Brown University viewbooks, and repeated in tours of the college for prospective students. It’s become a brand-name, an academic standard that overshadows its athletic origins.

There’s a band called “This is Ivy League” in Brooklyn, NY with a self-described “tropical/psychadelic/pop” sound. While I listen to their Vampire Weekend meets Paul Simon sound I wonder whether their lyrics are right and he Brown-Harvard football game is something archaic; a pageant whose meaning has been lost, a ritual whose worshippers no longer care. If “This is Ivy League” means anything (besides whether acoustic pop has a life after Jack Johnson) it must be that the Ivy League has gone ahead and escaped it’s own contextual meaning. It’s become an empty signifer. It’s available for recontextual and ironic use. It’s got nothing to do with football rivalries over a century old. It’s got nothing to do with anything. Right?

***

Harvard’s on the one yard line. Despite the rain, the situation is uncomfortably hot. Don’t let them cross the line. “Hold that line!” shouts the Brown Cheerleaders in the midst of the deluge,. “Hold them!”
Last week, Brown junior James Develin stopped the Stonybrook quarterback on the one yard line to deny him a touchdown. But that was last week. In the sun. Against a non-conference team. What do you do when 108 years of history are on the line?

***

It happens so fast, I don’t think I see it.
Harvard snaps the ball., surges forward. Just a mass of players. No way to see in the rain. A man in the front row throws up his hands and drops his umbrella. I think he’s signaling the touchdown. But he’s not.
The referees are waving their arms side to side.
No score.

Through the rain I see the neon-electric scoreboard unchanged:

BROWN 24 HARVARD 22 1:03 QUARTER 4.
And there’s a feeling inside so strange and so different, that I don’t realize I’m feeling it until I feel the rain soaking through my sweater a few moments later. As I stand there in the rain and begin cheering. Cheering for Brown. Cheering for victory. Cheering for meaning.

i wonder if i could make it a condition of my tax-payer dollars that ronaldo has to wear a boa.

that said, it must suck to be playing soccer all year wearing the sponsorship of financial champions like AIG. so i guess there is a certain joy to this, but i had to look REALLY hard for it.

i couldn’t sleep last night. i’d a rather too substantial afternoon nap, and wasn’t feeling ready for bed (though it was 2 am). so i turned on the television, and tuned in to my new favorite station, setanta sports. setanta is the yellow and black branded dream that broadcasts english premiership soccer, worldwide and rugby, crazy irish sports like hurling and gaelic football, and apparently also australia rules football.

in just the last two days, i’ve watched more than healthy helping of setanta. in fact, i’ve to date caught two enlish premiership matches, an english soccer round-up show, and a rugby match between new zealand and south africa. rugby is a fascinating sport, and seems to be the origin of several american sports terms such as “turnover.” in rugby, if you are rolled into your opposition during a tackle you have to give up the ball. often you are turned over in the tackle, hence the term.

rugby was exotic, but australian rules football was FAR more otherworldly. first, the sport has more players on the field per team than virtually any other team sport in existence. according to the commentators, aussie rules football teams have 22 (!!!) players on a side. but you almost don’t notice, because the field is absolutely massive. there is no offsides in the game, so players can go anywhere and frequently try to cherry pick from ample distances away. any and all possessions are contested, with the exception of catches made from kicks which result in “free kicks.” these “free” kicks are nothing like their soccer brethern simply meaning that an individual can kick from the place of catching the ball unrestricted.

with it’s oval shaped field, aussie rules football looks a lot like quidditch. combine the field shape with the scoring system, which requires players to kick the ball through one of three field goals, and we’ve got a damn-near muggle derivation of wizarding’s greatest sport. as i kept watching in the wee hours of the morning, i kept expecting a snitch to enter play and for the aussies to designate seekers to find the golden orb.

watching aussie rules football enabled me to come to two conclusions about myself and my strange love of sport. the first was a sudden conception of the definition of sport, games whose play require human bodily interaction. in this capacity, sailing, car-racing are sports, but chess is just a game. athletics, like timed races, gymnastics, or evaluated executions of form, must also be excluded from sport proper (my definition) as they fail to implement the human body in the strategic execution of plays, which is to say that sport must be multidimensional. it must engage athleticism in the calculated consideration of rules, boundaries, limitations, tools, and skills, in such a way as to manipulate those forces against a foe.

the second realization was that i love sports because they are almost perfect articulations of semiotic systems. like language, they can be considered synchronically or diachronically, namely, as at the moment of the individual game or across the history of the game and all games in the development of the sport. like semiotics, sport is almost always, by nature, arbitrary, but that arbitrariness is cloaked in the guise of its essentialism of it being totally natural, the only way, the way it is. this naturalism is embedded and indeed exists only in the individuals who play the game, and patronize it. which is to say that it is sports fandom that essentializes sport, and makes it static though it is by nature a dynamic arbitrary system.

watching aussie rules football reveals all this, because i have absolutely no way to make sense of it, so i must decode its structure (system) rules (grammar) and play (phrasing). by watching the phrases develop into certain conclusions, and observing refreed interventions, i am not able to perceive how the game is played, but how it cannot be played, which exemplifies saussure’s belief that a word is everything is it not, in order to be defined as what is.

strange semiotic dreams in the post-midnight fantastic. i have ordered a rare roland barthes essay recently re-released by yale on the very subject of sport as cultural sign. it has the very french, obvious noveau philosophe title “what is sport?”

i wonder if aussie rules football comes up.