Some clients want results, some clients want miracles. The International Football Advisory Council is definitely in the latter category. This afternoon, I contended with three inches of newly fallen snow to reach the IFAC offices on K Street. That’s enough snow to paralyze Washington DC, because Washington is a city where about sixty percent of the population cannot drive, walk or ride public transportation in snow of any depth exceeding one quarter of an inch without presenting a serious risk of injury and expensive property damage to themselves and others.
I braved roads and highways filled with skidding Mercedes, fishtailing BMWs, out-of-control Jaguars, Infintis wrapped around trees and 4X4 monster pickups piled up into Jersey barriers. I saw two totalled Hummers – one hit a jackknifed double semi and was crushed like a bug – was that, by any chance, poetic justice? I observed overturned SUVs of every description, including a Chevy Suburban that was in a ravine on the GW parkway, occupant’s bodies spilled all over the rocks overlooking the Potomac. I couldn’t help wondering if anyone else had noticed, but when I dialed 911, all I got was a busy signal. Once I made it over Key Bridge, I had to run a gauntlet of abandoned limousines with third-world diplomatic plates, disabled Metro buses every block and homeless people (and idiots, and people with chips on their shoulders, I guess) walking out in front of my car for no apparent reason other than there was snow on the ground. Yes, all that in order to brief an International Football Advisory Council panel on the research their organization hired me to perform, concerning strategies to address the extremely violent nature of the sport. By “football,” of course, I mean that game which Americans call soccer, and by “extremely violent nature of the sport,” I mean the way spectators, not the players, behave.
Americans, who, according to my Web site statistics, constitute a majority of the people who read this Web log, may not be aware of how badly football fans have been behaving lately. So I will point out that football fans have recently killed several people stone cold and rather messy dead, right there in the sports stadiums, in front of the television cameras, and have done so during game play at various professional soccer matches around the world – the last about three days before the IFAC contacted me, as a matter of fact.
I know that the game Americans call football can be fatal, but it’s very rare, and the victims are football players, who, after all, volunteer to play. That other kind of football, has, admittedly, killed a few people on the field with heatstroke, heart attacks and so forth during the course of its glorious history. Today, however, football claims a considerable number of lives, in addition to serious injuries, every year; and does so both inside and outside football stadiums.
Furthermore, football serves as the root cause for a considerable amount of vandalism, rioting and general street crime as well. The victims can be anybody. They range from babies who were in the wrong place at the wrong time to old geezers who were signifying support for the wrong team in the wrong place. The majority of fatalities, however, tend to be males between 14 and 35 who are killed in what Americans used to call “rumbles,” but today call “gang-banging,” (thus once again conflating sex and violence, as they are fond of doing, although not often semantically, as in this case).
Americans who are unfamiliar with what the rest of the world calls “football hooliganism” may realize that sometimes, fans get out of hand and riot, no matter what the sport. But they may be surprised to learn that, for the last ten years or so, all over the world, football fans have been organizing into centralized command structures capable of deploying tactical units bent on severe violence, including major sabotage, aggravated assault, gang rape, arson and murder. These units formulate detailed plans for those crimes, even supporting them with schemes for command and control, using, for example, cell telephones and weapons systems, including, for example, disguised electrified truncheons made from cattle prods. They assemble strike teams who subsequently travel to football games and carry out the battle plans. It’s organized, premeditated terrorism, directed and applied among rival groups representing (in their own warped minds, at least) the nations and city states the football teams represent. People are getting interestingly maimed and seriously killed in the midst of all that nonsense; and hard as it might be for someone in Idaho to believe, this is how certain sports fans around the world are behaving – I kid you not, that is how soccer fans around the world now behave.
Should this sociological outcome give the soccer moms of America pause? I doubt it. Enrolling your son or daughter in a soccer league might turn them bisexual, but it’s not going to turn them into murdering, pyromaniac football hooligans. The reason is simple – it’s watching the game, not playing it, that makes soccer dangerous.
Now we Yanks are used to, say, a basketball championship resulting in a flaming downtown Detroit for a couple of days. We also know that about forty percent of the people who attend ice hockey games go there to watch the fights, not a bunch of jocks in baggy sweat suits with missing teeth skating around after a puck in a game that, frankly, resembles soccer a bit too much. This being North America, however, (because I now include the Canadians, who are mad aboot ice hockey); the fights, for the most part, occur out on the ice between players on opposing teams, and they, like American football players, at least volunteer to take the risks traditionally associated with their chosen sport.
Not so with what the rest of the world calls football. For several decades, the problem has simmered, born of the basic nature of soccer itself. Rest assured, dear reader, that I pointed out what I am about to say in the Background section of the deliverable I sent my client last week. The game called football or soccer is great exercise and enormous fun to play for its own sake, personal enjoyment and the enjoyment of one’s friends. Given a requisite level of involvement on the part of a spectator – a spouse, a parent, a lover, a teacher, a sibling, a niece or nephew of the spectator – the game can also be enthralling to watch. But let’s face the facts, people, you folks out there in the rest of the world who haven’t discovered what we Americans call football – the game you call professional football is lousy public entertainment. The field is huge. The players are spread out all over it and they are, for the most part, in constant and incomprehensible motion. Although strategy exists, it is in general so fluid there is no time for the average spectator to even notice, much less appreciate its application. Like ice hockey, goals are relatively rare. But in ice hockey, this is because it is so difficult to control a rubber puck traveling one hundred miles an hour with a wooden stick. However, since all the players in football, except the goal tenders, are forbidden to touch the ball with their hands, the innate frustration in that game stems from a different source, and consequently produces different effects.
In ice hockey, the relatively small size of the play area, confined as it is by the size of an ice rink, and the innate difficulty in controlling the puck, makes the players mad at each other and results in fights between opposing team members. In football, however, it’s a completely different story. It’s possible for two football teams to interact like perfect gentlemen during an entire match – football teams do it all the time. The field is large enough, and their control of the ball great enough, that they fight with each other about as often as players of any team sport, such as basketball or baseball would.
Watching those fine, disciplined and gentlemanly athletes play their game, on the other hand, involves another dynamic. I’m not going to mince words here, watching a football game is – in comparison to many, many other sports, including American football – extremely boring. It is almost as boring as watching a baseball game. So why don’t baseball fans react to the boredom the same way? Because watching baseball is soporific. The slow, leisurely, bucolic pace of baseball lulls the crowd into a stupor, from which they arise only when, for a brief instant or two, something actually interesting happens on the field. Football fans, by contrast, are constantly watching a display of frantic action which has no immediate outcome. This induces a state of extreme nervous tension, causing adrenaline to build up, but offers them only very rare release.
Baseball and soccer fans both react to boredom the same way – they drink alcoholic beverages. A baseball fan, in a state of relaxation and with no excess adrenaline to deal with, drinks beer and mellows out in the hot sun, talking statistics and baseball lore. But a soccer fan can’t do that – he drinks beer, wine, liquor and Red Bull, first as a boredom reaction, then in a vain attempt to control the mounting nervous pressures caused by excess adrenaline pumped into him by constant frustration. As the football fan continues concentrating on the maniacal action out on the football field, further denial of catharsis causes the release of testosterone, which, in a vicious cycle, spurs the fan to consume even more volatile combinations alcohol and sports drink stimulants. While the fan can’t take his eyes off the field, neither can he stop drinking, because, despite all that running around, nothing much is happening, game-wise.
So the football fan remains, locked in a rising spiral of ennui, intoxication and endocrine fugue, his frustration level climbing higher and higher along with his adrenaline, testosterone, caffeine, sugar and alcohol blood concentrations, for several hours. There, my Background section tells the IFAC, is the deadly combination. It simply does not take much to turn a single male in that condition into a rampaging berserker. What then can be expected from a few thousand of them?
Consider a large mob of such men who are also convinced that their team, which they closely identify with their town, county, province or nation, just got robbed of a goal in the last five minutes of a tied match. Why, they might start ripping up seats and throwing them; tearing down fences; turning anything at hand into a blunt instrument of trauma – why, yes, indeed, they might kill somebody – and they have, plenty of times. Now, as if that kettle of fish were not horrid enough, imagine the stands of that stadium packed with multiple squads of men who are not only wild out of their minds on booze and stimulant sports drinks, but also on a variety of illegal drugs; men who came there with the intention of committing as much violence as possible; men who are not only armed for it, but have a battle plan and telecommunications infrastructure as well. Those would be today’s state-of-the-art football hooligans, a fun-loving bunch who just don’t seem to be satisfied with a match unless somebody gets killed, either before, during or after it is played. IFAC wanted a solution to these problems, but they wanted to have their cake and eat it, too. Like I said, IFAC wanted a miracle.
Now, the Statement of Work for this contract stipulates that, under no circumstances, is IFAC interested in any recommendations that would change the rules of football. Football must, they made it clear, remain the same game no matter what. The fact that it’s boring to watch and drives a significant portion of its spectator public temporarily or permanently insane means nothing to the deans and docents of football. Fine by me. After all, I don’t have to live with soccer hooligan violence here in the Unites States, and, given the popularity of the game played by the National Football League, it’s a pretty good bet I will never have to.
But there are only two entities involved in the problem. There is the game itself, which cannot be changed in any way, and there are the fans. So, obviously, the IFAC hired me to figure out ways to manage football fans so they don’t do the destructive, antisocial stuff they’ve been up to for oh, about the last sixty years or thereabouts, and that’s exactly what my deliverable explored. It seemed to me my job was done when I sent my analysis and recommendations to the IFAC, but they thought differently. Like most consultants, I readily agree to meet with my clients after I have performed the requested work and delivered the required product, and the IFAC was no exception.
Under such circumstances, I always carry a means of recording what transpires. It’s only common sense and, in my opinion at least, good business to do so. The IFAC have a very glitzy setup on one of the upper floors of a recent vintage high rise office building. Brightly polished marble, granite, porphyry and limestone dominate the visitor who passes inside the main lobby. No lie, this place is pumped – even the elevators have polished stone walls and floors. The elevator doors are mirrors, so the visitor can make sure they ascend to their host’s standards of appearance and, of course, vanity; so are the ceilings, but I’m not going there.
The IFAC themselves are a bunch of egomaniac retired soccer players, mostly from every two-bit, no-account, can’t go to the loo without somebody else like the US or UN has a quarter for it country on God’s green earth where the asinine game they call football is played as a professional sport. Like most jocks anywhere, they are, at best, of average intelligence, spoiled rotten and monumentally solipsistic.
The IFAC hosts 48 representatives in Washington, all of whom are attached to their the nearby embassies of their respective countries as diplomats, with titles like “cultural attache,” “plenipotentiary for athletics,” and “sports minister at large.” Forty-three of the IFAC member nations are pathetic, crippled, impotent, begging, dependent, disorganized, inconsequential, overpopulated, perpetually broke, foreign-aid stealing, tourist-robbing, fly-specked-monarchy governed, and/or new-military-coup-every-eighteen-months-plagued little jack-squat pips, blots or yawning, ghastly stains on the map; excreted with massive blood, noise and gas from the carbuncle infested behinds of various greedy, evil, corrupt, callous, mendacious and stupid empires during the last five or six centuries, where the godforsaken game of football is played professionally today. The other five are important, rich, civilized foreign countries where meaningful and influential things happen all the time, such as France, Germany, Britain, Italy and Sweden. Well, actually, the other five members are those countries, I guess. None of the gentleman I met with were from any of them, of course.
There were three IFAC members assigned to the project I executed. Would you be astonished, dear reader, to learn that the continent of Africa is littered with pathetic, crippled, impotent, begging, dependent, disorganized, inconsequential, overpopulated, perpetually broke, foreign-aid stealing, tourist-robbing, fly-specked-monarchy governed, and/or new-military-coup-every-eighteen-months-plagued little jack-squat pips, blots or yawning, ghastly stains on the map; excreted with massive blood, noise and gas from the carbuncle infested behinds of various greedy, evil, corrupt, callous, mendacious and stupid empires during the last five or six centuries, where the godforsaken game of football is played professionally today? I doubt it. The African member who attended the meeting was a Mr. N’Tata.
Would you be astonished, dear reader, to learn that the Western Hemisphere, between the Rio Grande and Tierra Del Fuego, is littered with pathetic, crippled, impotent, begging, dependent, disorganized, inconsequential, overpopulated, perpetually broke, foreign-aid stealing, tourist-robbing, fly-specked-monarchy governed, and/or new-military-coup-every-eighteen-months-plagued little jack-squat pips, blots or yawning, ghastly stains on the map; excreted with massive blood, noise and gas from the carbuncle infested behinds of various greedy, evil, corrupt, callous, mendacious and stupid empires during the last five or six centuries, where the godforsaken game of football is played professionally today? I doubt it. The representative at this meeting, hailing from a certain country in that region, was a Senor Mordita.
Would you be astonished, dear reader, to learn that vast territories vacated at the dissolution of the former Soviet Union are littered with pathetic, crippled, impotent, begging, dependent, disorganized, inconsequential, overpopulated, perpetually broke, foreign-aid stealing, tourist-robbing, fly-specked-monarchy governed, and/or new-military-coup-every-eighteen-months-plagued little jack-squat pips, blots or yawning, ghastly stains on the map; excreted with massive blood, noise and gas from the carbuncle infested behind of the ignominious, greedy, evil, corrupt, callous, mendacious and monumentally stupid Soviet empire during the 1990’s, where the godforsaken game of football is played professionally today? I doubt it. The representative from that region was a Mr. Hucutchakakov. There was a fourth person, an intern, who was holding a copy of my deliverable. I assumed she was there to read the parts the representatives wished to discuss, which proved correct; I was never told her name.
The microphone I wore was concealed in my suit coat, with a wireless encrypted Bluetooth connection to an ultra-thin Linux laptop running inside my briefcase, concealed under a layer of documents. Here, then, is a transcript of the meeting:
Hucutchakakov: Good afternoon, Mr. Collins. We have read with great interest your study on methods and practices to deal with world wide football hooligan violence problem. Please, seat yourself, make comfortable.
Tom Collins: Thank you, Minister.
Hucutchakakov: Minister of Sport Extraordinary to the United States and the International Football Advisory Council, by Exclusive Appointment of the Maximum Supreme Leader, Premier Jacov Tarsibalsov Gofocuselv.
Tom Collins: Certainly, Your Esteemed Excellency Hucutchakakov, Minister of Sport Extraordinary to the United States and the International Football Advisory Council, by Exclusive Appointment of the Maximum Supreme Leader, Premier Jacov Tarsibalsov Gofocuselv. May I, for the sake of brevity, expediency and parsimony, address you henceforth as “Minister?”
Hucutchakakov: No, I don’t think so – is not long enough.
Tom Collins: In that case, may I suggest “Minister of Sport Extraordinary,” as an expedient and parsimonious alternative to your full, awe inspiring, fearsome and magnificent title?
Hucutchakakov: You really think is awesome, fearsome title?
Tom Collins: In my experience, few other titles have been nearly as so awe inspiring and fearsome as yours, Your Excellency Hucutchakakov, Minister of Sport Extraordinary to the United States and the International Football Advisory Council, by Exclusive Appointment of the Maximum Supreme Leader, Premier Jacov Tarsibalsov Gofocuselv.
N’Tata: I beg the pardons of both the Minister of Sport Extraordinary to the United States and the International Football Advisory Council, by Exclusive Appointment of the Maximum Supreme Leader, Premier Jacov Tarsibalsov Gofocuselv, and this consultant person, but I feel I must encourage the Minister of Sport Extraordinary to the United States and the International Football Advisory Council, by Exclusive Appointment of the Maximum Supreme Leader, Premier Jacov Tarsibalsov Gofocuselv to quickly arrive at some sort of practical agreement as to conversational address for the Honorable Politburo Secretary Hucutchakakov, Minister of Sport Extraordinary to the United States and the International Football Advisory Council, by Exclusive Appointment of the Maximum Supreme Leader, Premier Jacov Tarsibalsov Gofocuselv at this meeting, or risk exhausting the funds allocated for this project, and, I add with particular emphasis, the purpose of this endeavor; by inadvertently extending the length of this meeting for superfluous reasons amounting to nothing more, considering the rates he charges, than the monetary benefit of this contractor person here.
Tom Collins: Thank you, Most High and Resplendent Cultural Ambassador of Peace and Sport. If we could just keep it to about the size of that observed for His Most High and Resplendent Cultural Ambassador of Peace and Sport N’Tata, that would, I think, be both pragmatic and expedient, Your Esteemed Excellency and Honorable Politburo Secretary Hucutchakakov, Minister of Sport Extraordinary to the United States and the International Football Advisory Council, by Exclusive Appointment of the Maximum Supreme Leader, Premier Jacov Tarsibalsov Gofocuselv.
Hucutchakakov: How about “Minister of Sport Extraordinary, Emissary Supreme of the Maximum Leader?”
Tom Collins: I think that would be quite satisfactory, Minister of Sport Extraordinary, Emissary Supreme of the Maximum Leader. Do you agree, Most High and Resplendent Cultural Ambassador of Peace and Sport?
N’Tata: I believe it is still too long, but for purposes of this meeting, I agree to it.
Tom Collins: Thank you. I assume we have your mutual concurrence, Special Peoples’ Ambassador with Full Portfolio for Sport, Culture and Game Console Imports Mordita?
Mordita: Yes, yes, you hurry now, not take too long for me. My schedule very busy today.
Tom Collins: I appreciate your time constraints, Special Peoples’ Ambassador with Full Portfolio for Sport, Culture and Game Console Imports. Your Excellencies, I understand there are some questions regarding the recommendations made in my deliverable, and perhaps some other issues. I am prepared to proceed at your discretion.
N’Tata: I have some questions concerning the first recommendation you made.
Intern: The first recommendation made is to quote, “Uncouple the fan’s local and national identity from football. This should be accomplished by forming teams with multinational memberships at the international level and with multi-regional memberships at the national level; and, by naming teams after abstract entities, such as colors. Primary colors should be avoided as team names, since there are very few such names and because primary colors tend to elicit strong emotional reactions. Instead, teams should be named after colors such as ‘mauve,’ ‘puce,’ and ‘aquamarine.’”
N’Tata: Mr. Collins, those colors, “puce,” “mauve,” and “aquamarine,” are colors favored by homosexuals, are they not?
Tom Collins: They are simply examples of non-primary color names, Most High and Resplendent Cultural Ambassador of Peace and Sport. Practically any reference to non-primary colors will end up sounding kind of gay, but if the Taupes are playing the Teals for the World Cup, and each team has players from at least eleven different countries on it, fans will simply have nothing much to get worked up about. They will either be rooting for taupe or teal, and that will be the extent of their emotional investment in football.
Hucutchakakov: For regional teams, you recommend players from all over nation on all teams, and you say use “light pastel color scheme” for color names. Also you say all football fans must wear colored shirts matching team they support while in stadium.
Tom Collins: That is correct, Minister of Sport Extraordinary, Emissary Supreme of the Maximum Leader. Returning to my previous World Cup example, supporters of the Taupes would be required to wear taupe shirts, and supporters of the Teals would be required to wear teal shirts.
Hucutchakakov: In my country, sometimes people have only a few shirts, maybe only one shirt.
Tom Collins: I understand, Minister of Sport Extraordinary, Emissary Supreme of the Maximum Leader. As I suggest in another section of the report, teams should have a stock of jerseys or T-shirts in their team color which can be loaned to fans who either forget to bring their affiliation colored shirt to the football stadium or cannot afford one. I’m sure we are all sufficiently realistic to agree that effective crowd control cannot be obtained without some sort of investment, either in personnel or equipment. It is not possible to end football hooliganism without spending some money to do so.
Mordita: I can see is maybe very expensive solution. Senorita, please to read part in pink highlighter on page two hundred and thirty-six.
Intern: The report states “Implementation Example 1. Fans shall not be admitted to stadiums to view events unless they show a picture ID and have it photographed onto a sheet, which has a tear-off stub with their admission ticket attached. On this sheet, they must also write down their name and address then declare a team loyalty in writing next to that. They must then either be wearing or put on a shirt in their team color. Only then will the authorities tear off the admission stub and allow them into the stadium. Fans may not leave the stadium and re-enter under any circumstances after they enter to view a game until the game ends. The tear off stubs are numbered and fans must keep them on their person at all times. Any fan found with another fan’s tear off stub will be summarily ejected from the stadium and not allowed to attend football for the rest of their life. The records with picture IDs and written name and address information have corresponding stub numbers on them and are kept at the security office during the game, then subsequently scanned into the international federation’s fan database for future reference.”
Mordita: All these science fiction stuffings, she cost a lot of money, no?
Tom Collins: As your young colleague here read to us, Special Peoples’ Ambassador with Full Portfolio for Sport, Culture and Game Console Imports, that was an example of how current information technology can be effectively employed to control football hooliganism. There are other implementation examples which use modifications of that approach, or similar approaches, in order to conserve funds. However, I would recommend that, in the beginning, your country outfit a single sports stadium, presumably your largest and most modern one, with the system described and simply require all professional football games to be held there. As your government collects revenue from the football stadium admission tax I recommend, then your government can use the funds to outfit other stadiums with the necessary equipment, and, perhaps in the case of your country, also issue everyone – or at least those who wish to attend football games – photo identification cards.
N’Tata: What about this?
Intern: “All seating is general admission and determined by security officers prior to start of the game. Furthermore, seating must place fans alternately in the rows of seats by team affiliation with as much separation between fans as possible, given attendance.”
Tom Collins: The object of that measure, Most High and Resplendent Cultural Ambassador of Peace and Sport, is to ensure that, returning to my World Cup example for clarity – every Taupe fan has a Teal fan sitting on either side of him and vice-versa. Attendance at a World Cup game would be sold out, presumably, but say if we had the Cream Sunset Sands playing the Sky Blue Pinks in a regional game within a member nation, there might be less than 50 percent attendance. In that case, it would be possible to separate the alternately seated spectators by one or more empty seats. So, in that case, we would have a Cream Sunset Sand fan, an empty seat, a Sky Blue Pink fan, an empty seat, a Cream Sunset Sand fan, an empty seat, a Sky Blue Pink fan, an empty seat, and so forth.
Hucutchakakov: In report, you write another thing we do not understand.
Intern: “The noisiest fans (e.g., those who yell above a specified decibel level) shall be selected at random to play fifteen minutes for the teams they are supporting, with a different fan on the team in a different position at every fifteen minute interval. This will tend to cause the potential troublemakers to wear themselves out yelling for an opportunity to play instead of starting fights. Fans who are selected to play for their team shall have their name and address displayed on the scoreboard along with their team name and the position they are playing. Thus, fans who aren’t any good at football will have a reason to keep quiet in order to avoid being selected and subsequently embarrassed in front of a large crowd and possibly a TV audience. Anybody involved in what the stadium security team leader deems to be a fight automatically has to play fifteen minutes for their team, or be detained, fingerprinted, photographed, subjected to a retina scan, summarily ejected and banned from further attendance at football games worldwide for life.”
Hucutchakakov: This is changing rules of football.
Tom Collins: No, Minister of Sport Extraordinary, Emissary Supreme of the Maximum Leader, that recommendation does not change the rules of football. The substitution of players is allowed by the current rules, and that recommendation merely employs the existing rules creatively in order to address the football hooligan problem.
N’Tata: So every moment of every professional football game, one player on each team is a fan. This is not professional football, then.
Tom Collins: There was no proscription in my Statement of Work concerning changes in the definition of professional football, Most High and Resplendent Cultural Ambassador of Peace and Sport N’Tata, only a proscription against changing the rules of football. These recommendations are, of course, points of departure for the drafting of a strategy that is mutually agreeable to all the IFAC members. Perhaps the IFAC will determine that forcing fans to “put up or shut up” by requiring them to play on the team they support for fifteen lousy minutes should only be practiced if a fan commits an infraction, instead of just making too much noise. In that case it would be possible, theoretically at least, for two entire periods of football to be played by two complete teams of professionals, provided the fans behave themselves. There are a number of possible permutations and modifications presented in the several appendices provided in the deliverable. I respectfully submit for the record that, in my opinion and, I believe, in the opinion of any reasonable and sufficiently informed person who would review the deliverable in question, the material discussed up to this point has been taken out of context.
Mordita: But Senor Collins, all your solution to football hooligan problem make fans dressed up in colores de la maricones, and supporting football team with maybe one person from their city, maybe one person from their country. All the time, everybody is sitting in stadium surround on both sides fans of other team. Stadium security taking fan pictures, maybe fingerprints, putting in computers, tracking with numbers on forms fans have to fill out to get into football stadium. Is totalmente insano, Senor Collins. Who pay dinero for that?
Tom Collins: To that question, Special Peoples’ Ambassador with Full Portfolio for Sport, Culture and Game Console Imports, I would answer with the observation that here in the United States of America, the citizens put up with a great deal of delay, inconvenience, and invasive searching in order to ride an airplane, but they still buy airline tickets.
N’Tata: If we do these things, then football will turn into one big fruit cake pansy party. These recommendations are all much too gay for football.
Tom Collins: If I may be frank, Most High and Resplendent Cultural Ambassador of Peace and Sport, in comparison to most other team sports, football is already pretty gay. It’s twenty-two buff guys in tight shorts and shirts running around after a ball for ninety minutes, after all. Admittedly, it’s not as gay as polo or lawn tennis, but it’s nowhere near as macho as rugby, or even baseball. Basically, football is medium-gay, anyhow.
Hucutchakakov: No! No! Football is mighty, muscular, sweaty, straining, very butch, manly sport, Mr. Collins!
Tom Collins: In that case, Minister of Sport Extraordinary, Emissary Supreme of the Maximum Leader, building teams that fans can’t identify with their city or nation and having those teams wear lilac or beige colored uniforms isn’t going to turn anybody queer. Men who are secure in their manhood do not fear wearing lilac and beige, therefore, football should remain mighty, muscular, sweaty, straining, very butch and manly. Certainly, you aren’t saying that it’s the affiliation with a particular city or nation, or the current choice of uniform colors, that keep football from being some kind of mincing, tush-wiggling, wrist-flipping, obviously homosexual sport like… lacrosse, for example?
Hucutchakakov: I agree, Mr. Collins, is not those things make football manly; not associate with city or country, not colors of uniforms. So okay, okay, maybe you right, but how I go back to my country and say is good idea to mix up team members from all over country and wear gay colors like taupe? Maybe they think I go crazy or homosexual from visiting United States; then execute me.
Tom Collins: Fortunately, Minister of Sport Extraordinary, Emissary Supreme of the Maximum Leader, you need not worry about such eventualities. If IFAC and the world football community adopt certain practices in order to control hooliganism, your country will have the option of either following those guidelines or not participating in world football. None of what happens will have been your doing or your responsibility in any way. Therefore, how could your countrymen do anything but praise your earnest and patriotic efforts?
Hucutchakakov: Is easy for you say! Football big deal in my country! I can tell you, what women would not do to me when I was big football player, sometimes two or three! Also much betting – Olympics, World Cup, national pride, all make big in my country, Mr. Collins. You not have to go to my country and oversee to making such things happen, or even telling news of IFAC guidelines to Maximum Leader; I have to go; I have to tell.
Tom Collins: I would be glad, Minister of Sport Extraordinary, Emissary Supreme of the Maximum Leader, to prepare a study and recommendations for your use; to be costed separately from the current deliverable, of course.
Hucutchakakov: Not having money for such things. Not having money for anything in my country. We have football, we have football hooligans, but we have no money, not for anything.
Tom Collins: That is indeed unfortunate, Minister of Sport Extraordinary, Emissary Supreme of the Maximum Leader, and I extend to you my deepest and most heartfelt sympathy; however, formulation and proposal of solutions to those problems are outside the scope of my current commitments to the IFAC.
Mordita: Senor Collins, you look like nice guy, I can see you pretty smart, I got nothing to lose, so I level with you, amigo – even if these things going to work, we just plain scared to suggest them in our countries.
N’Tata: I would ask that the Special Peoples’ Ambassador with Full Portfolio for Sport, Culture and Game Console Imports speak for himself. I have no fears concerning suggesting these recommendations to the people of my country. I do, however, consider them radical and potentially subversive to the moral fiber of my country’s football fans.
Tom Collins: I would ask the Most High and Resplendent Cultural Ambassador of Peace and Sport if rampant football hooliganism might not be worse than making the fans behave a bit pooftie in order to avoid it. Since the ancient Greeks, team sport has always been a homoerotic experience, one that mimicked the hoplite phalanx of Attic war; a psychodrama of gender identity performed by Jungian archetypes. Therefore, extension of that concept to football hooligan control makes perfect sociological sense, to the extent that anything in sociology does. If the sport of football won’t change so that it isn’t so boring and frustrating to watch, then steps must be taken to cool the raging fires of adrenaline and testosterone the experience of watching it so efficiently stokes. The deranging effects of watching football on the human mind are so intense, I believe, on the basis of my research, that even if only women were allowed to watch football matches, there would still be football hooliganism. Unless the spectators’ experience is significantly restructured, either along the lines recommended in the deliverable or along others, upon the nature of which I cannot speculate, football hooliganism will remain an intractable, even insoluble problem.
Hucutchakakov: If problem so big like that, is probably beyond mind of man, maybe impossible; anyway, too much work. So why bother to solve? Mr. Collins, you tell us ways to make big money from football hooliganism instead.
Tom Collins: Minister of Sport Extraordinary, Emissary Supreme of the Maximum Leader, I am certain there are ways to, as you put it, make big money from football hooliganism. But first, I was not retained to find them, and such questions are outside of the current contract scope. Secondly, there are ethical considerations that would prevent me from exploring such a question, even under a separate contract vehicle.
Mordita: Okay, okay, I get message. You won’t do job. So who we call?
Tom Collins: Madame, do you know how to operate an Internet Web browser?
Intern: Yes, sir.
Tom Collins: Go to www.fedbizopps.gov. Find the policy consultation, scientific, economic and information technology contracts awarded within the last thirty days. Download the RFPs and RFQs for those, and select the contracts that are either worth more than ten million dollars or require more than one hundred thousand labor hours to complete. For each such contract, starting with those having the greatest dollar value or LOE, determine which federal contractors bid on it. Then contact all of the losers and present your proposition. I guarantee you that at least one of them will be glad to do anything you want short of burglary or violent felonies. Continue this procedure until you have three such contractors. Obtain bids from all three and award the work to the middle bidder. Do you understand?
Intern: Yes, Mr. Collins. But what should I say if they ask how IFAC found them?
Tom Collins: Say I recommended them.
N’Tata: Very good. We have no further questions. Thank you for attending this meeting, Mr. Collins.
Tom Collins: You are welcome, Most High and Resplendent Cultural Ambassador of Peace and Sport. It has been a pleasure to meet you, Minister of Sport Extraordinary, Emissary Supreme of the Maximum Leader, and Special Peoples’ Ambassador with Full Portfolio for Sport, Culture and Game Console Imports; and you also, madame. Have a nice day.
I meant that, too, because today is Valentine’s Day, after all, and even clueless washed-up soccer players from places that aren’t good enough for an NFL fan to drop dead in should still have a nice day today. I’m certainly planning on making the rest of it as nice as possible for myself – headed, as I am, over to a very special lady’s residence with champagne, chocolates and a dozen long stemmed American Beauty red roses. May you, too, dear reader, also have love, companionship, romance and, should you be of an appropriate age in your present locality and in sufficient health to do so, participate in some dynamite erotic experiences today – or, if the weather today does not permit, then sometime in the very near future after they get your street plowed, the flood waters recede, the torrential rains cease, the ice breaks up, the blinding sandstorm subsides or the volcanic ash stops falling, as the case may be.