Re: Five Downs With DMN 2009, Week 1

Comments on DMN are always golden. After last year predictions, especially.

Re: Five Downs With DMN 2009, Week 1

I thought that too, and still do. Of course, now I realize that 98% of every team's franchise is thoroughly ignorant.

Re: Five Downs With DMN 2009, Week 1

I don't think this phenomenon is at all specific to Cowboys fans. You have no idea how many times I argued with fellow Broncos fans who said Javon Walker was the best WR in the NFL (seriously) or that John Lynch was no longer one of the best safeties in the game.

I think just most fans of any team are what I think of as "passive." They don't research anything or even so much as look at a stat sheet. They don't consider various theories about why X or Y is happening. It's just like most people watching movies--I was a film student (who ended up with a psychology degree and am now in law school, so obviously I'm a freak) and I get no enjoyment out of just seeing a fake explosion in a movie. Now, when it's something like seeing the subtle detail of the doll in Susan's bedroom in "Citizen Kane," I get interested. (And when it becomes studying the framing of shots in "Rashomon," I get damn excited.) Most people don't care about the doll--they want to see explosions, blood, boobs, or whatever. They're passive--they aren't engaged or thinking about what they're seeing.

Then there's an intermediate step of people who think they're the smart ones--the football fans who listen to and read commentary regularly, but swallow it whole or the movie fans who say all that matters is the basic story and the acting. (And I'm resisting the temptation to rant about the latter . . . so far.) These people actually tend to be the most annoying, because we tend to think, "Look--he's not passive, so he should know better!" They're not totally passive, but they aren't really critically engaged either.

Then there are the real thoughtful people like us. We're not necessarily better or any smarter, but we put more thought into this (football viewership--and movies in my case) than they do. And we get enjoyment in a different way. There just aren't many of us, and so every team has loads and loads of the earlier categories.