Touchdown Nightmare

I have a recurring nightmare that I am about to score a touchdown in the Super Bowl.

In football a touchdown is worth six points. Scoring a touchdown is the single activity that produces the most points at once. Players are often very naturally excited about scoring a touchdown. Players will celebrate a touchdown with great enthusiasm.

Sometimes players get so excited that they get carried away after a touchdown.
Sometimes a player will deliberately call attention to himself in the act of celebrating a touchdown. Since football is a team sport, excessive individual celebrations have caused officials to penalize teams. Even ordinary spectators criticize players for the way they celebrate after reaching the end zone. They say things like this: “When a player scores a touchdown, he should act like he has been there before”. The idea is that a player should act nonchalant after scoring a touchdown. If the player is good enough to score many touchdowns, then he should not be particularly excited about scoring another one. It is just his job to score touchdowns. It should be a routine matter.

However, since scoring a touchdown is the most valuable action in football then every time a touchdown is scored it should be considered to be an important event. This is often demonstrated by football game broadcasters. Some of the broadcasters are hired by a team to announce the team’s games. It is natural for these broadcasters to get excited when the team that is paying for the broadcast scores a touchdown. Even when the opponents score a touchdown the announcers get excited because of the negative effect on their team.

It is a different circumstance when the broadcasters are paid by an independent company to announce a game. Because the announcers supposedly do not favor either team it seems that the announcers should not be very excited if either team scores a touchdown. These announcers will still act extremely excited in response to a touchdown. I suppose the announcers are trying to make the game interesting for fans of the teams as well as other viewers and listeners, but it does not make much sense to be enthusiastic after a touchdown if, for example, one team is leading 35 to 0 late in the fourth quarter.

One successful head football coach was recently quoted as saying, “It’s all about scoring points”. If coaches, team owners, fans, and broadcasters can get excited about touchdowns, then why must the players show restraint?

Why do I have a recurring nightmare that I am about to score a touchdown in the Super Bowl? If scoring a touchdown is the single most important activity in football and many people value it, then I should be excited about scoring a touchdown in front of a stadium crowd of tens of thousands and a television audience of millions of people. My coaches and fellow players would enthusiastically congratulate me and my fans would be extremely happy, but the idea of scoring a touchdown frightens me. I have never scored a touchdown in the Super Bowl (or anywhere) and if I did I would be embarrassed because I would not know how to act. I’ve never been there before!


Copyright (c) January 29, 2010
eMeRaLD Effect Enterprises