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Jewish World Review Jan.25, 2005 / 15 Shevat, 5765 It really is only a (video) game By Lenore Skenazy
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
If you like cartoons, maybe you should start watching more TV sports. The pros are all busy trying to become cartoon characters.
Or maybe the correct term is video game characters. Or cyborgs. Little digital guys on a screen whose moves are controlled by a 12-year-old with a joystick. Whatever the term is, that's what today's pros dream of becoming - the 21st century equivalent of making it to the Wheaties box. All of which would be fine, except for this:
The athletes never stop auditioning.
You'll notice, says Rich Hanley, a football fanatic and head of the journalism and interactive communications program at Quinnipiac University, "The players tend to be very demonstrative, even when they make an innocuous play." This excess exuberance is calculated, Hanley believes, because the players know it sells.
"From college on up, they know exactly how to get on the ESPN highlight shows." They also know that video game makers scour those reels for crazy moves and big personalities to jazz up their games. "So the players are very much scripting themselves," says Hanley. "They know they have to do something outrageous."
That's why you see so much suspiciously telegenic hotdogging these days - players jumping, pumping or grabbing the pom-poms and doing a little dance.
Now maybe that really was spontaneous on Terrell Owens' part back in 2000. But Owens is equally famous for whipping out a Sharpie and signing a football in the end zone. (And then, brilliantly, passing it to his financial adviser. No need to pay him this year!) If that was spontaneous, I'm Joe Namath.
Joe Horn one-upped Owens by faking a cell-phone call after a 2003 touchdown. Obviously, he must have hidden the phone in the goalpost padding before the game. And just two weeks ago, Randy Moss of the Minnesota Vikings fake-mooned the crowd in Green Bay. Sure, he was fined $10,000, but that was money well-spent if his real goal was to ensure a cyber future. "I wouldn't be surprised to see that embedded in next year's video game," says Hanley.
In this tail-wagging-the-dog sports world, video games are not only changing the way the players play but also the way the fans, uh, fan.
Some day, what goes down on any given Sunday (or Monday night) could be almost irrelevant to young fans that prefer the game on their own terms. Kids take for granted their cyber-given ability to make their own teams, pick their own plays and even choose "celebration" moves, like mooning.
As millions of fans play individualized versions of the game, the real game could fade away. Think that can't happen? Look at hockey! The league has been on strike this whole season, yet fans kept the game alive using cyber versions of the players. Who needs flesh and blood (emphasis on blood) anymore?
That's exactly what the players must be asking themselves as they jockey for pixilated posterity. As athletes turn themselves into caricatures, however, the sports world loses and so do we.
Game over.
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