Judge Ye Not

“If Bobby doesn’t love football, he won’t lead a fulfilling life, and then he’ll die.”

-Hank Hill

The most popular sport in America is football. And by popular, I mean people can make it the most important part of their lives. As the above Hank Hill quote indicates, Americans value football so much that they include it as an essential ingredient to personal happiness.

Take Hank Hill, a former high school football star who will retain his single-season rushing record as the pinnacle of his life. His climax occurred when he was 17 years old, and the rest of his life will be lived in remembrance of that moment.

It’s a subtle vice in King of the Hill’s protagonist, but one very common in middle-aged men. Living in the past keeps Hank from ever progressing toward another time of glory. His best times were lived on the field, and that’s that.

Sadly, the only way he can relive that exciting time is to watch football on Sundays. He never did, and never will, play for the Dallas Cowboys. But he’ll keep his dream alive by cheering for them.

To add insult to injury, football is a mind-numbingly stupid game (sometimes literally). Beefy men slam into each other, inducing concussions on a weekly basis. If they don’t die off early, former players turn into vegetables by age 45. It’s a violent and disturbing sport in essence, a modern gladiator ring.

So how does Hank find value if he can no longer play football? He ascribed it to himself as a propane salesman. He’s embarrassingly proud of his mediocre job. His inspiration is still rooted in football ideologies, but he applies it to propane and propane accessories. The teamwork enthusiasm is ever-present, but in a much less exciting form.

This is what happens when football is viewed as glorious. All analogies and fatherly advice turns into a conversation about a sport. Important things are turned trivial and the trivial is made out to be important. In reality, of course, football is silly. But the masses ascribe value to it, often because it’s that one exciting thing that happened to them in high school. Upon the knee or back injury that occurred senior year of high school, or sometime in college, the former great athletes become altogether useless. So they pursue boring careers, perpetuating a nostalgia for what once was or could have been.

The thing is, football is only a game. But you’ll never hear Hank say such a thing. Because he doesn’t believe it. To him, it really is an important aspect of life. Oh if only this satire didn’t hit so close to home. We are a country of self-satirists, especially on Sunday afternoons.