Not Your Average Couch Potato

One of my favorite stories to tell goes like this: we were all sitting around our television on the night of Super Bowl XLIII, when one of my blockmates, in an attempt to show off his sports knowledge, said, “Oh man, Kurt Warner just got hit hard!”  He then continued, a bit perplexed, “Hey, but why did the ref just drop his yellow napkin?” To this faux pas I immediately responded with a deep, guttural laugh.  I was (this is the important part of the story) a sports god in comparison.

So perhaps this anecdote is just a crutch for my own insecurities. See, in truth, I don’t really know anything about professional sports. Currently, my favorite athlete is Wiggler, the giant female worm in “Mario Tennis” that, upon winning a match, will squeal and giggle (the cross-species equivalent of a chest bump) and then turn into a flower. And, to make it worse, all but one of my blockmates is just as completely uninformed as I am. On our last blocking group vacation, beach football was almost unanimously booed down in favor of sunbathing after about 15 minutes. We were a failed inception of the Great American Bro Blocking Group. The Brblocking Group, if you will. That is, we were, until “NFL Blitz” came along.

“NFL Blitz 2002” is a video game ostensibly about football for the GameCube.  Having such outdated graphics, each player looks as if he were finger-painted with a steroid-inflated fist, and the style of play is somewhere between a WWE match and a street brawl.  It is the ultimate icon of man, and ever since I bought it last term, we spend hours each week playing it, sitting together amidst the pastiche of filth and tactfully un-disposed beer cans that is our common room, more satisfied with our masculinity than a preening gym rat.  Which is to say, in other words, just sort of bro-ing out.

I have grown added chest hair since buying “NFL Blitz,” I think. But the effects of the game on my blocking group and me have been more profound. The whole thing started like this: One day, as I often did in the beginning of fall term, I was peering into the common room in Gollum-like fashion from my doorway (in New Quincy one single, mine, sits alone next to the common room, while the other four are downstairs). Though we use it heavily on weekends, our common room was always dark and empty during the week, as we are a quite busy and prolific suite. This particular time, however, I saw my roommate sitting alone in the common room, watching the football game that he knew no one else cared about, mournfully doing his Chinese homework in silence. We were both so lonely. It was a deeply moving moment, and it convinced me that we needed video games, stat. “NFL Blitz” wasn’t really just about making girls uncomfortable in our room; it was about bringing our blocking group together.

A cantankerous friend of mine once whined that it takes an “institution” to get people at Harvard to even consider hanging out together. By this she meant that we tend toward things that have a label, that are officially stamped as worthwhile or at least excusable by the powers that be, that fit nicely onto our resumes and succinctly into sentences explaining what exactly we have done with our time on earth. She complained, for example, that no one would waste his or her time having a lengthy intellectual debate unless it was for a debate team or a class; that no one would go on a day trip or organize a dinner with friends unless it was as a retreat for some organization; that no one would, say, spend four years together in a library unless it came with a diploma. I would extend this definition of institution into the more informal realm of culture, for example, to Alcohol: the institution of drinking on weekend nights is so standard for us that even if we nominally regret not having finished that paper instead of “going out,” we don’t usually consider it wasted time. However, if I spent several hours on a weeknight just sitting around with my blockmates, I would probably feel guilty about not doing something more constructive.

In summary, our blocking group needed an institution. This leads us back to “NFL Blitz.” In “NFL Blitz,” you tackle someone by punching them in the face. In “NFL Blitz,” if you are succeeding, you get lit on fire; and if you are lit on fire, and then you leave the couch because you have to go to section or answer an e-mail, “NFL Blitz” will punch you in the face. So yes, “NFL Blitz” has taught us that running plays are the ones with blue arrows and that the best way to sack the QB is with a body slam. But more importantly, it has become an institution for us. It has become a muscular bulwark against homework, e-mail lists and productivity, a serpentine trench in the excoriated battlefield of weeknight Lamonting, a brief but heroic drive through the line of all that would have us be friendless and overworked (and, clearly, also a sort of style guide for my sentences).

In other words, for me, it was never really about the football. And, in truth, it was never really about tying together the splitting shards of our blocking group either. We were doing fine; we were just a bit too busy during the week. And if it takes these sort of minor “institutions” to get people living busy lives to spend more time together, is this really that bad? Actually, it’s a bit exciting.  What’s next for us?  Weekly late-night pajama chats with Häagen Dasz? Cranium night? Hallway football (foam, for comfort)? —Alexander J. Ratner ’11 is a Physics concentrator in Quincy House. If he doesn’t pick up your  phone call, he is likely in the midst of scoring a touchdown.