Perception. What did we see? What did we really see? And what did we want to see?<\/p>\n
A number of columns ago, I wrote about a particularly bloody college football game between two Big 10 teams, a fierce, decades-long rivalry.<\/p>\n
The winning team lost two quarterbacks to injuries; the losing team lost with its second-string signal-caller at the controls.<\/p>\n
Well, this was in the time when TV was in its infancy. If \u00e2\u20ac\u0153instant replay,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to which we football fans are now quite accustomed and addicted, existed in those days, it was nascent. There was, for example, a play in Sunday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Super Bowl in which the Seattle receiver needed to do some loop-de-loops to register a catch, finally managing to snare the ball before it hit the ground. That gave Seahawks fans some hope.<\/p>\n
But this isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t intended as a summary of the game in which my team (sniff!) lost. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s merely to point out that TV cameras using \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc40s and \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc50s technology probably would have been unable to capture the catch by Jermaine Kearse. Remember, technology was more primitive then, whereas anyone who watched the game on TV Sunday was able to see in minute, stop-action images, every detail.<\/p>\n
One wonders whether the officials would have ruled it a catch if relying solely on pre-Civil War technology. Of course, assuming we lacked all that amazing equipment that records every second and every angle of the game, we wonder what the verdict would have been. Ask the Patriots fans and they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll say \u00e2\u20ac\u0153no catch\u00e2\u20ac\u009d; ask a Seattle partisan and the result will be \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a catch, plus a touchdown \u00e2\u20ac\u201d for Kearse\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s efforts.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
The competing universities in that college grid game employed the respective communication departments to turn in some valuable research.
\nEvery play of that game was filmed, and the entire footage was distributed to both colleges.<\/p>\n
The assignment: Watch the games as many times as you wish and then report on how many times your team committed an infraction that wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t whistled by the referees. Then do the same for the other team.<\/p>\n
Would it be any surprise that the communications students, who saw the game live and also a zillion reruns, observed far more infractions by the opponents? There was almost perfect correlation between the results of those rooting for their own team. The title of the published research, which appeared in a professional journal, was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They Saw a Game.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
That reinforces the notion of favoritism on the part of countless fans: We are quick to notice other people\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s violations but not our own. And also as a Raider fan, I was forced to agree with my daughter-in-law, Connie, who hosted a mini-party Sunday, that in each case in which Seattle (she used to live and work there) got penalized, it was, after all, the other team\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fault.<\/p>\n
This isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t intended to reveal any profound revelations about human behavior, but merely to stress that we see what we want to see.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
When Seattle\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s coach, Pete Carroll reaches the Pearly Gates, will Saint Peter ask him why he made that bonehead call with less than a minute to go?<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
I believe that for the most part, I have 20-20 memory. True, certain chunks of it have dissipated, but when it comes to recollections of my youth, I remember things clearly. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s despite claims of siblings that it didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really happen that way at all. Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t most people wish to see themselves as heroes, the same way sports fanatics believe that only the other team got away with infractions?
\nOne event that comes to mind was a three-on-three basketball game in the back yard of Clyde and Jimmy Apodaca, apparently the only neighborhood boys who owned a ball and a basket.<\/p>\n
The pairings seemed balanced until my team learned that all I had to do was pass the ball to my teammate, under the basket. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d keep rebounding and shooting until the ball went in. Why didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t our opponents snap to our trick? We weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t that good.<\/p>\n
We won the Railroad version of the All-Time Pro Championship, and the victory came easy. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153How about a re-match?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the other team suggested.
\nBut this time, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Just to make sure nobody\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cheating,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d one of our opponents suggested keeping score by etching the tallies with a stick in the dirt. Fair enough, we agreed.<\/p>\n
Naturally, the scorekeeper was one of the guys we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d just beaten, and several times we caught him recording our scores in their tally. So what did they gain? On \u00e2\u20ac\u0153paper,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d it appeared they had won.<\/p>\n
All three of them practically suggested hiring a CPA and a notary public to prove the authenticity of the final score. But worse, at school the next day they boasted about the slaughter they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d handed us.<\/p>\n
On the playground, I confronted the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153scorekeeper\u00e2\u20ac\u009d with, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We all know who won the games, but you can still look me in the eye and lie about it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The act upset me \u00e2\u20ac\u201d not because others applauded our opponents\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 LeBron James-style hoop skills but because of the blatant lie. What did they gain?
\nAnd the downside to our arguing that we had won was the inevitable charge that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re poor losers.<\/p>\n
Those pickup games took place more than 60 years ago. I hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t thought of the games until I ran into one of the men downtown last week. I confessed I remembered neither his name nor his face. Then he told me, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yeah, we used to beat you at basketball all the time.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
So a lifetime of fabrication has turned those games into facts. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s interesting to me how much a simple game meant to his team. Congratulations, guys!<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see much point in the big to-do about Groundhog Day. Groundhog doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem too appetizing. And isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t that what we call \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sausage\u00e2\u20ac\u009d?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Perception. What did we see? What did we really see? And what did we want to see? A number of columns ago, I wrote about a particularly bloody college football game between two Big 10 teams, a fierce, decades-long rivalry. The winning team lost two quarterbacks to injuries; the losing team lost with its second-string […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1326"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1327,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326\/revisions\/1327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}