Greetings, friends. (XVII)

Greetings, friends. Today I want to talk about American football, or, as we call it in America, football.

The reason I am writing this journal entry today is that the 2022 NFC championship game is tomorrow, and I can’t decide whom to root for.

Uh, Schuyler, I can already hear you saying, your redneck is showing.

Yes, yes, but maybe not in the way that you think. I hope you will permit me to dissect my relationship to this uniquely American spectacle.

[Omitted: About 450 words on the history of American professional football in general, and the NFL in particular. Also the NFL rule book, and the peculiarities of Canadian football.]

Customarily, one roots for one’s home team, or the nearest equivalent, and there are very cool maps of nearest equivalents if you like cool maps.

I was raised watching the Philadelphia Eagles during their brief heyday in the early ‘80s, sitting next to my father on Sunday as he watched, alternately murmuring in satisfaction, cursing roundly the vile perfidy of the opposing team, usually the Dallas Cowboys, or else shouting at the incompetence of the referees, as if they could hear him through the television.

Unlike me, my father played football in high school, although I think he wasn’t very good at it. I never did. I was too cool for that shit, which is to say I was too uncoordinated as a teenager to be good at any kind of sports, and too socially awkward to be anything other than a nerd who resented everything, starting with the school’s football players, their popularity, their entitled arrogance, and everything they stood for, right on up to the whole of mainstream society, in which I did not feel that I belonged. I was not a happy kid.

I’m happier today, though still a nerd. Yet somehow seven or eight years ago, American football snuck up on me again. At the time, I was living in my adopted home town, San Francisco. So I started following the 49ers, who have had a decent, if inconsistent, stretch since then.

Now, what caught my attention about football as an adult was the cerebral aspects of the sport. Yes, the nerdy parts, which, believe it or not, are pretty substantial.

[Omitted: Another 700 words on the beauty, but also the barbarity, that is American football.]

So there is definitely a lot to be ambivalent about. The NFL is truly an American sport, in all of its glory and its hideous ugliness. Yet, even knowing all of this, I have to confess that I still love the game.

I had a brief stretch at my current employer as a competitor in the company fantasy football league. You can watch my five minute summary of that experience on YouTube.

But I digress. I was speaking of tomorrow’s NFC championship game, which features the top-seeded Philadelphia Eagles hosting the NFC West division-winning San Francisco 49ers. This is only the second time they have ever faced each other in the NFL playoffs. The first was in 1996.

So, of course, I am going to watch the game. It is likely to be an electric matchup between two very talented and well-coached teams. I shouldn’t confess this, but I actually moved a plane flight in order to be able to watch it. But this is the first time I have ever been presented with this quandary of whom to root for in the playoffs — my hometown team? Or my adopted hometown team?

(Never mind that I now live in the Portland area, where the closest thing to a home team is the Seattle Seahawks. As the Seahawks are long-time division rivals of the 49ers, I will certainly not be joining the 12s, and I am taking no further questions at this time.)

On one hand, we have the Eagles led by first-round draft pick Jalen Hurts. Hurts is one of a relatively new breed of quarterback in NFL, of which the best known example is probably Patrick Mahomes. Hurts can throw, sure, but boy can he run. And this keeps defenses off balance. Thrust and parry, feint and counterfeint.

The rest of the Eagles this season are a well-rounded team. They can run, they can catch, they can block. They are fun to watch.

Fun is the key word here. The Eagles offensive line recorded a holiday musical album, with guest turns from other teammates, and a grab bag of Philly musicians. The last time I recall something like this happening, it was the 1985 Chicago Bears, who released a record and video of them performing “The Super Bowl Shuffle.” They went on to win Super Bowl XX.

The last time the Eagles won the Super Bowl was only a few years ago, in 2018, when they beat Tom Brady and his hated New England Patriots in a stunning upset. They accomplished this playoff run with their backup quarterback, Nick Foles, and turned the tide of the Super Bowl game on a trick play known as the “Philly Special”.

This marked the first time ever in the team’s entire history that the Eagles had won the Super Bowl. The city was so overjoyed that they put up a statue outside Lincoln Financial Field of Nick Foles on the sidelines, asking Coach Pedersen, half in disbelief, “You want Philly Philly?”

Who doesn’t love a trick football play with a name that sounds like you’re ordering a cheesesteak whiz wit?

San Francisco, by contrast, has lots of Super Bowl wins in its storied history, but hasn’t brought home the Lombardi Trophy since 1995. And this season, the Niners are in the uncomfortable position that the Iggles were in back in 2018, making their way through the playoffs with their backup quarterback.

Their third-string quarterback, to be more precise, a guy named Brock Purdy, who was added to the Niners’ roster as the player picked dead last in the entire 2022 NFL draft. This dubious distinction is honored each year with the informal title “Mr. Irrelevant,” presumably because it is assumed that he will never actually set foot on the field as a professional football player.

Yet Purdy was virtually shoved onto the field by the fickle hand of Fate, which took out starting QB Trey Lance with an ankle injury in week 2 of the season, and then the team’s aging backup, the still-handsome Jimmy Garoppolo, in week 13 with a broken foot. The next week, in Purdy’s first official start, the 49ers beat Tom Brady and his hated Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Niners have won every game since.

Obviously, it takes a team to make that possible, and Brock Purdy lines up with some of the most colorful players in the league. Deebo, Aiyuk, Kittle, Jusczyk, the thunderous Christian McCaffrey. Ward and Warner flying around the backfield, making tackles for the defense. The terrifying Nick Bosa, with his grin and his signature ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ every time he sacks an opposing quarterback. This is a team built to win championships.

This is also not the first time that Jalen Hurts and Brock Purdy have squared off against each other, so to speak. In November 2019, the University of Oklahoma Sooners, who were ranked seventh in the country, Iowa State Cyclones in a memorable game that saw Purdy’s Cyclones stage a late-game comeback against an early lead by Hurts’s Sooners.

[Omitted: An 1,100 word play-by-play description of the final quarter of the match between University of Oklahoma and Iowa State, which you can read here.]

It is entirely possible that tomorrow’s NFC Championship game could end in the exact same manner.

Brock Purdy’s sudden surge into relevance is such a Cinderella story that it beggars belief. He can throw accurately, but only middling far, and he can run, but he’s only middling fast, which is why he was drafted dead last. But his winning attribute seems to be something that might not show up in the annual NFL draft combine.

Purdy’s main virtue on the field seems to be an unwavering calm, a steady poise, which is virtually unheard of in an NFL rookie. Even with 300 pound defensive tackles bearing down on him at full tilt, Purdy never seems to panic on the field, and is rarely rushed into making egregious errors. He moves through his progressions with speed and precision. He seems to know when linebackers are charging down his blind side like he was counting cards at the poker table. Purdy has played exactly five professional starts, and he already looks like Drew Brees did after ten seasons in the league.

Off the field, when asked if he ever doubted that he could make it this far — and he gets asked that a lot — the only thing Purdy ever talks about is making the most of every opportunity. When his teammates talk about him, they emphasize how, even as the third-string quarterback, Purdy would work as hard each week as any other player on the team.

Fortune favors the prepared. It’s clear to me that Purdy has earned his shot at stardom.

If the 49ers should succeed, and go on to win the Super Bowl, maybe the grateful fans of the team will put up a statue outside Levi’s Stadium, with Purdy on the sidelines, asking Coach Kyle Shanahan, “You want Rice-a-Roni? The San Francisco treat?” But probably not.

I think it substantially more likely that, if the San Francisco 49ers win tomorrow, and then go on to win the Super Bowl, then Hollywood will start casting for the based-on-a-true-story biopic in March. Maybe, if they wait long enough to make the movie, they can even cast Jimmy Garoppolo, with his model’s looks, as Coach Shanahan.

The film will, of course, be titled: “Mr. Relevant.”

I do love the Iggles fans, whose ranks include my own family members. I would be overjoyed to hear them singing “Fly, Eagles, Fly, on the road to victoryyyyyy” when Hurts spikes the ball in the end zone, after a touchdown on a designed run in the fourth quarter to win the Super Bowl.

But I want Fate to save that happy event for next season. You know me. I love a good story. I want to see that schmaltzy biopic get made someday.

So, this season, I want Brock Purdy, and the San Francisco 49ers, to have their Cinderella victory. That’s who I’ll be rooting for tomorrow.

If you’re still reading this, I… Why are you still reading this? I can’t guess but I love you for it.

Ceterum censeo pro vigilum imperdiet cessandam est, in the name of Tyre Nichols. May his memory be a blessing.