The problem is that we've become a nation of legalists.

We debate bad calls like bad lawyers. Only a nation of lawyers would play a game and then argue about "process," "seoond move", and the like. Only a nation of lawyers would need a rule book that looks like the Federal Register.

Yes, instant replay lets us get more calls right. But it also reinforces the notion that "getting all the calls right" is the point of the game. Which it isn't.

Football is not a game of "controlled violence", it is a game of violence semi-controlled. With emphasis on the "semi-". All the uniform police and all the PR men and all the marketing babble isn't going to change the fact that this is a game where people are beating the crap out of each other. Putting a barbarian in a $300 uniform (or a $2000 suit) isn't going to change the fact that he's doing barbarian stuff.

But put that aside. Even if you weren't talking about a game of semi-controlled violence, taking the legalist's approach is the wrong way to go.

Look, I was trained as a lawyer. I think law is a noble profession. It takes a certain kind of nobility to do a shit job that needs to be done by someone. And lawyering is about as shitty a job as there is -- we're better off if even assholes have assholes to look out for their interests.

But just because we need lawyers in our imperfect world, doesn't mean we should approach life like they do. We may need people who look at human relationships as inherently adversarial zero-sum games, but we ourselves ought not to look at life that way. The relationships of life have to be a zero-sum game.

That they all too often become such does not mean they have to.

And neither do the relationships of football. Because even if football is a game of semi-controlled violence, it can also be played by people who recognize it is a game, a place where we only temporarily act like barbiarians. A game that takes third place to God and family (to paraphrase a certain coach). Not a game played by barbarians, but a game of human beings playing like barbarians.

The law is necessary, because there are barbarians still among us. And as long as there are barbarians among us (Oliver Wendell Holmes used the phrase "bad men"), we must strive to keep them in check. But all the lawmaking in the world isn't going to eliminate the barbarians. The best you can hope for is keeping them in check a bit.

And that's the great error of legalism. It acts as if we just pass this law, if we just change that rule a little bit, if we just interpret the rules this way instead of that, we can eliminate all bad conduct or all bad results. And it just isn't so.

And in striving for that perfection (what the economist calls the "first best solution") you end up encouraging more barbarian behavior than ever. Because you convince more people that "if its not illegal, it's okay," that "anything within the rules is okay."

That every wrong can be righted.

Because every wrong can't -- ever -- be righted. (Save by God, but I don't want to go there today.)

A perfectly called game isn't possible. A perfectly played game, with no "crossing of the line", with no breaking of the rules, with no getting away with breaking of rules, isn't possible.

But we can decide which kinds of barbarism we will accept and not accept.

Back when I was a kid, back before "organized football" made its way down to whatever grade it now obscenely starts in, we played tackle football all the time. Without pads. And without officials there to enforce the rulebook.

Sure we had arguments and the occasional fight. We were little wannabe barbarians after all.

But we also learned how to keep the real barbarians out. We learned that we didn't have to play with everyone. We learned not to play with the sociopath bully, and we learned not to invite the kid who always whined about not playing fair. We learned that there were some lines we didn't cross, and we learned not to play with those who flirted too much with crossing them.

Occasionally our parents had to get involved. But mostly, they didn't. And in fact, we resisted the interference of parents and other rule-givers more than we accepted it.

Yes, sometimes the "justice" in the games was very rough justice indeed. Too rough, even. But we understood that our games, in the end, were not about justice. Our games were about, well, our games.

But you know the odd thing? There was more justice, and less barbarism, in our game-playing as kids, than there is in today's highly organized and highly legalistic sports world.

I don't think it's an accident. Because legalism is not a check on barbarism. Exactly the opposite. Unlike us kids on the park and our rules of personal association, it merely says which barbarism is "against the rules."

And legitimates the rest.

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Excessive celebration is a form of barbarism? I liked your post Wade but I didn't take much from it lol.