First of all, with a nod to transfer2BGSU: Man law.Flipper wrote: We've made great strides as a culture since 1978. The Bay City Rollers have been hunted into extinction, white shoes + a white belt no longer equals high fashion and Pete Rose is greeted with the derision and scorn he so richly earned on that very same RIverfront Stadium carpet you alluded to.
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Artificial grass is the wave of the future. Like antibiotics, color television and free internet porn, it's a vast improvement over the options those before us had to deal with
Now, for Flip:
Our modern culture has also served up truthiness, silicone implants and boxer shorts hanging out all over the place -- and I think we can agree that at least two of these are steps in the wrong direction.
This values debate is bigger than aethestics, whether a cornerback has an inalienable right to avoid getting his jersey dirty or whether Toledo cheerleaders have something to snack on at halftime.
At it's core, it's about cultural imperalism.
Football is our game. Just as Saudi Arabia has a special relevance and responsibility for the cultural legacy of Islam, we here in Ohio -- and, to some extent, the entire Great Lakes region -- have a special relevance and responsibility for the cultural legacy of the sport of football.
Football is our game. It spent a wonderful carefree childhood among the cultural elites of the East before growing up and becoming a MAN right here in Ohio.
It warms my heart that our cousins to the South have embraced our game as much as they have. At least, when we look down there south of the Ohio River, we find something we can recognize amid the general chaos and otherworldness I'm not going to dwell on, such as Katherine Harris' makeup.
And it is also my understanding that, down South, they have by and large stuck it out with grass fields.
So, by going to this fake plastic stuff, we would be tacitly acknowledging latitudinal inferiority.
In other words, while fake grass may represent a smaller, crisper step for a corner, it would also be a giant leap into the muck for Ohiokind.
This brings me back to the Notre Dame test: If they go to the plastic stuff in South Bend, then I'll concede the entire debate, because all will be lost and all we will have left to do is contemplate the great karmic debt we owe to Jim Brown for forcing him to play on vegetation and not putting our finest scientists to work on finding him something more worthy of his skills.
Until then, fellas: I'm saying NO to plastic.
Mud is part of the game. Because, in Ohio, once in a while, mud happens.
