Before my barber had his own shop he used to cut his clients out of his house. We could smoke, jack up his K/D on Call of Duty, and bullshit freely. He took care of us too, $10 for a cut no tip. When we were in high school anyway. If any one of my friends needed a haircut we’d go there as a unit just to hang out. It’s made us really close with our barber but also capable of losing our shit in his shop.
We’ve had blow out fights. Which can get bit concerning when someone has a straight edge razor to your neck. Making customers nervous outside of the appropriate age group to be screaming in public about the latest football Sunday. But it always ends in a dap and a nice tip.
Today’s argument centered around the NFL’s need for change concerning the overtime rules. To my surprise, my barber was against it. To his surprise, I was for it. But I’m staunchly aware that him taking a contrarian stance on everything is probably good for business.
My barber claims, and I haven’t heard this argument yet, that extending overtime for both teams to have a shot at scoring is “soft”. He says that your defense has to step up and make and play. That allowing the other quarterback a chance to tie it is, “participation trophy culture.” This is where it really started to go off the rails. My barber began to compare the current OT rules as capitalism and the proposed change as socialism.
I refuted, that not everything has to be political. It’s just sports, it’s not that deep. I only see it as the most logical solution to the coin toss having too much influence on stakes this high. I asked him if every other sport is “soft” and “socialist” since literally every other league allows both teams an opportunity to score.
He responded with saying that this overtime makes the most sense for football since it’s the only sport that has the offense and defense as two separate units. The the initial defense has just as much an opportunity to make a play than the offense has to score. That Baseball, NBA, and hockey, all the players are on both offense and defense. Damn, didn’t expect that. I could tell he’d been having this argument for days now.
He almost had me, almost. I said, okay so if it’s Yankees vs Astros in the playoffs, should the first team to hit a home run automatically win? No. My pitcher has a chance to stop your hitters and their pitcher has an opportunity to stop mine. He didn’t like that, it turned personal.
He called me weird and didn’t expect this “soft” approach from me. That since “he played football” he “probably sees it differently.” Lunatic.
I told him he’s in the minority which he refused to believe. And as far as his “I played” argument, nearly all the players in the NFL, current and HOFers, were tweeting that the rule needs to be changed. Like his two years of high school varsity somehow stacks up to their professional careers.
It was getting heated. So we agreed to leave it as a generational gap thing. Yeah, I don’t know, he’s only twelve years older than me. But we were scaring the high school kid in there who kept side eyeing the door.
I prefer the college football rules on the fifty yard line. I think it’s the most fair and dramatic way to resolve games. Plus it’d be fun as fuck and jack up overs. I’ve also seen the “first to 8” approach and I’d be alright with that too. But something needs to change. I don’t care what the guy who fucked up my hairline says.
At the end of the day, it’s why I love getting hair cuts. If you’re barber isn’t obsessed with conspiracy theories or dropping the clippers to scream in your face about sports, you’re in the wrong shop.
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