A Field of “Dreams”

Bloggers Note: Before I get started on this post, I’d just like to apologize for my absence from TSBN. Life started moving kind of fast for me. I graduated from college, got a job, moved to a new town, and got my own place. Everything was a whirlwind for a bit, but now that I’m settled in I hope you’re all as ready for football season as I am!

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“Build it, and they will come.”

One of the most iconic and easily recognizable sports quotes in the history of sports quotes. I remember the first time I watched “Field of Dreams”. It was in the days of Nomar Garciaparra and Pedro Martinez, and back when I still believed in curses. The movie combined everything I admired as a young sports fan– America’s pastime, the history of the game, the future of the game, a father/son story, and even a ghost tale. It quickly became one of my favorite movies, and “Build it and they will come”, one of my favorite quotes.

I was checking up on my Twitter earlier (yes… I have a Twitter) and Chad Ochocinco (yes I follow Senor Ochocinco) had taken over my Twitfeed with posts about how excited he is to be coming to Foxborough to play the Patriots on Sunday. [To tell you the truth, I was excited too. Chad has a habit of renting out entire restaurants for pre-game and post-game receptions and it just so happens, I live a few miles from Gillette Stadium]. I always knew Chad was an interesting guy, but I never really knew he had anything interesting to say until I saw this series of tweets:

OGOchoCinco: Damit sunday please hurry up, i can’t wait to get to New England, great players on 1 field, Brady, Welker, Moss, TO, Ocho, Palmer #awesome

OGOchoCinco: Randy Moss wants a new deal, doesn’t feel wanted?… id pay [him] in heartbeat but i need the extra money for fines #justsayin

OGOchoCinco: Could y’all imagine Randy Moss, Terrell Owens, and Esteban on the same field? Who would be the qb to deal with this shh!

OGOchoCinco: @dariusbutler28 are you gonna have safety held the entire game?

OGOchoCinco: @dmccourty32 hi, my name is Esteban… gonna talk [trash] to you in espanol during the game ok

OGOchoCinco: @wilfork75 taking a large number of patriot/ochocinco fans to eat saturday, you want to come?

After reading the tweets, reading them aloud to my roommate, and laughing for a little bit, the first thing that popped into my head was “Build it and they will come”

Build [a successful franchise], and [the egos] will come.

When I look at the rosters for both the Bengals and the Patriots I see a lot of good players and a lot of BIG egos. Between the two teams, I see some of the biggest egos in the league. First you see the obvious– Moss, 85, and TO– probably 3 of the top 5 biggest egos in the league. Then you get tier 2 (you know, guys who don’t refer to themselves in the 3rd person) egos in Cedric Benson and Brandon Meriweather. And you still have a guy like Brady (who refused to give me an autograph after his 1st SuperBowl MVP) and a guy like Palmer (Mr. Pedigree himself) under center.

How can a little town like Foxborough, Massachusetts hold up under all this pressure now that it has become the egomaniac capital of the world? Will this little town in “the snow belt” of Massachusetts ever be the same?

It really gets me thinking about the difference between what the quote meant to me then and what it means to me now, and the naivete I had as a young sports fan. On one hand, it can symbolize nostalgia, legend, and ghosts in the cornfields of Iowa. On the other hand, it symbolizes Chad Ochocinco, the capitalization of sports, and the inevitable implosion of the beautiful town of Foxborough.

Egos aside, I can’t wait for Sunday. I can’t wait to hang around the television with my dad and my brothers and watch the Boys of Fall start their odyssey for the Lombardi. I just sometimes long for a simpler time, and I definitely wouldn’t want to be the officials on the field.

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