American football remains brutal. In the NFL, athletes best one another. Their greatest enemy remains the opposing team — an entertaining show naturally ensues. However, the true spectacle lies when humans attempt to conquer the natural world.
Wind, snow and rain — dramatic imagery in the cinematic world — generate a new sense of stakes when applied to a football field. Kicking a 43-yard field goal is a feat on its own, but when Chicago Bears kicker Cairo Santos must hammer home said field goal in winds powerful enough to shake the goalpost, legends are created.
Creating stadiums closed off from the elements results in homogeneous gameplay and over-polishedness that takes away from the physical, aspirational athleticism of players. Now, quarterbacks no longer have to adjust for the wind or sun. They are playing in a vacuum. The stakes are lower; the game becomes simplified.
Some may argue that the game becomes slower when elements are introduced. For instance, in the Denver Broncos and New England Patriots AFC Championship game, the snow resulted in neither team being able to execute offensively. Due to the conditions, the two teams were restricted to ground play, and even then, players could not gain enough traction on the snow-riddled field to move the chains. Snow entered the stadium, and flamboyant passing plays exited. But passing spectacles are not what the game is entirely about.
If one wants to watch endless passes, turn on a Dude Perfect YouTube video. Football is all about the gruesome desperation of a team to win a game against a formidable obstacle, typically taking the form of the opposition’s defense, but now and then, Mother Nature decides to taunt teams with defeat by a force that cannot be juked or stiff-armed.
Perfect conditions degrade any sense of realism that sports contain. Rather than watching greatness be something that Americans aspire to on the field, greatness becomes something that can be engineered through artificial intelligence-driven rosters, cutting-edge medical technology and running away from the natural world rather than facing it head-on and conquering it through the undaunting spirit of the human race.
