Collins' Gesture: Shakespearean Tragedy, Comedy and Fate

[MickeyCat]

With my wife and mother-in-law looking on, and with the DVR replay and the Collins Tribune picture at hand, I found myself leading a discussion with my two children and their two friends about the goal-tending non-call, Collin's reaction, and the technical, comparing it to Shakespearean story telling.

We all think the picture of Collins in the Tribune is comic and that it probably was mistaken as an obscene gesture (mistaken identity a key feature in Shakespeare's plays).

We all believe the young man they showed in the crowd was like a Greek Chorus. He might as well have had on theatrical masks.

In the end, the children think the event was a tragedy. Given it's a sport, I think it leans to comedy, even though I'm an NU basketball season ticket holder, and we have a great time going to the games.

When my daughter's friend said, "How could the refs get away with that?" My daughter and I thought about the three witches in MacBeth. Our conclusion; it was fate.

There are amazing and life-teaching moments watching Northwestern sports. To me, last night's turning point was Shakespearean.

What say you? Am I reaching too much on this? Any other events in NU sports remind you of something else?

 

[Hungry Jack]

I think you did a fun and educational exercise with your children. You taught them more about Shakespeare than I ever learned in high school.

Far too often, sports writers use sports as a metaphor for life in attempts to convey some bit of transcendent wisdom: hard work paying off, the power of determination, overcoming adversity, squandering opportunity, the value of team work, etc. While playing sports are a great way for young people to learn good habits, playing sports does not transcend real life experience (and it gets really galling when military metaphors find their way into sports). And watching sports is really just about entertainment (or should be).

I don't think you committed such a sin. I think you found a clever way to apply a Shakespearean framework to another spectacle. Well done!

 

[MickeyCat]

Thanks, HJ.

Since we're talking about entertainment and comedy and the Cats, I think it's worth mentioning that Charlie Hall's mother Julia Louis Dreyfus and her husband Brad performed in an improv comedy troupe at NU. I think there are similarities with improv and sports. In both, it's easier to succeed if you say and act with "Yes, and...". Maybe that's why we think the picture of CC in the Trib is funny. The ref missed the call and we interpreted Collins' response as "Yes, and...."

 

[PhilipVU94]

There are amazing and life-teaching moments watching Northwestern sports. To me, last night's turning point was Shakespearean.

I have no opinion if any part of y'all's game yesterday was Shakespearean. But you can't imagine how delighted I am to be around a basketball fan base who generates threads like this instead of.... say, Kentucky fans with their infinite depths of knowledge.

 

[PhilipVU94]

But I will say, when I have kids, if they care about CBB we will use it to talk about randomness, probability, results orientation versus process orientation, and theodicy (or at least the fact that bad things sometimes happen to good, and to capable, people). Maybe by then I'll have learned some identity theory and the psychology of how groupthink makes us irrational.

Diff'rent strokes...

 

[EvanstonCat]

Wow. This is a Northwestern board indeed. That was way too CAS for this McCormicker though.

 

[D_C_B]

No kidding. I was really hoping this thread would have gotten zero responses. Alas, it's Northwestern. You can take the academic out of Evanston but you can't take the ... oh, whatever. Who cares. To most of the world (me included), our use for Shakespeare is as a fishing pole company.

 

[MickeyCat]

Shakespeare's awesome. His take on fishing: "A man may fish with the worm that have eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath eat of the worm" He's got many great quotes for every occasion It's very easy to Google them, too.

Regarding sports: "There is no sport as sport by sport o'ethrown". That sums up the bad non-call pretty well.

Many athletes have been quotable. My favorite is Duane Thomas's quote about the Super Bowl: "If it's the ultimate game, how come they're playing it again next year?"

Shakespeare had an answer. In Hamlet, he wrote:"The play's the thing."

 

[EvanstonCat]

Shakespeare's awesome. His take on fishing: "A man may fish with the worm that have eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath eat of the worm" He's got many great quotes for every occasion It's very easy to Google them, too.

Regarding sports: "There is no sport as sport by sport o'ethrown". That sums up the bad non-call pretty well.

Many athletes have been quotable. My favorite is Duane Thomas's quote about the Super Bowl: "If it's the ultimate game, how come they're playing it again next year?"

Shakespeare had an answer. In Hamlet, he wrote:"The play's the thing."

Like I said, I'm too McCormick. I have no idea what any of that means. Except for Duane Thomas's quote.