Cleveland-Pittsburgh Freezer Game a Throwback To a Stronger Era.

A -20 wind chill on the shores of Lake Erie in December highlighted the NFL Thursday battle between the also ran (Steelers) and the never ran (Browns).

No, the game wasn't pretty. It never usually is in conditions like Thursday's. Maybe more importantly, the game highlighted what's good and bad with this country.

Back in the day when the NFL was in it's infancy, this country still worked hard to produce products.  Many players held second jobs in mills and factories in Cleveland and Pittsburgh just to make ends meet.  Playing against the elements was just another factor in winning a game.  Not something that is whined about today.  It was a badge of honor when football was football.

Today, the game is pretty. It's played in shining domes where Peyton Manning always has perfect weather and palaces like Dallas. Who cares about football when you can experience the Taj Majal of Texas.

What changed football?  The government sold our heavy lifting jobs to the overseas peeps and let cheap foreign steel kill our mills.  Sons and daughters moved to the soft and sunny parts of the country and we forever lost our working past.

The great local brews and brats of the past in the old stadiums have been replaced by the white wines and lattes of the West Coast and the beach boys of Florida.

It was great Thursday night to see a throw back game played as it was so many times in the past.  The football was a rock in the sub zero temperatures. 

At least the NFL has addressed the problem with the home field equalizer in the playoffs.  Big time college ball and it's B.C.S. spin-off has doomed it's teams to unfair geographic advantages.

Put the Alabama's, SoCal's and Florida's of the football world in the old school arena and see how that plays out.  Then again it might interrupt everyone's busy social schedule at the beach.

Today's football is but a microcosm of the country as a whole, soft and pretty.  Remember the guys that built the sport as you look over your team's dome or the pretty bay outside the stadium. 

Then again too, it might take away from your number one sport, soccer.