People might try to pass it off as some sort of coincidence, but last year the Denver Broncos and the Seattle Seahawks made it to the Superbowl. That is the teams from Colorado and Washington state. These are the two states that legalized pot.
Now I don’t know why football players who can smoke pot play better, it’s just something that happens. I know most of you are going to poo poo my conclusion but just allow me to ask this: why did the New York Times editorial board reveal a pro pot position just months ago? Again, coincidentally, New York City has the most American football teams of any city with the Giants and the Jets.
Good football teams sell papers. Lots and lots of newspapers. It’s the stories and the stats that bring this about. The New York Times wants good local teams hence their pro pot stance. They don’t want to see dynasties develop in Seattle and Denver. New Yorkers are nothing if not ambitious.
Also making football news this year is the possibility of the Buffalo Bills moving to Toronto and thus making American football truly international. It kind of is already with the former ownership of the Bills letting Toronto host one game a season already.
But now that the pot connection has been made in football, I don’t see Toronto as a prime host of American football. Toronto doesn’t want a team doomed to failure because you can’t smoke pot in Ontario.
More likely the places that would add international flavour to American football would be the city of Amsterdam, the island of Jamaica or the province of B.C. Pot might not be legal in the province of British Columbia but that is only because the politicians are lagging far behind the populace. I suspect a change is on the horizon soonest.
But this new open, football winning society might be at risk. They test Olympians for any performance enhancing drugs. It would be a small thing to test NFLers for pot smoking. Of course Olympian Ross Rebagliati’s excuse will probably wear very thin when all the winning NFLers say simply that they were nearby when pot smoking occurred.
I know some people wish to see the best American football possible. In that case some legalization of pot seems to be in order.
Post Script: By the way I’m not a total pot advocate. For instance there seems to be a smoking gun in that pot can trigger mental illness like schizophrenia. Any legalization must take that into account so pot could perhaps have a high legal age of consumption since schizophrenia tends to hit younger people more so than older people.
