The Muse's Corner
By the Philosopher of Arena Football, Paul Celmer
As you might recall from last week's column, the Muse taught me about the power of hate. And it looks like more than one team sipped that bitter cup in Week 12. One of those teams was the Utah Blaze. A promising expansion team coached by the legendary Danny White, the Blaze had been in the midst of a gut-wrenching losing streak. That is, until the mystical return of another AFL legend Andy Kelly who exploded for 8 TD passes in the victory.
That is why I must tell you something I neglected to mention last week. Just after the Muse poured forth her song in the caverns of the Raleigh Train Station and I had already mounted my trusty ten-speed, she whispered one word to me: Opsimath. Now I failed to mention this cryptic encounter primarily because I did not know what the word meant. But after Kelly's amazing performance in Week 12, I felt a strange urge to seek the meaning.
I consulted the volumes of the venerable Oxford English Dictionary that fill the shelves of one of the walls in my humble one-room abode, and found the answer. At least the dictionary meaning. An Opsimath is simply "a person who becomes a student or learner late in life."
So, what does this word have to do with the AFL? It appears the key is the “late in life” part. Just look at all the players that are playing well beyond the time when most careers end. Here are just some of the data points:
Chris Jackson, stunning defenders at age 31.
Freddie Solomon the go to guy in Tampa Bay at 34.
Clint Dolezel having a career year at age 36.
Barry Wagner still productive at age 39.
Sherdrick Bonner still bombing endzones at age 38.
And of course, Arena Legend Andy Kelly, age 38, trying to rescue an expansion franchise.
How do these old men stay strong? From whence this fountain of youth? I of course asked the only one that would know: the Muse. And I Marvelled as she sang:
"If we had but world enough and time
This mundane madness my friends would be no crime.
We could shuffle papers all the long fluorescent day
And forever postpone the backyard joys of play.
We could have a meeting
on which end to break the egg,
And debate whether it safest to stick a suit
upon a hangar or peg.
But as the Opsimathematician Andy Kelly knows,
He of the verdant skills that never cease to grow,
The storm of Time even at age 38 can be held at Tampa Bay.
But not forever.
So now,
Let us dance x and y patterns through the padded hall
And let us roll all our skills into an oblong ball
And despite the petty tediums and the strife
Hail Mary it through the iron nets of life.
For if we cannot make the Referree's unfair clock unspun,
Then we will surely make that Joker run."
As Tennyson has said, "old age hath yet his honor and his toil." But it appears that when men enter the Arena, they do more than toil, they thrive. What old man rises up in Week 13?
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