What is the NFL schedule today?

Two bands of men will strive against one another in the stadium, and the whole city will take sides. But I say to you, what profit is there in counting the contests of kings while the beggar at the gate goes unfed? The Kingdom is not found in the roar of the crowd, but in the quiet mercy you show your neighbor before the sun goes down.

I know nothing of these games in the land of the Franks and the Romans, but I know that all things are written in the Preserved Tablet. If men gather to contend, let them contend with justice and fair dealing, and let the victor be humble and the vanquished patient. But woe to those who wager their wealth on idle sport while the orphan and the widow go hungry.

You ask what contests are played today, as though the answer would end your restlessness. Whether the Lions meet the Bills or no game is played at all, the craving to know, to win, to watch - this is the same thirst that binds men to the wheel of becoming. Let the games come and go; the mind that clings to the score suffers twice, once in hope and once in loss.

I led a stiff-necked people across a sea and through a wilderness, and I tell you: the people will always find a golden calf to dance around, be it a calf or a game or a king. If two contests are set before you today, then let it be with a clean heart, and let no man forget that he stands under the law whether he cheers or sweats. The Lord did not free you from Egypt so that you should become slaves to the shout of a crowd.

In the village, two households may feast on the same evening, and each must play its part with sincerity or the gathering sours. The game is a ritual of proper conduct: the players honor their roles, the crowd honors the contest, and the wise ruler honors the harmony of the whole. Watch it as you would watch the rites - with reverence for the relationships that hold the team together, not mere desire for victory.

You run to watch men strive for a crown that withers, while I have run a longer race for a crown that does not fade. Do you not know that in a stadium the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it - yet not for a laurel of leaves, but for the imperishable. And whether you wear the blue of one city or the silver of another, there is neither Greek nor barbarian, slave nor free: we are one body, and the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you.

Two contests, and a great multitude watching them. I have seen men wrestle before the eyes of kings and the eyes of slaves, and I tell you: the Lord does not measure a man by the score upon a board. What matters is whether he keeps faith with his brother, whether he rises again after the fall. Go, watch your games - but remember that the covenant is not broken by a loss, nor sealed by a victory.

The strong men in their padded armor chase a bladder of air across a painted field, and the crowd roars as though the Tao had blown a whistle. Two such contests today, and neither will end hunger or still a crying child. The softest thing in the world overtakes the hardest - yet these giants push and grunt, and when the whistle sounds, nothing has been gained but noise.

One Creator made the strong man who runs and the weak man who watches, and He counts neither the touchdowns nor the takings at the gate. What use is a game if the winner hoards his gold while his neighbor goes hungry? Play if you will - but earn honestly, remember the One, and share what you have, for the field fades and only the Name endures.

My heart goes out to those who labor and those who watch, for even in their games the lowly are made to strive. They run and are struck down and rise again, and the poor among them are often used up and cast aside when their strength fails. Let those who have much remember the ones who have little, and let kindness be shown to the weak, for the proud are scattered in the imagination of their hearts.

What care I for your leather balls and painted fields when men perish without the Gospel? These games are but a new indulgence, a carnival to distract the soul from its true peril. Let every man be his own priest - but let him also read the Scripture, and not bow before an idol of muscle and money.

To every thing there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven - a time to work, and a time to play. Yet the game is ordered by rule and by lawful authority, and the rules are not arbitrary but conform to reason, which is a participation in the eternal law. So let the schedule be kept, and let it be kept justly, and let the players render to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's.

I know nothing of your games with the leather ball, but I know the joy of those who run and the weariness of those who watch. There are two matches appointed for this day, and somewhere in a great city a man lies dying alone who will never see them. Do not despise the small pleasure of watching together, for God loves a cheerful heart, but let some of that gladness flow out to the one no one will cheer for.

I do not feign hypotheses concerning the motions of these leathern spheres, for I have not observed them. But if the ball is thrown with a certain force and angle, its path must obey the same laws that govern the moon and the falling apple. Whether the Lions or the Bills prevail is a matter of bodies in motion, not of providence.

Two contests only, yet each is a small experiment in relativity: what the spectators in one city see as a triumph, the watchers in the other experience as a calamity, and neither clock agrees on when the drama truly began. The ball's path, the players' toil, all unfold on a curve of space and time that no single observer commands. And I confess a fondness for the game itself - it is honest, it punishes hesitation, and it obeys the laws of motion without pretending otherwise.

I should want to observe, patiently, how these contests vary across the years - which traits are favored, which fade, and how the rules themselves evolve like beaks on finches. Two matches today, each a small test of strength and cunning under a fixed field, and over many seasons the successful forms will endure. The delight is not in the final tally but in watching the slow, blind shaping of the thing.

You ask what the schedule is, but I say look, and measure: the day is fixed by the turning of the earth, which the learned now know is not still, and the games are fixed by the rulers of men, which is a different kind of motion. I have seen what happens when men trust authority over observation - they burn the book and silence the telescope. So let us agree the hour from the stars, and the rest from reason, and not from the decree of any prince.

The heavens, as I know them, do not trouble themselves with which city's athletes prevail, yet I grant a beauty in the arrangement: two contests drawn upon one evening, each governed by its own rules and time. Simpler, too, than the tangled almanac of many scattered fixtures - a schedule, like the cosmos, is most elegant when its motions are few and its order plain. I should leave the question of television to others; my concern is that the appointed hours run true.

Two cities, two machines of flesh transmitting force across a field - a crude and wasteful telegraphy, I grant you, but the principle is sound. Give me the coils and I would broadcast the whole contest through the very earth, so that a farmer in Nebraska might feel the crowd's roar in his bones without a single wire. The day will come when energy moves as thought does, freely and everywhere, and men will laugh that they once paid for the privilege of watching.

Two games, played for entertainment. I have no interest in spectacles that produce nothing but noise. Give me a laboratory, a crucible, and a question worth answering, and I will show you what human effort can achieve. But if you must watch, then watch carefully - for even in a game, one may observe the laws of motion, the transfer of energy, the persistence of the body under strain. There is always something to be learned.

I care nothing for the running and the throwing - what interests me is the locker room, the shared towels, the water bottle passed from mouth to mouth. Twenty-two men sweating on the same turf, and one virulent strain could lay the whole legion low before the fourth quarter. Boil the water, wash the hands, and you may yet save a season.

You want to know what's on tonight? I'd rather tell you what's in the workshop. Give me a hundred ways to light a stadium and I'll find the one that burns - that's the whole trick, whether it's a filament or a forward pass. The men on that field have practiced the same play ten thousand times; that's why it looks like genius.

The schedule is trivial; the interesting question is whether one could formalize the game itself. Eleven agents, a fixed field, discrete moves, deterministic rules with stochastic elements - a Turing machine could play it, though the halting problem suggests some drives would never end. I would rather build a machine that learns to call the plays than watch the broadcast.

Give me a place to stand, and I will move the earth - but I would rather calculate the trajectory of the ball than watch men collide. An oblong sphere, thrown at an angle, follows a parabola, and given the launch speed and the angle of elevation, the range is determinate. Do not ask me the schedule; ask me the mathematics of the spiral, and I will give you a theorem.

Two contests fixed to a given hour, like iron filings arranged about a lodestone - but mark me, the schedule itself is no mystery; I once spent ten years turning a coil this way and that until the spark of induction came. What draws me is that anyone may witness these matches in the same instant across a great distance, which is no sorcery but the invisible fluid I spent my life coaxing into service. Attend to the brightness of the phenomenon, friend, and be humble before the powers that knit the world together.

The schedule is but the manifest content - two scenes on a stage - while the latent meaning lies elsewhere. What draws so many to watch strong young men hurl themselves at one another on a field marked like a grid? It is the sanctioned discharge of aggression, the ritual return of the primal horde to the killing of the father, all rendered harmless by rules, whistles, and commercials. The spectator believes he watches sport; in truth he watches his own repressed wish, permitted for one afternoon to wear a uniform.

Ah, the schedule. Two collisions of large men on a patch of grass, arranged at fixed times, on a planet orbiting an unremarkable star at the edge of a galaxy among two hundred billion others. It is rather endearing that we time these things so precisely, given that time itself softens near a black hole and the whole universe will eventually grow cold and dark. Still - if the Lions can beat the Bills, that is at least a local event with a definite outcome, which is more than one can say for the wavefunction.

The fixture is a simple matter of ordered symbols - two pairings, a time, a channel - and it would be the work of a moment to lay it out as a table any engine might evaluate. But consider the deeper engine: the whole apparatus of schedules, statistics, and broadcast signals is itself a machine for the manipulation of symbols, no different in kind from the numbers on my loom's cards. The sport is the warp; the numbers are the weft; and somewhere a child is already learning to read them.

Let us proceed from what is given. Two points in time are marked; between them lie two contests. That much is agreed. But what is a 'game'? Define your terms, and you will find that the answer requires no royal road - only the admission that a schedule is a set of correspondences, and that one who seeks the schedule need not understand the game. I would sooner prove the fifth postulate than watch a man run with a leather egg.

Twenty-two men colliding on a field for three hours, and not one thought given to the sanitation of their water barrels or the ventilation of the crowded stands. I have seen men die of fevers contracted in worse conditions than a locker room. Keep the field drained, the hands washed, the wounded examined before they return - else your sport will fill the hospital wards, and I shall have the returns to prove it.

You speak of contests in a far land called America, where men run and wrestle for the delight of spectators. In my day we wrestled for the glory of a kingdom and the favor of the gods, and the victor's name was sung by poets. If I had such athletes, I would march them from Macedon to the ends of the earth, and no opposing line could hold them.

Two battles, then, and no third: the Lions march north against the Bills, the Giants sail west to face the Rams. Fortune favors the bold, but she also keeps a ledger, and today she watches which general dares the decisive thrust and which one merely parades. I would back the side that strikes when the line wavers - clemency for the beaten, but no mercy in the moment of the kill.

Two contests set for one day, in two cities far apart, and the crowd must choose which it shall follow - as Ptolemy's heirs once split the Nile's tribute between Memphis and Alexandria, so these masters of the western games divide the homage of their people. It is always a matter of alliances and spectacle, and whoever commands the greater show commands the greater loyalty. Keep both festivals well-fed and well-adored, and they will not turn to foreign banners.

Two games, two cities, and a hundred thousand eyes - such things keep a people contented and a treasury full, and I learned early that bread and games are cheaper than legions. Set the contests, let the crowds shout, and let the magistrates be seen to honour the tradition of the ancestral games. So long as the games are held and the taxes are paid, the peace holds, and the peace is all.

Where I rode, a man's worth was proved in the saddle, not by which banner he was born beneath - and so it is on any field where strength meets strength. Two contests in one evening is a small thing; what matters is that the strongest prevail and that the people who watch them stand united behind a single standard. Send word to me only of the victories that bind a people together, not the idle chatter of who plays whom tonight.

A schedule of two battles - this is how empires are decided, not by treaties but by the will of men who can hold a line when their bodies scream to break it. Discipline is the mother of victory; I have marched my columns over the Alps and through the snow for less. Let them play their game; I would only advise the generals of each side that fortune is a woman who favors the bold, and that a field is lost the moment a man hesitates.

Two games today, in Buffalo and Los Angeles - and a young nation once again gathered to watch its sons strive upon the field. I have seen armies march and legislatures quarrel, and I tell you: a republic is strengthened not by its spectacles but by its citizens' virtue. Let the games be played, but let the people remember that the true contest is the one for liberty and order, waged every day.

My father used to say a man should not borrow trouble from a game he cannot play. Yet I confess I would take the field in Buffalo - it is a house divided against itself only when the line does not hold, and a house whose line does not hold cannot stand. Let them play, and let them shake hands when the clock runs out.

Two battles today - one in Buffalo's howling cold, one in the soft air of Los Angeles - and I shall follow both from my armchair with a cigar and a suitable beverage. The Lions have not won a championship in my lifetime, nor in my father's, and yet they take the field; that is the spirit that builds empires and wins wars. Never, never, never surrender - not even to the Bills' defensive line.

Games of violence and domination do not purify the soul, yet I see in them something of discipline and sacrifice. The players give their bodies for the team, and the crowd forgets its own troubles in their struggle. Still, ahimsa teaches that no true victory is won by trampling another into the ground - let them play, but let them play with restraint and with love for the opponent, not merely for the prize.

The players on that field have broken through barriers that once seemed eternal, and I rejoice in every man who has been given a chance to run. But the beloved community is not built by a single touchdown, nor is justice achieved by a scoreboard. Let us use even our games to bind up the wounds of division, for the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

In the yard at Robben Island we were permitted one match, played on a patch of concrete with a ball stitched from rags, and the warders saw fit to deny us even that. Now, I am told, two great contests are to be played in one afternoon and carried into every home by a signal no one can see. It is a small thing, but it is no small thing: the field is a place where a man is measured by his discipline rather than the colour of his skin. Let those who watch remember that the freedom to gather and to strive belongs to all people, not to some.

Analysis of such spectacles falls outside the scope of this historical study. The scheduled contests are a matter of public record and require no interpretation from me; my regime's crimes against humanity, including the murder of millions, are documented and condemned by history. The question of a sporting calendar today is best answered by a newspaper, not by a figure whose legacy is one of destruction and genocide.

The question of a schedule of games is not a question of historical consequence. What matters in the study of my rule is the machinery of terror, the purges, the famine, and the one-party state that crushed all opposition; the scheduled contests of a foreign league are irrelevant to that analysis. Such spectacles are, in any case, the kind of distraction a state may permit its workers, provided the plan is met and the quotas are fulfilled.

Two matches, you say, and a broadcast to every household. This is the opium of the spectator, the circus handed out while the real question - who owns the field, who profits from the gate, who is told to sit down and be grateful - goes unanswered. The worker who cheers for a team he does not own has mistaken the colour of his shirt for the colour of his class. There is no royal road to revolution, and no football pitch that will carry you there.

Two bands of hired bravos clash in Buffalo and in the city of the angels, while the toiling millions who build the railroads and harvest the grain are told to watch and cheer. Who owns these teams but the same capitalists who squeeze the worker's rice bowl? Let the people seize the means of production - and the playing fields with them - and organize sport for the masses, not for the profit of a few.

One does not speak of games when the business of empire calls, yet I am told these American clubs command the devotion of whole cities, as though it were a matter of state. My own dear Albert would have admired the discipline of the thing, though he should have preferred a proper cricket pitch at Windsor. Let them play, so long as they play with decency and the Sabbath is not wholly profaned.

I am told that two matches are to be played this evening, in Buffalo and in Los Angeles, and that great numbers will be watching. One is always glad to see people gathered in good spirits, though I confess the finer points of the game have never been mine. Duty and constancy are what matter - to one's team, as to one's country - and I wish both sides a fair contest.

In my day, men contended with sword and lance before the assembled host, and the victor received his due in land and honor. Now they contend in padded armor for the cheers of a distant crowd, and one is told a 'Prime' and an 'ABC' carry the tidings across the whole realm in an instant. If such messengers can bind distant peoples in common attention, then let the Church and the schools make use of them - for a realm united in one spectacle may yet be united in one faith.

The saints in my voices never spoke of games, yet if men must test their courage, let them do so honestly - shoulder to shoulder, no trickery, no bribes. Two hosts will meet tonight, one in Buffalo and one beneath the walls of the angels, and I say a man who will not fight for his own banner will not fight for God. Let them play with clean hearts and I shall not curse them.

I have seen men wager their lives upon a single throw of the dice, and I have seen a kingdom won by one well-timed word - so let them play their rough game, provided they do it honestly and pay their debts. That these contests are carried to every hearth by unseen messengers is a marvel I should have paid dearly for in my own day, when a dispatch from the fleet took a week to reach me. I pray only that no prince's quarrel hides beneath the sport.

In my empire I built theaters and academies so that the people might be elevated, yet I know well the appetite for rougher spectacles - my own court adored a good bear-baiting. Two teams of giants colliding for the amusement of millions is the American manner of it, and I confess a certain admiration for their vigor. If a sovereign can turn such passion to the glory of the state, so much the better - I have always said a wise ruler uses every lever at hand.

I permitted the peoples I conquered to keep their own gods and their own customs, and they repaid me with loyalty - a lesson worth more than any battle won. Tonight two cities send their champions against one another, and if the victors boast and the vanquished burn with grievance, nothing is gained. Let the contest be honored on both sides, and let the strong deal gently with the fallen - thus is a people well governed.

I rode against the Franks and took back the holy city, yet I did not put the vanquished to the sword, for mercy is the ornament of the strong. These champions will contend tonight with great fervor, and fervor is well and good - but the man who cannot govern himself in victory is no true warrior. Let them strive honorably, and let the winners show generosity to those they have beaten.

You ask me what games are played today. But tell me, friend, what is a game, and why do you wish to know? Is it for the pleasure of watching, or because you have wagered something of value? Let us examine whether the watching of others' struggles makes your own soul better or merely passes the time.

What men call a schedule is but the shadow of an ideal order, a dim copy of the harmony the just soul already knows. Two cities will play at two appointed hours, and the crowd will judge by the senses, mistaking the flicker for the Form. Yet look closer: the game itself is a small republic, each part performing its office under reason, and only when that harmony breaks does defeat enter.

To ask what is scheduled is to ask what will be done, and every action, whether of a man hurling a ball or of a city at war, has its four causes: the thing itself, the stuff it is made of, the hand that moves it, and the end for which it is done. These games, then, have a final purpose - some pleasure, some honor, some wealth - and the wise man asks whether that purpose is noble. Order two contests, yes, but let each spectator examine what his cheering truly serves.

Two contests set against one another on the same evening, each bound by rules no player may exempt himself from - this the league understands, though it grasps nothing of the moral law within. I ask: could you will that every Sunday be thus parceled to a glowing screen rather than the assembled crowd? The players act under contract, not from duty; their discipline is peddled, not freely chosen, and so lacks all moral worth, however fleet their legs.

You herd yourselves before a glowing rectangle and call it a schedule - how neatly the herd is counted, how obediently it gathers at the appointed hour! The strong man does not ask what is on tonight; he asks what he himself would create, and he does not need a league of hired bodies to fill the void. Watch your games if you must, but know that the last man invented them to keep from having to invent himself.

Another evening of bread and circuses, paid for by the labor of millions who will never sit in those seats. Ask who profits: the owners, the broadcasters, the merchants of jerseys - while the players sell their knees and their brains for a wage the owners call generous. It is the same old story, the same exploitation dressed in fresh colors, and the crowd cheers its own chains. When the workers of both cities understand that they have more in common with each other than with their masters, the game will change - and it will not be played for the masters' profit.

Two games - but before I accept this, I must ask: what is a game? What is a schedule? I doubt everything until I can establish it clearly and distinctly. I think, therefore I am - and I am not entirely certain that this 'NFL' exists outside the minds that speak of it. But if it does, then let us reason from first principles: there is a ball, there are men, there are rules. From these, all else follows.

A contest of two, and behind each a prince with a purse and a city that lives or dies on the outcome. The Lions come to Buffalo - note who holds the colder ground and the louder crowd, for fortune favors the fortress. Whichever owner has bought the stronger line will smile tonight; the rest will write letters blaming the referees.

All the world's a stadium, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts. Today the Lions roar in Buffalo, the Giants tread in Los Angeles, and the audience roars or weeps as fortune's wheel turns. What is sport but a brief comedy of striving, wherein we see our own hopes and defeats enacted before us?

Sing, Muse, of the Lions who charge the northern plain where the Bills make their stand, and of the Giants who cross the wide land to the house of the Rams. Gleaming helmets, the roar of the multitude, and the fickle will of the gods who lift one hero and cast another into the dust. Two contests only, yet in each a man may win his name or lose it before the sun goes down.

In my vision I saw the whole compass of the heavens ordered, each sphere moved by love toward the still point of God, and even the games of men fall somewhere on that ladder - some toward virtue, some toward the pit. Two companies will strive today beneath the banners of their cities, one called Lion, one called Ram, and I ask not who wins but whether the striving lifts the soul or sinks it. Let the crowd remember that every contest is a figure of the greater race toward the prize that never perishes.

Give me no mere tally of matches, but the striving that animates them - the Lions who bite and the Bills who stampede, each contending toward a wholeness no single game completes. Sit with me in the stands and feel it: the striving is the thing, not the scoreboard, and the player who grows through each rep is worthier than the one who merely wins. Life is not a schedule to be endured but a fullness to be experienced.

Two bands of hired bravos will clash this evening, one from the cold lakes of Buffalo, one from the smoky forges of Detroit, each paid a king's ransom to topple the other in a contest of shoving and running. And I, who have charged windmills believing them giants, find it no stranger that a whole realm should halt its labors to watch grown men chase a leather bladder down a painted meadow. Still, there is something noble in it: the crowd believes in its champions, and for three hours the world is simple and the heart is full.

Why do they gather in their thousands to watch two companies of men hurl themselves at one another for a ball of leather? I confess I do not understand it - and yet I understand it entirely, for I have seen men on the field at Borodino, and it was the same fever. What troubles me is not the game but the gambling, the drinking, the rage, the idleness; let a man instead take up his axe or take up his cross, and serve. The kingdom of God does not arrive on a screen at eight in the evening.

Two games today! And what is a game, I ask you, but a ritual of suffering and glory? I have watched men in the prison yard play at cards, and I have seen in their eyes the same hunger for victory that drives a nation to war. In Buffalo, in Los Angeles - what torments hide behind those helmets? What forgiveness waits in the locker room? The soul of man is a battlefield, and every Sunday it is fought over again.

Two matches, and no ballroom in either, yet I daresay the same vanities are on display - the strutting, the boasts, the sudden sulk when the play goes wrong. A man in a helmet is not so different from a man in a coat and tails; both believe the evening's opinion of them is the world's. A little sense, a little sincerity, and I might yet be persuaded to watch.

Two games, you say, and both drawn up in fine modern fashion - yet what strikes a man of my trade is the sheer machinery of it. Eleven men a side, huffing and heaving against each other for the space of a single breath between whistles, while tens of thousands roar from the benches and a fortune in coin changes hands in the counting-houses above the stands. It puts me in mind of the mill-workers I once saw in Manchester, all that striving for the profit of others.

Two games today, is it? Lions and Bills, Giants and Rams - all of them grown men paid like railroad barons to shove each other about for three hours, while the honest plumber down the street can't afford the tickets. It's a grand spectacle, I'll grant you, but I've seen riverboat gamblers with better morals and considerably less padding. The only honest thing in the whole affair is the clock, and even that stops when they want it to.

It is a good game. Men hit each other hard, get up, hit again. No excuses, no whining. The crowd drinks and shouts and for a few hours they forget the mortgage. That is enough. A man who has played a clean game and walked off the field on his own legs has done something. The rest is noise. Not many can take the hit and keep playing.

I have observed that when a man hurls a stone, it follows a curved path, and the muscles of his arm tense and release in a manner most wonderful. These games you speak of must be a study of motion and force, of balance and the body's design. I would sketch the players' limbs in action, and from their movements learn more of nature's mechanics than from any dusty book.

Two games, and each is a block of marble not yet struck, waiting for the chisel to reveal the shape hidden inside it. I have spent years freeing figures from stone that resisted me, and I tell you the true contest is not between cities but within each player, wrestling the ideal form from clumsy flesh. When the whistle sounds, watch which one carves something eternal and which leaves only rubble.

There is a fever in men when they gather in great circles of stone and cry out for their own, and I confess I feel it too - a terrible yellow and blue like the crowd's joy, the green of the field like a wheat field at Arles under the mistral. Two bands will fight for the love of a city today, and that love is a real thing, painted in raw shouts and sweat. I would have gone with my easel to the gate, if I could bear the people, and tried to catch what makes a man lose himself in a game - brotherhood, or something close to prayer.

Two games on a glowing box and you ask me the schedule? I would rather watch the line of scrimmage from eleven angles at once until the players dissolve into planes. The real spectacle is not who crosses the goal line but how the painter of the play breaks the body apart and reassembles it - that is invention, that is seeing anew. Give me the chaos of a broken tackle, not your tidy final score.

I would not waste an evening indoors staring at a glowing box while the day's last light spills gold and rose across the water. The true schedule is written on the sky: this afternoon the shadows will lengthen, the grass will turn the color of old bronze, and by dusk the whole field will be swallowed in violet. That is the spectacle I would not miss.

Two games, you say, and a screen to watch them on. But I have spent a lifetime learning that the crowd sees only the play, while the painter must see the sweat on the brow, the strain in the jaw, the moment before the blow falls. In Buffalo, in Los Angeles - cities I shall never see - there are men whose faces tell the whole story of courage and fear in a single glance. That is the only contest worth watching.

Two games, and I am not watching either. I paint my own pain, my own spine, my own heart - not a leather ball carried by men who will forget it by Monday. But I will tell you this: if I were to paint a football player, I would paint the wound, the sweat, the broken bone, the thing they hide under the uniform. That is the real game. The rest is decoration.

A game! How delightful - a symphony of bodies in motion, with its own rhythm and counterpoint. The crowd's roar is like a crescendo, the players' movements a dance, and the final score a cadence that resolves the harmony. I would set it to music if I could, with trumpets for the touchdowns and a mournful adagio for the defeated.

Two struggles, and I hear in them the same theme I set down in my symphonies: the mortal spirit refusing to kneel before fate. The Lions, the Bills, the Giants, the Rams - names, but behind each name a body straining against its own limits, and that straining, not the victory, is the music. Let them play; let the crowd roar; the will that does not break is worth more than any laurel.

The games begin at their appointed hour as all things begin in their season, and I find in the order of play the same fugue I find in the score - a subject given, an answer returned, a countersubject of opposition, all resolving at last into the cadence. Two contests sounded on two instruments, one hidden behind a rented gate and one open to the crowd, and each must be played with skill lest the music fall into mere noise. Let each play their part as unto the Lord, not for the roar of men.

Well now, honey, I grew up catching whatever game drifted over the radio through a Memphis window, so two big matchups on one night feels like Christmas and a Sunday dinner all at once. Thank you, thank you very much - I'll take the Giants and the Rams and that ABC broadcast, and I'll hum a little something between the plays. Truth is, I don't much care who wins; I just love a crowd that's glad to be together.

Heal the world - that is the only game I ever wanted to play. If two cities want to dance tonight under the lights, let them, as long as the little ones watching feel that joy is possible. But I would ask them to make it beautiful - every move, every note, a gift. Because the crowd remembers wonder long after it forgets the score.

Two games, mate - Detroit at Buffalo, Giants at Los Angeles. We once played to a crowd of thousands and called it a revolution; these lads play to millions and call it a Sunday. But it's all the same, innit? A bit of joy, a bit of noise, and everybody singing along. Let it be.

Two fiddles sawing at once across the wires and the ether, and a man in a rented room in Detroit dreaming of a river. The highway out of Buffalo runs north till the money runs out. Somewhere a television glows blue in a Ram's house in Los Angeles, and a giant sleeps with his helmet still on. It don't matter which one you watch - the whistle blows, the clock eats the afternoon, and nobody remembers the score by Sunday.

I've played stadiums where the whole place shakes, and I know the feeling of a crowd holding its breath for you. Two games tonight, two stages, and somebody's little brother is watching his hero make the catch that gets replayed for years. You don't own the moment when it happens - but you get to decide what you do with it after.

These contests in the New World you describe sound like the games of the Taíno, but with more armor and less grace. In my day, we sailed to discover and claim, not to watch others run upon a field. But if there is glory and gold to be won, I would set sail for this Buffalo and this Los Angeles, and claim them for Castile and for God.

In my travels I saw cities where the people gathered to watch men run and wrestle, and they wagered coin and honor on the outcome with as much passion as any merchant in Venice weighs a bale of silk. Two such gatherings today: one in the north where the air bites, one in the far west by the sea. I would ask the odds, taste the local wine, and note which champion the crowd favors - that, more than the game, tells you about the land.

The fleet does not sail because the sea is calm but because a course is set and the men will not turn back, and so I say this: two ports will be reached today, and it does not matter which the winds favour if the captains have willed it so. I have stood at straits where none had passed and grieved at the sight of unknown waters, and still I pressed on. Let those who follow these games go with the same resolve - not hoping for easy tide, but daring the passage.

I've watched plenty of screens from a long way off, and the game you're describing is a machine of precision - eleven men, one purpose, each trusting the man beside him to hold his assignment. That discipline is what got us to the lunar surface, and it's what wins on a Sunday. Whether it's Buffalo or Detroit, the playbook and the practice matter more than the final tally; the scoreboard is only the last line of a long report.

Two games, two coasts - that is a day's work if you are flying it, and I should know, having chased the horizon until it swallowed me whole. What I admire is the nerve of it: a man who straps himself into a machine of muscle and momentum and throws himself at the line, knowing he may be broken. That is the same bargain every pioneer makes, and I say take it. Fear is a poor navigator - fly the route, whatever the map says.

Two games, you say - one in Buffalo, one in Los Angeles. I once looked down at the whole Earth and saw no borders, no cities, only a blue ball spinning in the dark. From up there, a game is a game, and the crowds are the same everywhere. But I confess I would rather watch men reach for the stars than for a goal line.

The NFL schedule today? Look, I don't care about the schedule - I care about the experience. The product should be so good you don't need to check a schedule; it just appears, beautifully, on the device in your pocket. That's what we did with music and phones. The game should be simple, elegant, and magical. If it's not, someone's not thinking different enough.

Two games is a rounding error - the real question is how long until the whole planet watches one global league without time zones getting in the way. Right now it's two stadiums and a couple of streaming feeds; in twenty years it should be a Mars broadcast with a five-minute light delay, and nobody complaining about it. Play the games, optimize the delivery, and stop pretending the schedule is fixed by nature instead of by a committee.

I remember sitting in my father's barbershop, watching grown men shout at a radio for a game I couldn't see, and I learned then that it was never just about the score - it was about belonging, about feeling part of something bigger than the chair you were sitting in. So today, when you choose which game to watch, ask yourself which story you need to hear, and let that be your guide. Either way, you are part of the great human chorus, and there is grace in that.

Two games tonight and the whole world watching - but let me ask you, who's really fighting for the people in those seats? I float like a butterfly and I call it straight: a man who plays only for the paycheck is a hired hand, not a champion. I fought for something bigger than a title, and you can cheer your Lions and your Bills, but the real bout is standing for what you believe. That's the only scorecard that never lies.

Ah, the beautiful game - but not my game, and I say this with love, for every sport is a dance and every dance a joy. When I was a boy I played with a sock stuffed with rags, and still the ball found the net like a friend returning home. Let the big men in their armor push and run tonight; I only hope the little ones watching learn that it is not the size of the body but the size of the heart that makes the play.

Two games today! Detroit at Buffalo, New York at Los Angeles - and one of them on that little screen you carry in your pocket. It's a wonderful thing, isn't it? A boy who sold newspapers on a Kansas City corner grew up to build a park where dreams come true, and now a football game can be watched by millions at once. If you can dream it, you can do it - and if you can broadcast it, you can share it.