In Thinking on the Future

I'm watching some playoff football right now. The Giants got beaten last week so I have no emotional investment in any of these games left but what they hey, I dig football. Of course, the mind wanders when watching some of these boring games and that has brought me to a thought about football and the future.

In the cartoon "The Jetsons" I remember that once they showed a football game being played by robots. "The Jetsons" was set in the future and robots were everywhere so it was only natural. But what would be the advantage of having robots play the game instead of people? The robots could dish out and take more punishment but to what end? Big hits and big action are only part of the game. A beautiful run, a well thrown ball, a perfect pass route and calling one play to stop another all make up the game. I don't think robots could improve on this.

I don't use the word "violent" when describing football because to have violence there has to be an intent to harm. That is the definition of the word. That intent to harm just isn't there. The intent is to stop the other team cold, physically dominate them and win the game. Football players don't really want to hurt other football players. At least most of them don't. There are anti-social types in football too.

With robots I will use the word "violent". That is what would change. Much like those robot gladiator shows that we have now football robots will have weapons and be given the will to destroy the opposing football robots. At least that's how I would do it. I also think that would make the game less like football. The concentration won't be on the execution of plays but on the execution of players. A game more like old time football, before the forward pass was invented, might ensue.

There might even be two types of robot football leagues. A stock league with off the shelf models and an "Indy Car" league where anything goes. The stock league might resemble football more as we know it and the Indy league might have the serious violent cutting edge robot technology.
Ahhh, robots, they are so amusing. I wonder what basketball playing robots would be like?