As I was settling down for an evening of Sunday night football, I remembered that I had a heap of reading to do. I knew it would be difficult to study after the game, so I decided to study during it. Let me warn you right away — reading Aristotle’s Metaphysics and watching the Eagles and Vikings duke it out is nearly impossible.

So I left my spot in front of the boob tube and returned to my room and switched on my good friend, the radio. Already tuned to 1350, the station which carries my beloved Cubs, Brad Shamm was barking out the play-by-play of the game.

I turned my focus to Aristotle, trying to concentrate on his vision of the universe, and ended up with notes like this: “Aristotle believes there is no void. In addition he says … “WHAT A PLAY BY JOHN RANDALL! WATTERS HAD A HUGE HOLE UP THE MIDDLE AND RANDALL … that all movement is started by the “Great Mover” … HE HAD BOTH FEET INBOUNDS, FOR SURE! THAT IS JUST A BAD CALL …

There are four elements, according to Aristotle. They are fire, water, earth and air. If nothing were moving, they would fall into … DETMER BACK TO PASS, THROWS A DEEP BALL! OH, IT IS PICKED OFF BY THE VIKINGS AT THE TWO! HE HAD A RECEIVER AND HE UNDERTHREW HIM … various spheres: earth, being the heaviest, would fall to the middle, water just outside, then air, then fire, and then surrounding them the celestial sphere which … THIRD AND ONE AT THE 19. SMITH GETS THE CALL — HE’S GOT THE FIRST DOWN AND THEN SOME … the sun, the planets and the moon are attached to.”

The point is, I didn’t want to miss the football game just because I had a piece of great philosophy to read. Why is this? What is it with us that would make us sacrifice time we could spend enriching our minds to watch a bunch of fat men falling all over themselves? It is easier and much more fun.

Let me paraphrase the master humorist Dave Barry: “If you put me at the center of a room with Sir Isaac Newton standing in one corner, Socrates in another, Michelangelo in the third and Abraham Lincoln in the fourth; and in the remaining corner [this is a pentagonal room] a football game showing two teams that have no bearing on my lives, such as the Indianapolis Colts and Chicago Bears, I would ignore some of the greatest minds of western civilization and become absorbed in the game. AND SO WOULD THE OTHER GUYS!

“Within seconds, Socrates would be beating on Lincoln’s shoulder and shouting in ancient Greek that the receiver did NOT have his feet in bounds and Michelangelo would be red in the face from shouting at me that the hit on the quarterback was definitely late.”

The most fun has been Monday night football this season. We have seen some magnificent games with Frank, Al and Dan. This week, minus a dramatic finish, we saw one of the finest examples of power football in recent times, strangely enough from a finesse team, the San Francisco Forty-Niners.

See you next week, where I describe my struggles in trying to read Latin passages about kids falling out of trees and watch the MLB playoffs at the same time. (Of course, I’m kidding!)

Jayadev Athreya is a sophomore in mathematics from Ames.