George Carlin talks football

The Water Cooler Quarterbacks are back.

For those of you who might not know who we are . . . the Water Cooler Quarterbacks were formed when a group of co-workers -- about ten of us, though the number can vary from discussion to discussion -- discovered that we all love to talk about NFL football.

We have teachers, educational support staff, family and friends in the group. We range in ages from 25 to 55 and represent the fan bases of a variety of teams. We are headed up by yours truly, a devout Broncos fan. We also have fans of San Diego, Dallas, Kansas City, Green Bay, Cleveland, New England, Miami San Francisco and *cough* *cough* Oakland. We have multiple athletes (including one who played college football), two coaches (high school football and high school baseball) and all consider ourselves to be armchair quarterbacks.

As school was starting up again, we were laughing about an old George Carlin routine in which he compares football to baseball - and which explains why we like football better. The full text of that sketch can be found here. For the young among us, George Carlin was a comedian who had a long and fun career from the 1960s through 2008, the year he died.

So, we thought we'd start off the 2014 NFL season with a little bit of humor. Here are some excerpts that we found delightful -- read the football sections in a deep, gruff-sounding voice and the baseball ones in a lighthearted, soft tone of voice -- presented without further comment:

"In most sports the team is run by a coach; in baseball a team is run by a manager. And only in baseball does the manager or coach wear the same clothing as the players. If you'd ever seen John Madden in his Oakland Raiders uniform, you'd know the reason for this custom."

"Baseball is a nineteenth-century pastoral game. Football is a twentieth-century technological struggle."

"Baseball is played on a diamond, in a park . . .Football is played in a stadium, sometimes called Soldier Field or War Memorial Stadium."

"Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life. Football begins in the fall, when everything's dying."

"In football you receive a penalty. In baseball you make an error."

"Football has hitting, clipping, spearing, piling on, personal fouls, late hitting and unnecessary roughness. Baseball has the sacrifice."

"In baseball, during the game, in the stands, there's kind of a picnic feeling; emotions may run high or low, but there's not too much unpleasantness. In football, during the game, in the stands, you can be sure that at least twenty-seven times you're capable of taking the life of a fellow human being."

"And finally, the objectives of the two games are completely different.

In football, the object is for the quarterback, also known as the field general, to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack that punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy's defensive line.

In baseball, the object is to go home! And to be safe!"