One of the most basic plays in football is the quarterback passing the ball to his receiver. There is also the idea of the running game, but any quarterback that is only good at handing the ball to a runner or running it himself may not be so great. You might have Tim Tebow on your hands. And I just get more excited for passing plays than running plays. From my few years of watching football, most of the big plays I have seen from an offense come from passing. The quarterback gets the ball snapped to him, he puts it in the air, and he hopes his receiver catches it.
There is more to this picture than just the quarterback and the receiver. There is the defense. Their job is to limit how far down the field the offense can go, limit the points the can score, and possibly even take the ball away. When a defender is going against a receiver, his main job is to pressure that receiver to not be able to catch the ball or limit the yards the receiver gets. That's what keeps the game so competitive.
Now, let's make this less competitive. Imagine if a defender was there just for show. He never gets anywhere near the receiver to ever pressure him to miss a catch or bats the ball away. He isn't even close enough to tackle him. He doesn't even try. Hard to imagine, right? I've never seen it happen, and probably never will, but I could imagine it. Just like you might hear stories of boxers being paid off to take a dive to make someone else look good, what you can have in this imaginary football scenario is a defender being influenced to just not even try. Imagine if all the defenders were like this. What's the point? How about to just put up a facade that the receiver has to really overcome someone else to be able to catch the ball? You want the receiver to shine. He is going to shine more if it looks like he is overcoming something than if it is just the quarterback throwing the ball to him with no defense at all on the field. This imaginary situation would basically be a facade of competitiveness.
Bring that back into the diva division. The quarterback represents the WWE. Specifically, I'm talking about those individuals that ultimately decide whom the big stars will be and how to develop and feature them. The receiver represents the centerpiece of the diva division. The football represents success. That's not so hard to believe. Scoring in football revolves around the ball. You get a touchdown for taking the ball into the end zone. You get a field goal for kicking the ball through the crossbars. Even the rules on safeties revolve around the ball. The ball is success. It is what it is all about. In the WWE, overness is what it is all about. That is success for them. They are not about simply featuring wrestling matches. They are about getting whom they want to be over that success.
If the WWE choosing whom they want to be a success and developing them to be over is comparable to a quarterback eying his receiver and passing the ball to him, what represents the defense? It would be stupid to have a defense, wouldn't it? A defense's job is to hinder the offense. Why would the WWE want to have someone in the picture to hinder the development of their centerpiece? My comparison falls flat? I'm not finished yet. Go back to that imaginary situation I gave about a defender that is just there to put up the illusion that things are going to be tougher for the receiver than they really are. They are just there to make the receiver look good. They are just there to put them over. Put them over? Things starting to sound a bit familiar now? The faux defenders represent credible jobbers in the diva division. They are not there to make things difficult for the success of the centerpiece. They are there to help the centerpiece be a success. Their primary purpose is to be jobbers to the centerpiece, as well as interim centerpiece. Outside of that, they get mediocrity that does not allow them to be as successful as those pushed to be the centerpiece or periphery divas are meant to be.
Imagine another situation on the football field. Jinder Mahal goes up to play quarterback, he gets the ball snapped to him, drops back, puts it in the air, and...INTERCEPTION! Mahal has been picked off! That sounds more like the story of Tony Romo.
What would an interception look like in the diva division? The WWE is the quarterback. The centerpiece is the intended receiver. The ball represents success. The credible jobber being used to put over the centerpiece is the defender. Imagine a credible jobber intercepting success. That has happened. I believe the woman who did that has a birthday coming up. Mickie James was not supposed to get over against Trish Stratus. She was not supposed to get cheered as a heel. The thing about Mickie James, she didn't just intercept the WWE once during her career. After her success, they continued to use her as a credible jobber, as a faux defender. They continued to use her as a jobber to the centerpiece and interim centerpiece. The WWE tried to pass the ball to Candice Michelle. It was the woman that they were pushing as interim centerpiece while Candice Michelle would be out due to injury that was succeeding. They pushed her to put over Maryse and used her as filler when Maryse was injured. Once again, she kept succeeding. Her final feud had her being used to put over Michelle McCool. The WWE tried to take advantage of Mickie's overness there to get McCool finally over. Didn't work out as well as the WWE would have liked. McCool could not hang on to true overness. Mickie James remained the woman the fans really cared about. That uproar when she was released shows that. Mickie James intercepted success 4 times in her career. That includes against the greatest centerpiece, or star receiver in terms of the football analogy, the diva division ever had, Trish Stratus. Now, interceptions are not a blemish that appears on the stats of the receivers in football, even though the pass may have been intended for them. Interceptions are a blemish for the quarterback, the guy actually passing the ball. How do you think quarterbacks like Mark Sanchez or Tony Romo feel when they throw an interception? Those two have thrown 4 interceptions in one game before. How do you think the WWE would feel if one credible jobber did this to them against 4 different centerpieces? And after so many years of having never experienced this?
Now, let me get to the final part, and the part that I really wanted to talk about the most. I have been saying that the defender's job is to try to hinder the receiver from moving the ball and scoring. However, there are rules and penalties to the game. Specifically, there are pass interference rules. You have to give the receiver a fair opportunity to make a play at the ball. For one thing, you cannot grab the arms to stop them from having any chance at catching the ball. You always hear the commentators say that the defender needs to look back for the ball. Play the ball, not the receiver. I'm not going to go through all the rules and analyze them. Fact is, the receiver still has to have a fair chance to make a play. Sounds fair. When a defender does something illegal in this regard, they get a defensive pass interference penalty. That can be a heavy penalty. Now, there is something that I really found weird when I first heard it. Pass interference also applies to the receivers. When the ball is in the air, the receiver that the quarterback is hoping to catch the ball cannot do too much to interfere with the defender to catch the interception. Defensive players have as much right to the ball as the offensive players. Maybe that does not impress you as much as it did me. When the quarterback is throwing the ball, the last person he would like to catch the ball has to be given a fair chance at it? Really? If the intended receiver ends up interfering with the defender, that is offensive pass interference.
Apply that to the diva division. The WWE, the quarterback in this story, puts the ball in the air for the centerpiece. There is a credible jobber there. But the credible jobber doesn't get a fair chance to come up with the ball, to come up with success? They are not allowed to get over and move on to a better career? In football, both the receiver and defender have to be given a fair opportunity to make a play at the ball. That sounds very fair. In the entire history of the diva division, you have never had a credible jobber get over while being pushed to put over the centerpiece and stop being pushed as a credible jobber. You have never had a credible jobber being pushed as interim centerpiece get over and take the spot away from the person she was filling in for. Are these women, the ones pushed as credible jobbers, being given a fair chance to really make a play at success? The only woman to intercept success while being pushed this way did not get the better career. You can say that the officiating crew in this football game just happen to also be on the payroll of the quarterback. To put it another way, the WWE represents both the quarterback and the referees in the analogy. If a play happens that they don't like, it's no problem. The game is rigged in their favor. All their receivers have to do is catch the ball. And things still don't seem to be working out for them, as far as centerpiece issues go.
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