Before there was Daily Show and Seinfeld, before SNL and before the Friends were friends, even before the Three’s Company gang had all their hilarious misunderstandings (ahem), there was Monty Python’s Flying Circus to carry the comedy flag.
The group helped shape comedy the way the Beatles’ helped shape music, at roughly the same period in history.
Anyway, you can read about Monty Python at your leisure. Point is, one of the famous Monty Python bits, one of which soccer fans are especially fond, was the Philosophers’ Football Match.
It was famous Greek and German philosophers (Archimedes, Socrates, Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx … the usual suspects) thinking their way through a big match. Confucius, Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine officiated. Who else?
Highlight: Franz Beckenbauer, a “surprise inclusion” for the Germans, looking confused throughout. (He was the only real player.) And Nietzsche getting booked for “claiming that Confucius has no free will.”
Finally, watch for the Man of the Match moment from Archimedes at the end.
Get geeked for Germany-Greece by watching classic Germany-Greece:
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