How they made such a goofy sport/minigame the centrepiece of FFX, which inarguably takes itself very seriously, is a baffling choice that you'd only expect to see from a non-western game studio.

How they mostly managed to stick the landing on it is even more baffling to me. And that's speaking as someone who has played enough blitzball that if I had dedicated enough time to actually playing a legitimate sport I'd be an expert.

For the Final Fantasies of that era, 7 had pretty incongruous goofy contrasts which felt very much like shifting gears and you sorta get primed for the transition when it comes to the casino or crossdressing and going to a love hotel and so on, whereas 8 was almost entirely devoid of anything genuinely goofy because it is uncharacteristically dour for the series, and then you have 9 which went in completely the opposite way and was routinely goofy to the point that it was notable for being downright whimsical a lot of the time.