Why I Am Not An NFL FanWhat Is an NFL fan?I’ll start by making a distinction between a devotee or follower of American football (henceforth referred to as ‘football’) and an NFL fan. Very simply, the former could watch just about any old game of sufficient proficiency and be entertained. Someone who regularly watches an NFL team is part of a fandom, with all the derision and philosophical impotence that should imply.
For the acolyte, all that matters is 22 men being violent to each other in 3-5 second doses. Who these men are, or where they’re from isn’t so important, I mean hell, their names aren’t even on the backs of their jerseys. The acolyte has multiple loyalties to multiple colleges, conferences, even parts of the country- which deep inside they know to be wellsprings of offensive style or maybe just prone to producing lightning fast tailbacks.
The NFL fan, on the other hand, at best is a parochial soul, and at worst, a front-running pleaser of men, beholden only to the jersey of the moment on sale at Champs. She MIGHT watch the NCAA national championship if it looks like her team is lousy enough to be able to draft the star player. They mediate their relationships to the rest of the existence of the sport through how it affects their fandom. In this, someone who normally couldn’t tell you jackshit about Roman Gabriel or Flipper Anderson can tell you all about the defensive line of the St. Louis Rams, because their Hawks can’t run the ball.
Why? Because the sports fandom experience provides a plotline and characters, just like any other tv show, and anyone in America can follow those. However, this is about why I am not an NFL fan. The monograph “Why I Don’t Watch A Lot of Network TV” is a whole other animal, albeit one with many of the same spots and stripes.
The Existence of Plotlines in FootballThe position I espouse is that the average NFL fan does not in fact care about the discrete actions of the sport on a play-by-play basis, and as such, this is a less than fulfilling position for the true believer. The fan just cares about them as mediated by plotlines explicated through sportswriters and talking heads. At best, this is a subordination of process to result, and at worst, worshipping the golden calf for the beauty of the bovine form. Here’s the plotlines of the NFL:
The Manning Family Rivalry
Bill Belichick Is Mean and Evil (And Effective)
The Redemption of Michael Vick (or) The National Shame That Is Michael Vick
Is It Okay To Root For An Alleged Rapist, So Long As His Team’s Good Without Him?
The Saints Singlehandedly Saved LouisianaWhat’s my proof? The fact I couldn’t tell you who won the Super Bowl last year. Was it the Saints? The Giants? I seriously don’t know.
The Populist Argument (football gives you something to have in common)
Is it really so bad to have something you can share with people who would otherwise…not share with you? Wrong question. Is it really so GOOD? I mean, buildin on it with the gang is great and all, but they also hang with those who sit and watch Firefly. Point being, if the mobb aint deep, the mob don’t rule. 5 million Elvis fans CAN be wrong.
The Natural-law Argument (college football was how you were raised)
Real Talk: I was raised to bleed purple and gold, and these are not the colors of an NFL team. Where I’m going with this is my personal loyalties were ever-tilled and rotated each year. Ironically, this concept of matriculation-as-inoculation-against-following-the-players-and-not-the-team has been inverted in the era of free agency and nonguaranteed contracts. To whit, there’s now LESS turnover in college football than pro.
The Argument from Design (if you must have football, shouldn’t you have the best?)
Food for hobgoblins small enough to mind me: my system of sports hedonic calculus is not internally consistent. I would rather watch professional basketball than college, and yet the ‘professional’ grade of football is decidedly an inferior product than that of college as far as entertainment value.
Why is this? The NBA is an 82 game season, more of an endurance match (and therefore more valid as an indicator of overall athletic fitness) than the NFL season, which at 16 games over 4 months or so, takes on the quality of a annual short term relationship with a date each weekend, or worse still, a political campaign with more debates and stupider questions.
When Coach Gregg Popovich of the San Antonio Spurs finds his league-leading team down by 10 points in the fourth quarter against the Knicks, he pulls his starters. Why? Not because he’s afraid they could make a run to win the game, fall short at the end, and possibly make the loss look worse than it is. But that’s TOTALLY the mentality of a NFL coach in a losing effort- all damage control and no go for the gusto. Pop’s pulling Duncan and Parker because he knows it’s a long season. In the NFL, you can be down 3 touchdowns in the fourth quarter, STILL have your starters in, and yet STILL punt on fourth down.
The Moral Arguments for Deity (why pro football isn’t the best on its own merits)
The gutless quality of professional football is most apparent in the lack of diversity or innovation in the offensive formations. The popularity of the spread and Vick’s resurgence notwithstanding, you’ll never see anything like a triple option or Mike Leach’s ‘ninja’ play in the NFL- the stakes are simply too high, it’s too much a business, and in business at this scale, there is NO impetus to do things that are different let alone LOOK different.
If the sport is being prosecuted in such a way that tactical decisions are made (the coach feels his job is safer at 6-10 if he perennially loses 17-21, and not 7-9, but with a couple of 30 point blowouts) without regard to actually winning the game, again- this paves the way for interacting with the sport on terms that have nothing to do with the sport itself.
This is the gist of the complaint "the NFL is just a business".
The Argument for the Remedying of Injustice (why college football is superior to the NFL and high school)
Hopefully what is trickling through the narrative is a commitment and demonstrated appreciation to the art of football, which is organizing 11 people to move a ball 100 yards against 11 other people. Violence is involved. Discussion of haircuts & pitbulls is not. If we’re not to let this simply devolve to an appreciation of sheer size and bulk, then let’s remember why NFL coaches look dull- because college coaches MAKE them look that way.
Football is a team sport. Yes, individual stars are necessary for certain types of team philosophy (do you prize speed or bulk? Pass to set up the run, or run to set up the pass?), and yet they can only get you so far. The cult of personality at the college football level then is not the player, but the coach. The upshot of idolizing or putting focus on the coach is that the individual watching can secondguess an intellectual decision rather than a physical one, which they were never capable of replicating.
Appreciating college football= choreography
Appreciating professional football= striptease
The Character of Football (is there anything redeemable about this crap?)
Probably not?
Defects in Football's Teaching (what football diverts you from)
Basketball. Reading non glossy, non-HTML publications. Women who don’t brag about being a bitch.
The Moral Problem (the NCAA)
Even when Roger Goodell gets around things like Sterger Gate by fining Brett Favre for not cooperating in a timely manner, it does nothing to make the Barney Fife Pharisees of the NCAA look any better. These guys sneeze at a mosquito to swallow an ostrich. Or something. They miss the forest for the pine needles. I can’t put a good spin on them. They’re like the Satan of the football cosmology, and if there is a god that can make good from their evil, it’s definitely a deus absconditus.
The Emotional Factor (the SEC)
There’s something problematic about a reconstructed Southerner such as myself continuing to take pride in SEC dominance over the rest of the country. What exactly am I rejoicing in?
That their descendants of slaves are bigger and faster? That the universities of the South may possibly have their priorities skewed toward winning sports programs and not, say, educating students? I can’t defend or explicate this. Instead, I will just point to the NFL and show that neither does it unite or atomize society as effectively as the geo-socio importance of the conferences of the NCAA. And if its ineffectual, it’s got to be inferior, right? Um, sure.
How the BCS Has Retarded ProgressThis is the hardest part of my football theogony or christology. How can I support college football over pro when there’s no playoff system? When unbeaten teams don’t have a chance to prove they’re the best? WHEN BIG CORN (Tostito’s) DECIDES WHO IS IMPORTANT AND WHO IS BESIDE THE POINT!?!? I mean, if there was ever a Question of Evil in football, this is it.
There is no making this look better. About all that can be done is point to domestic violence rates on Super Bowl Sunday and say “college athletes (usually) aren’t rich enough (yet) to get away with murder…as much?”
War, the Foundation of FootballWe’ve simply got to have football in America. We’re a savage, bloodthirsty lot, and that’s the civilians. Standing armies must have something to fight, else they turn on the population. Human beings like to fuck shit up, plain and simple. Ergo, people need to understand that those desires are natural and need a vent, but one with consequences and etiquette, like holding penalties, pass interference, broken bones, and torn cartilege. However, it needs to go through a sport, and one that is participated and celebrated- not passively consumed.
What We Must DoNothing. I am quite content to stay in my ghetto, just quit acting like you graduated from mine.
