Football and My Crisis of Faith.

[Rain Man]

I have been a football fan for more than forty years, and it has been one of the foundational interests of my life. I’ve played the sport since childhood, I’ve traveled to games, I’ve purchased jerseys, and I’ve been an unceasing student of statistics and strategies.

I’m now experiencing a crisis of faith, though, and I fear that football’s time is coming to an end for me. The catalyst was something really stupid, but it opened the door to a greater awareness that is quite disturbing and disillusioning.

The initial catalyst was the NFL’s “Together We Make Football” contest. I read about it and thought, “Wow, a nice celebration of football, and Super Bowl tickets would be a great prize”. So I wrote an essay and felt pretty good about it, and sent it in. I loved football.

The entries were posted on the site, and I read a few of them, and frankly, most of the essays and videos were pretty weak. People didn’t follow the rules or think about why a judge would pick them to win. Many of them were just pictures of people in jerseys saying, “We like football. Send us to the Super Bowl!”

But I saw another pattern, too, and it got me to thinking. There seemed to be a lot of people using disabilities or illness as an argument, particularly among their kids. “I had a lung infection. Send me to the Super Bowl!” “My son has spina bifida. Send us to the Super Bowl!” For the most part, they were not well-written or well-produced. They were requests for pity, and frankly I found them kind of off-putting. They seemed almost more like panhandling than an essay about why those people love football.

As I skimmed through, them, though, I found myself getting agitated. I’m a market research guy, and I found myself starting to read them from a marketing standpoint. I would find myself thinking that some NFL public-relations person would probably like this angle or that angle. “Hey, a disabled kid. Wouldn’t that be a great winner to use for marketing?” (Sorry if that’s insensitive, but it’s how p.r. people think.)

I looked through some more entries, and thought, “If I was a callous, cynical s.o.b., I’d bet that the five winners of this contest will be a disabled kid, an attractive woman, an inner-city African American, a veteran or active duty soldier, and then whoever writes the best essay." And then I immediately felt bad for being a callous, cynical s.o.b. and I submitted my essay.

The NFL announced the ten finalists recently. Three of the ten stories are interesting and speak to football. Three. The other seven are incredibly lame and contrived, and I think one is actually insulting to any longtime football fan. My cynical side picked wrong on the military guy, but if you look at the videos it’s pretty clear that this contest was not about celebrating football. We are not hearing the ten best essays about how football shapes and impacts people’s lives, and how they love football. We are hearing manufactured stories that are nothing more than a cynical marketing ploy to reach pre-defined target markets and serve as a p.r. tool.

Now, I mean no offense against the people in those videos when I say that. I have no doubt that nearly all of them like football, and that most of them love football. It’s not about them, or the fact that I wrote an epic, soul-shattering, thought-inspiring essay that was not selected since I don’t fit the any of the NFL’s market expansion segments.

What it really drove home was that the NFL is a business these days, and nothing more. I wanted a contest where I could write about football and how it has shaped my life, and where I could read about what it has done for others. That was what I was sold. Instead, I was used as a pawn so the NFL could sell its business.

Now, that thing is just a contest. I lose contests all the time. My years of playing and watching football have taught me to lose with grace, and I hope the winners of that contest have a great time. But it really made me think about who’s running the NFL now. I wanted the judges of that contest to be people who love football themselves, people who got into the business because they grew up passing and catching and tackling. I wanted the judges to be people who know who Otto Graham is. Who know Johnny Robinson and Doug Buffone and even John Jefferson, and who can tell you about the Sneaker Game or Christmas Day of 1971. I wanted the judges to be football people who understand what the story of football is about.

The judges of this contest were not football people. It is clear and obvious that they were p.r. people who said, “Okay, give me a person in this market segment and a person in that market segment and two more from that one, and let’s build stories around them." Those people probably don’t know Lawrence Taylor from Opie Taylor.

The NFL is run by businesspeople now. Lamar Hunt is gone. Bud Adams is gone. George Halas is gone. The league is run by lawyers and marketing people and advertisers. You could take them out of the NFL and exchange them with the industry leaders of soft drinks or smart phones, and it wouldn’t make a darn bit of difference. They’re selling a product, and I don’t think they really care what that product is.

And then I look at the games I am watching these days. I see rules changes that are designed for marketing value rather than sport. They’ve done the marketing analysis. If there’s more scoring, more casual fans will watch. If there are more passes, quarterbacks will become bigger celebrities. The games are cartoonish now, unbalanced scoring orgies because scoring lets casual fans know when to cheer. Defenses are being made irrelevant and quarterbacks are merely playing catch on their way to another 400 or 500 yards of showmanship. P.T. Barnum loves the aerial circus even as students of the game cringe.

And I am finally seeing the more sinister side of the business plan. I see blatant phantom penalties against the opponents of quarterbacks like Peyton Manning and Tom Brady, two of the highest-visibility products that the league sells, penalties that are critical in letting their teams win and continue playing as the TV audiences surge in January. If you’re running a business, you act to maximize your revenues, and Peyton Manning holding a Super Bowl trophy will do that a lot more than Alex Smith or Nick Foles doing so.

I don’t think the players rig games. It’s realistically impossible to do that in a high-level sport on a leaguewide basis. But Tom Brady is good. If Tom Brady gets four extra downs to win a game because of a pass interference call, he’s probably going to win. You can’t rig games, but you can tilt odds with just a few critical officiating decisions.

Maybe I’m waxing nostalgic, but I don’t think the NFL always had this attitude. Back when Hunt and Adams and Halas were around, the league was a competitive sport. Those owners loved the game and they wanted to win. The money was big, but it wasn’t insane. Look at the ownership and league management today. Are they football fans who want to win, or are they businesspeople who want to maximize profit? The cash flows are enormous.

I have been a Chiefs fan my whole life. In the modern world, that is naïve and Quixotic. The Chiefs are a small-market team and none of the players do national commercials. From a marketing perspective they support a middle-class fan base that is much smaller than most other markets. There’s not much marketing value in Alex Smith holding aloft a Lombardi trophy, and in fact there’s a huge opportunity cost if it’s him and not Peyton Manning. The league’s management team does not want Alex Smith or Jay Cutler or Jake Locker to win. Maybe they’ll do it, because a football field remains a chaotic place, but if so it will be against the wishes of the marketing braintrust of the NFL, and therefore against odds that have become more steep than one team in 32.

Sometime in the past twenty or thirty years, football evolved, and not in a good way. Any given game is still fun to watch. The players still try hard to win. On a tactical basis I enjoy the show and the athletes. But on a higher level I have reluctantly concluded that professional football has ceased to be a competitive sport. It’s an entertainment conglomerate, and just like the tables in Vegas the odds are stacked in the house’s favor. The house exists to make money.

I’ll probably continue to watch football. It’s a tradition. The games are fun. But at this point I’m reluctantly going to go into it knowing that it’s not what it appears. It’s a TV show. I’m not going to buy merchandise to support a TV show, and I’m not going to pay hundreds of dollars to watch a TV show live. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll go out and live life a little more on Sunday afternoons.

There’s a semi-famous internet clip of an audience member at a professional wrestling show. He’s given the microphone and thanks the wrestlers for the “all they’ve done to their bodies”, and then tearfully says, “It’s still real to me, dammit!” Well, I’d like to thank NFL players like Johnny Robinson and Doug Buffone and John Jefferson for all they’ve done to their bodies to entertain me. I have loved football and it’s been a great run. But it’s not real to me any more.

[Tombstone RJ]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

I have been a football fan for more than forty years, and it has been one of the foundational interests of my life....

And I am finally seeing the more sinister side of the business plan. I see blatant phantom penalties against the opponents of quarterbacks like Peyton Manning and Tom Brady, two of the highest-visibility products that the league sells, penalties that are critical in letting their teams win and continue playing as the TV audiences surge in January. If you’re running a business, you act to maximize your revenues, and Peyton Manning holding a Super Bowl trophy will do that a lot more than Alex Smith or Nick Foles doing so..

So how do you explain all the lousy, bad, horrible calls and non calls on the Broncos/Ravens playoff game last year?

You had me right up until you start waxing on about how it's all rigged for Manning and clearly last year's playoff game was very much not the case. If anything, the NFL rigged it so the killer LBer Ray cut-them-up Lewis got is fairwell ring right?

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by Tombstone RJ

So how do you explain all the lousy, bad, horrible calls and non calls on the Broncos/Ravens playoff game last year?

You had me right up until you start waxing on about how it's all rigged for Manning and clearly last year's playoff game was very much not the case. If anything, the NFL rigged it so the killer LBer Ray cut-them-up Lewis got is fairwell ring right?

Ray Lewis practically has his own show on NFL Network, and they knew that Manning would be back for another year. It was their last chance to make Killer Ray into a legend, and they obviously believe that he has marketing value.

As I've mentioned before, I'm not being anti-Bronco on this topic. If it works better to screw you guys over, they will. It's all about return. You guys just have a great hedge fund in Manning, and at some point it will pay off.

[Rain Man]

Okay, here's my essay.

The rules of the contest are apparently not available online any more, but in essence the mission was to write about why you love football, and what it means to you. It was a 1,000 word limit (or you could submit a video), and they basically said something like, "We're looking for essays that present a story that we can tell in a three-minute video" or something like that.

I envisioned it as them reading the essay and producing a video supporting it, and apparently their vision was that they wanted a video that featured the author. So I understand not winning and frankly am glad that I didn't, because I really wouldn't want to be featured in a video. My goal was to write an essay that would describe the typical arc of football in a human life, using myself as an example. But anyway, here's my essay just for grins.

In a quiet corner of my house, displayed on a high shelf, is a football.

It probably doesn’t have much monetary value, though it may be an antique now. It’s a beautiful aged leather, circumscribed by the white stripes of its era, and it’s inscribed with the machine-etched autograph of Gale Sayers. The laces are chewed up by past dogs who tackled it, and it won’t hold air any more, but that doesn’t really matter. It’s the only item from my childhood that I keep on display.

My uncle gave me the football in the Christmas of 1971, when I was eight years old. I was already an avid football fan, and I did all the normal football things that a kid did. I collected football cards, memorized stats, and was a sixty-minute man on the playground. I lived and died by the fortunes of my beloved Kansas City Chiefs. But I did not own an actual football, and I guess he recognized the gap that winter. He gave me his.

It would be nice to say that this gift unlocked an athletic greatness in me, that I found fame or fortune from its roots. It would be a wonderful story to say that it helped me get a college scholarship or date the homecoming queen, or perhaps that I caught the winning touchdown in some game that really, really mattered. Football has certainly been that story for many people.

But in my case, none of that is true. The reality is that I was a skinny kid with glasses, and athletic greatness was never in the cards for me. My greatest football feats, my touchdowns and interceptions and booming punts, came on vacant lots or playgrounds against other skinny kids with glasses. My field goals were scored over a clothesline. No fan ever saw my glories and no scoreboard ever recorded them.

But as important as they were at the time, in the end it wasn’t the touchdowns or the interceptions or the booming punts that really mattered.

You see, my uncle didn’t do this gift halfway. It was a high-quality football that he gave me, not some cheap toy. It had an ideal friction in the leather grain, and it was perfectly formed to produce spirals, even from small hands. If you played football, you loved this ball, and that was the key.

We moved a lot, so I was always the new kid. I went to eight different schools in twelve years. I was always starting over, regularly touching down in a place I’d never been before. But two facts held true no matter where I landed. Everybody played football, and I owned the best football in the neighborhood.

I learned that the best way to start anew was to show up with the football, whether it was at recess or at the park or in some field, and ask to play. I’d find the kid who looked like the leader and toss him the football. He’d look at it, grip it, and say, “Yeah, you can play.” And then he’d tell the other kids, “Let’s use this ball.” It worked when I was eight, and it worked when I was 18, and it even worked at my first company picnic after college.

At that point, the hard part was done. After that, whenever the neighborhood guys played football, my football was unequivocally the ball of choice. And if they wanted to use my football, I came with the deal. An interception here, a punt return there, and pretty soon they forgot I was the new kid. A good football and hustle would earn my way into any group. Football was my passport.

The football itself had an active career of about 20 years, and in that time I suspect that five hundred different people threw it, caught it, carried it, or hit someone who did. Nearly every best friend I’ve ever had has thrown that football to me at some point, along with a lot of people I met once and probably a few people I couldn’t stand, though I tend to forget about those. The friends were the important part, and that football helped them recognize that skinny new kids with glasses could have something to offer. I would be a different person today without that football, and I would be a different person without those games in vacant lots.

The last time I threw or caught the ball in a game was when I was 30 years old. After that, it became harder to get a group together, and the ball started losing air, and eventually it found its way onto the shelf. Neither of us has seen action on the field in twenty years, and we probably never will again. So why is the ball there, still within easy reach? Maybe it’s because it makes me smile whenever I see it, that it takes me back to a golden time of my life where I could run from sunup to sundown and bounce up from a blindside hit. Or maybe I’m secretly hoping for one more game.

I’m fifty years old now. I have no children, and my life has taken me far from those who know my history. Some day I’ll die and someone will clean out my basement and they’ll either throw the football away or they’ll sell it for a few bucks. No one will know its power, or how it helped to mold my life.

Like me, this football will never be famous. It will never be in a museum, or have its story told other than this simple essay. Like me, it will someday be gone and forgotten. But I hope and believe that somewhere on that same day, some other kid will be given a high-quality football that offers a perfect spiral, and the story will start again. It’s not really about the ball.

[Tombstone RJ]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

Ray Lewis practically has his own show on NFL Network, and they knew that Manning would be back for another year. It was their last chance to make Killer Ray into a legend, and they obviously believe that he has marketing value.

As I've mentioned before, I'm not being anti-Bronco on this topic. If it works better to screw you guys over, they will. It's all about return. You guys just have a great hedge fund in Manning, and at some point it will pay off.

so the NFL really, really wanted to honor a defensive player in the age of it's-all-about-the-offense!!? And Flacco, let's not forget his kind of wonderful, amirite?

You are 100% correct about this together we make football promo crap. It's totally rigged and the winners are not picked on their stories, nor their love. They are picked based on how much it will sell to the market place of women and minorities. So you are right in that regard!

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by Tombstone RJ

so the NFL really, really wanted to honor a defensive player in the age of it's-all-about-the-offense!!? And Flacco, let's not forget his kind of wonderful, amirite?

You are 100% correct about this together we make football promo crap. It's totally rigged and the winners are not picked on their stories, nor their love. They are picked based on how much it will sell to the market place of women and minorities. So you are right in that regard!

I don't understand it, either, but the NFL promotes the intestines out of Ray Lewis. I don't get it at all, because I find him completely objectionable in every way. But from a marketing perspective he likes mugging for the camera, he gives them showboating and footage before and during the games, and he's got an insatiable appetite for the press. He embodies the three-ring circus that they want to project. Plus, they know they can count on him for exposure and interviews after retirement, so I guess they want to make him a legend for that reason.

Oh, and I should also note that the marketing people may possibly have been aghast when Rahim Moore didn't do what any basic middle-school safety does when protecting against a hail mary pass. Perhaps they wanted the Broncos to win and it didn't work out, so they were forced to ride the murderer's horse.

[Nzoner]

Originally Posted by Bearcat

I don't really believe it, but if there was a conspiracy, I don't think they would need to influence it that much. The Giants didn't make the playoffs that year. The Jets did as a wildcard, so you could have the NYC team or a team named the Patriots win it all. And it's not like it's the end of the world if one of them doesn't make it, but a small influence (maybe a big call in the conference championship game ) could go a long way.

tuck rule

[Hammock Parties]

Rain Man just needs the Chiefs to find their own franchise QB.

Then it will seem "more real."

I have felt like this team has had 0 shot to win a SB since Green left, and it has dampened my enthusiasm for the team significantly. The Chiefs won 45-10 Sunday and I felt like saying "oh, that's nice."

[Hammock Parties]

BTW, I do think we have marketable commodities in Alex Smith and Andy Reid.

The league would love to see either of them win a SB after they were treated harshly in their exodus (exodi?) from Philly and SF.

But they are probably less marketable than Brady, Manning, Brees and Wilson.

[The Franchise]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

Okay, here's my essay.

The rules of the contest are apparently not available online any more, but in essence the mission was to write about why you love football, and what it means to you. It was a 1,000 word limit (or you could submit a video), and they basically said something like, "We're looking for essays that present a story that we can tell in a three-minute video" or something like that.

I envisioned it as them reading the essay and producing a video supporting it, and apparently their vision was that they wanted a video that featured the author. So I understand not winning and frankly am glad that I didn't, because I really wouldn't want to be featured in a video. My goal was to write an essay that would describe the typical arc of football in a human life, using myself as an example. But anyway, here's my essay just for grins.

In a quiet corner of my house, displayed on a high shelf, is a football.

It probably doesn’t have much monetary value, though it may be an antique now. It’s a beautiful aged leather, circumscribed by the white stripes of its era, and it’s inscribed with the machine-etched autograph of Gale Sayers. The laces are chewed up by past dogs who tackled it, and it won’t hold air any more, but that doesn’t really matter. It’s the only item from my childhood that I keep on display.

My uncle gave me the football in the Christmas of 1971, when I was eight years old. I was already an avid football fan, and I did all the normal football things that a kid did. I collected football cards, memorized stats, and was a sixty-minute man on the playground. I lived and died by the fortunes of my beloved Kansas City Chiefs. But I did not own an actual football, and I guess he recognized the gap that winter. He gave me his.

It would be nice to say that this gift unlocked an athletic greatness in me, that I found fame or fortune from its roots. It would be a wonderful story to say that it helped me get a college scholarship or date the homecoming queen, or perhaps that I caught the winning touchdown in some game that really, really mattered. Football has certainly been that story for many people.

But in my case, none of that is true. The reality is that I was a skinny kid with glasses, and athletic greatness was never in the cards for me. My greatest football feats, my touchdowns and interceptions and booming punts, came on vacant lots or playgrounds against other skinny kids with glasses. My field goals were scored over a clothesline. No fan ever saw my glories and no scoreboard ever recorded them.

But as important as they were at the time, in the end it wasn’t the touchdowns or the interceptions or the booming punts that really mattered.

You see, my uncle didn’t do this gift halfway. It was a high-quality football that he gave me, not some cheap toy. It had an ideal friction in the leather grain, and it was perfectly formed to produce spirals, even from small hands. If you played football, you loved this ball, and that was the key.

We moved a lot, so I was always the new kid. I went to eight different schools in twelve years. I was always starting over, regularly touching down in a place I’d never been before. But two facts held true no matter where I landed. Everybody played football, and I owned the best football in the neighborhood.

I learned that the best way to start anew was to show up with the football, whether it was at recess or at the park or in some field, and ask to play. I’d find the kid who looked like the leader and toss him the football. He’d look at it, grip it, and say, “Yeah, you can play.” And then he’d tell the other kids, “Let’s use this ball.” It worked when I was eight, and it worked when I was 18, and it even worked at my first company picnic after college.

At that point, the hard part was done. After that, whenever the neighborhood guys played football, my football was unequivocally the ball of choice. And if they wanted to use my football, I came with the deal. An interception here, a punt return there, and pretty soon they forgot I was the new kid. A good football and hustle would earn my way into any group. Football was my passport.

The football itself had an active career of about 20 years, and in that time I suspect that five hundred different people threw it, caught it, carried it, or hit someone who did. Nearly every best friend I’ve ever had has thrown that football to me at some point, along with a lot of people I met once and probably a few people I couldn’t stand, though I tend to forget about those. The friends were the important part, and that football helped them recognize that skinny new kids with glasses could have something to offer. I would be a different person today without that football, and I would be a different person without those games in vacant lots.

The last time I threw or caught the ball in a game was when I was 30 years old. After that, it became harder to get a group together, and the ball started losing air, and eventually it found its way onto the shelf. Neither of us has seen action on the field in twenty years, and we probably never will again. So why is the ball there, still within easy reach? Maybe it’s because it makes me smile whenever I see it, that it takes me back to a golden time of my life where I could run from sunup to sundown and bounce up from a blindside hit. Or maybe I’m secretly hoping for one more game.

I’m fifty years old now. I have no children, and my life has taken me far from those who know my history. Some day I’ll die and someone will clean out my basement and they’ll either throw the football away or they’ll sell it for a few bucks. No one will know its power, or how it helped to mold my life.

Like me, this football will never be famous. It will never be in a museum, or have its story told other than this simple essay. Like me, it will someday be gone and forgotten. But I hope and believe that somewhere on that same day, some other kid will be given a high-quality football that offers a perfect spiral, and the story will start again. It’s not really about the ball.

Awesome essay, man.

[Bearcat]

Originally Posted by Nzoner

tuck rule

yeah...

Originally Posted by Bearcat

... but, if the conference championship rolls around and there's a chance a team named the Patriots could make it to the SB right after 9/11, or the SB rolls around and the Saints have a chance to win it after Katrina, I don't think it's a big stretch the NFL would have something tucked away for such occasions.

...get it, tucked away?! I'm hilarious.

[Hammock Parties]

Great essay, BTW.

You should have embellished it by taking a photo in a wheelchair, claiming that you were paralyzed in a flag football game at age 30. Football took your legs, but it gave you so much more.

Then when you are firmly in your Super Bowl seats (after being wheeled around all day), you could stand up and claim I'M CURED! FOOTBALL MADE ME WALK AGAIN!

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by Pam Oliver's Forehead

Rain Man just needs the Chiefs to find their own franchise QB.

Then it will seem "more real."

I have felt like this team has had 0 shot to win a SB since Green left, and it has dampened my enthusiasm for the team significantly. The Chiefs won 45-10 Sunday and I felt like saying "oh, that's nice."

Winning masks a lot of things, so if we were winning with a big media star, I'd probably be just as happy as the next guy.

There's certainly room to criticize the Chiefs for their naivete over the past few decades. While the league was huddling and figuring out how to maximize the business model, and while other teams were recognizing that and adjusting, the Chiefs continued to think blocking and tackling. They sought to play the sport of football while other teams won football championships by better understanding the business of football.

Perhaps the Chiefs were slow to adjust because their ownership was one of the football families. Maybe Clark will be more of a businessman than Lamar was, and the Chiefs will join the 21st century and start playing the business game. Yay, Chiefs. If they do, it'll likely decrease my enjoyment of the game since I actually like football, so either way I think I'm screwed.

[mcaj22]

But Rain Man is kind of right, what if the "business side" of the league gets their way in the next decade

*Teams in London, LA, and Toronto?
*expanded weeks
*TWO Thursday night games
*those bullshit playoff rules

I mean at what point is too much, too much?

[unothadeal]

Whatever you do don't click on Bobby's photo on their website

[MahiMike]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

Ray Lewis practically has his own show on NFL Network, and they knew that Manning would be back for another year. It was their last chance to make Killer Ray into a legend, and they obviously believe that he has marketing value.

As I've mentioned before, I'm not being anti-Bronco on this topic. If it works better to screw you guys over, they will. It's all about return. You guys just have a great hedge fund in Manning, and at some point it will pay off.

I agree. Last year was Ray Ray, killer Ray Ray's last chance to go out like Elway. I do believe the refs are paid by the NFL to swing the games for marketing. Just watching yesterday's games shows you that. The Ravens and Pats games were crazy biased.