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.

[HemiEd]

Originally Posted by InChiefsHell

I actually think that was more of an opportunistic thing rather than a fix. Here are the Saints, looking like they might win the Superbowl...what can we market here...AH! Katrina!

As Cosmo stated, it's too long after the actual event to link it to a fix. Rather, it was a chance for the NFL to exploit a story. They do that shit all the time.

You mean like Andy Reid coming back to Philly? The Manning brothers playing each other?

I personally don't think the NFL is fixed, but I have had many doubts about "part time" refs with so much money involved.

[blaise]

Just on a sort of side note - When you write for contests like these you sort of have to know what they want. They want hack. That want kitsch. So, you have to give them what they want.
The person in charge of screening the entries is probably some 32 year old female marketing grad who doesn't know a thing about football.

[HemiEd]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

FWIW, I'm not suggesting that the NFL is rigged or blatantly biased (I do think it's inherently biased in some cases).

I think the combination of city, fans, ownership, NFL structure, and several other factors are going to make it nearly impossible for the Chiefs to win a Super Bowl.

I don't blame the NFL for that.

I think the fan base has shown very clearly to ownership how impatient they are and how much they hate losing.

Being in a small market doesn't allow for all of the "extra" demand for the seats that would be available, while that star franchise QB that they draft learns to win.

Consequently ownership is not going to draft a QB and they will keep bringing in the QB rejects that are capable of getting this team to 10 and 6 for the fans to keep the dream alive. It just may work again someday.

I for one, have really enjoyed this season now that I have accepted this.

[HemiEd]

Originally Posted by Bearcat

Enough Chiefs fans are satisfied with mediocrity, so there's no point in "wasting" 2-3 years to develop a QB when you can sign a retread/stop gap and get butts in seats.

Buy season tickets.

This, or slightly above mediocrity at 10 and 6 please. Wildcard!

[Amnorix]

Originally Posted by Sannyasi

The NFL still ignores steroids because the fans don't care about them. Everyone knows that most of the players on every team are doing it.

This is true across all sports, pretty much. The leagues just want enough of a policy/system to avoid being perceived as ignoring it or in the bag allowing it, but ultimately they just hope there's never a scandal...

[Just Passin' By]

Originally Posted by notorious

Tuck Rule was as blatant as it gets.

They properly applied the tuck rule, so I'm not sure what you think was blatant, other than the officials blatantly making the proper call. That same rule, properly applied, had cost the Patriots a game against the Jets earlier in the season.

[Earthling]

Originally Posted by HemiEd

I personally don't think the NFL is fixed, but I have had many doubts about "part time" refs with so much money involved.

Exactly.

[Earthling]

Originally Posted by MahiMike

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.

I'm dubious. How would that decision be made, who would make the proposition to the refs, how would monies be transferred, and who would be keeping the books on that illegal activity? A lot of possibilities for an errant leak and total chaos within not only the NFL but also a huge hit on the Las Vegas betting casinos once trust in the game had been breached. I just don't think the risk would be worth the gain.

[LoneWolf]

Originally Posted by Just Passin' By

They properly applied the tuck rule, so I'm not sure what you think was blatant, other than the officials blatantly making the proper call. That same rule, properly applied, had cost the Patriots a game against the Jets earlier in the season.

Don't let facts get in the way of the conspiracy theorists in this thread.

The league is biased towards Peyton Manning/Brady, but Manning has won one Super Bowl and had a plethora of one and dones in the playoffs and Brady hasn't won a Super Bowl in 8 years.

Green Bay, the smallest market in the NFL, has recently won a Super Bowl. Rainman, you wrote a great essay and it sucks that the contest was looking for something more marketable, but stop being an idiot about the rest of the game.

[texaschiefsfan]

Enjoyed the essay and the overall discussions in this thread. I don't think there is a conspiracy. It's just horrible officiating.

[Iowanian]

Were I sitting in the board room discussing this as a corporate marketing concern, I would address the list of several valid points in your opening statement. With grace and tact I would express sentimental understanding and empathy for your essay and the validity of your feelings about your childhood.

Then I would offer some tails to the heads side of the coin you have shown. Manning or Brady going out in a blaze of glory with confetti avalanches over a hoisted Lombardi. Ideally they'll cheer for an AFC championship game between the two. This is true.

A true marketing genius sees the value in the underdog winning from a league perspective from my view. A Chiefs championship, going from 2-14 to MVP, inspires hope in 20 fan bases of mediocre and otherwise feces covered teams. Marketing campaigns abound about next season, possibilities, new hope born in the spring....Hell, I'd throw a clip of a newly born fawn standing for the first time into the power point.

Then, I'd jump on the table shout that I didn't date the homecoming queen but I shagged her sister and spike your football into the condiment platter you've been so kind as to provide for our meeting.

Boom. roasted.

[Bob Dole]

Originally Posted by Earthling

I'm dubious. How would that decision be made, who would make the proposition to the refs, how would monies be transferred, and who would be keeping the books on that illegal activity?

One word: Illuminati.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by LoneWolf

Green Bay, the smallest market in the NFL, has recently won a Super Bowl. Rainman, you wrote a great essay and it sucks that the contest was looking for something more marketable, but stop being an idiot about the rest of the game.

I'll try, but it's hard to stop being an idiot at my age. I've been doing it for far too long.

[Marcellus]

Something tells me Baltimore would never have won a SB if people in the NFL gave a shit about what city the team was from.

[LoneWolf]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

I'll try, but it's hard to stop being an idiot at my age. I've been doing it for far too long.

Sorry about the name calling. I've just read several posts over the past couple of days talking about NFL conspiracies and they make this fanbase sound like a bunch of whiners.

There isn't enough reward to warrant the risk of purposely influencing games through league mandates.