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.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by Pestilence

Don't forget fantasy football. That shit is a multi-million dollar business. I'm not going to talk shit about it because I play it.

Despite my loss of faith in the league, I still highly recommend Sandbox Football as a game of skill.

[Sannyasi]

I don't see why it would make more sense for the NFL to rig games. Why would you risk the integrity of a multi-billion dollar industry to make things slightly easier for the marketing guys?

Strictly from a risk vs. reward standpoint, I don't see how anyone could come to the conclusion that fixing games would be in the best interest of the NFL.

[GordonGekko]

Originally Posted by T-post Tom

Welcome to a brave not-so-new world. This is a microcosm of modern society. Only one thing can revive you...

Thanks for brightening my day a bit here!

[Rausch]

Originally Posted by Sannyasi

I don't see why it would make more sense for the NFL to rig games. Why would you risk the integrity of a multi-billion dollar industry to make things slightly easier for the marketing guys?

Strictly from a risk vs. reward standpoint, I don't see how anyone could come to the conclusion that fixing games would be in the best interest of the NFL.

For the same reason the NFL and MLB ignored steroids for so long...

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by Sannyasi

I don't see why it would make more sense for the NFL to rig games. Why would you risk the integrity of a multi-billion dollar industry to make things slightly easier for the marketing guys?

Strictly from a risk vs. reward standpoint, I don't see how anyone could come to the conclusion that fixing games would be in the best interest of the NFL.

Because you have orders to increase revenues by 3.5 percent a year, and the easiest way to do that and keep your multi-million dollar salary is to see the league's biggest stars playing in the games with large viewer ratings potential.

Again, I don't think they're fixing games to ensure who'll win. I think they're working to ensure that games are close and exciting and have last-minute scores to pull out victories, preferably by the league's biggest stars. The league isn't sitting down and saying "Listen, the Saints are going to win this year, and they're going to go 13-3 with losses at Green Bay, Houston, and Chicago." They can't do that. But they can say, "We want a passing offense because passes produce more consumer engagement, and we want our biggest stars to be in exciting games, so let's keep 'em close and give those guys every chance to win."

[Sannyasi]

Originally Posted by Rausch

For the same reason the NFL and MLB ignored steroids for so long...

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.

[Sannyasi]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

Because you have orders to increase revenues by 3.5 percent a year, and the easiest way to do that and keep your multi-million dollar salary is to see the league's biggest stars playing in the games with large viewer ratings potential.

Again, I don't think they're fixing games to ensure who'll win. I think they're working to ensure that games are close and exciting and have last-minute scores to pull out victories, preferably by the league's biggest stars. The league isn't sitting down and saying "Listen, the Saints are going to win this year, and they're going to go 13-3 with losses at Green Bay, Houston, and Chicago." They can't do that. But they can say, "We want a passing offense because passes produce more consumer engagement, and we want our biggest stars to be in exciting games, so let's keep 'em close and give those guys every chance to win."

I can see why the results in recent years would lead some people to those conclusions. After all, the NFL marketing guys get paid millions of dollars to craft storylines out of these results that appeal to the public and spark interest in the sport. If you are a public relations guy after the Saints win the Super Bowl you'd be stupid not to invoke the triumphant spirit of a team giving hope to a city still coming back from a natural disaster. That shit sells, specifically to the more sentimental viewers that the NFL seems keen on attracting. However, the fact that these narratives exist is not evidence that they have been reverse engineered.

As far as the preferential treatment for super star players, no one can pretend to know the individual psychology of each referee, but I don't see it as a policy. Maybe my memories are different, but I don't recall Brady or Manning needing massive intervention from the refs to win their championships. There are so many individual moments in a game that someone could point to in hindsight, but in reality, isn't it much simpler to admit that these players win because they are damn good?

[ClevelandBronco]

When I stopped thinking of football as an essential event, a way of life and a tool to measure character and instead began to see it as nothing more than a passive entertainment that didn't require or even particularly care for my individual participation, my life improved. It was not a smooth transition. I still care a little, but I'm getting better.

Good luck with whichever path you decide to take from here, Mr. Rain Man.

[Brock]

It's just show biz now.

[Bearcat]

Originally Posted by Sannyasi

I can see why the results in recent years would lead some people to those conclusions. After all, the NFL marketing guys get paid millions of dollars to craft storylines out of these results that appeal to the public and spark interest in the sport. If you are a public relations guy after the Saints win the Super Bowl you'd be stupid not to invoke the triumphant spirit of a team giving hope to a city still coming back from a natural disaster. That shit sells, specifically to the more sentimental viewers that the NFL seems keen on attracting. However, the fact that these narratives exist is not evidence that they have been reverse engineered.

As far as the preferential treatment for super star players, no one can pretend to know the individual psychology of each referee, but I don't see it as a policy. Maybe my memories are different, but I don't recall Brady or Manning needing massive intervention from the refs to win their championships. There are so many individual moments in a game that someone could point to in hindsight, but in reality, isn't it much simpler to admit that these players win because they are damn good?

I don't think anyone is really stating otherwise. The NFL has created a QB league for the high scores and excitement, so of course the best QBs are going to have the best chance of winning. And yes, it's easy to come up with a number of conspiracies in hindsight... you could list reasons why the NFL would want any team in the league to win a SB, but of course some reasons are better than others.

I don't really believe the conspiracies, but there's really no doubt the NFL would benefit from certain outcomes and there's really no doubt the NFL is all about money these days. Like Rain Man said, I don't think it's predetermined at all... if the Saints don't make the playoffs after Katrina, there are always other storylines... but once they're there, if it's all about business and entertainment, it would almost be dumb not to nudge the Saints along IF they need a little push along the way.

I agree with you for the most part... conspiracy nuts will always find a reason the NFL wanted team x to win a SB or spin a certain call or whatever, and those reasons existing doesn't make for a valid conspiracy... 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.

[Bearcat]

Originally Posted by ClevelandBronco

When I stopped thinking of football as an essential event, a way of life and a tool to measure character and instead began to see it as nothing more than a passive entertainment that didn't require or even particularly care for my individual participation, my life improved. It was not a smooth transition. I still care a little, but I'm getting better.

Good luck with whichever path you decide to take from here, Mr. Rain Man.

Yep... I remember being the former in college, even though losses never really impacted my well being beyond a good night's sleep... people here would talk about not taking losses too harshly and I would tell them to , heh... this stuff is important!

It took me a while to get out of the habit of watching every single game and having the desire to spend hundreds to see big games live, and now it's much closer to simply having something on the TV Sunday afternoons. I've missed or turned off a few shitty games this season and barely watched 2011 or 2012... if it's not even entertaining, there's really no point. The NFL is still a decent product, but mostly not until mid-January.

[Otis99]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

So I wrote an essay and felt pretty good about it, and sent it in. I loved football.

I'd really like to read it. I suppose that the essay itself runs somewhat counter to the gist of your post, but I think it would make for a good companion piece to this well-written critique of the contest.

[jettio]

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. 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.

Why not post your essay so that we can compare it to the winning entries?

Since this looks like a yearly contest, you should submit the opening post as your essay for next year.

[notorious]

Originally Posted by ClevelandBronco

When I stopped thinking of football as an essential event, a way of life and a tool to measure character and instead began to see it as nothing more than a passive entertainment that didn't require or even particularly care for my individual participation, my life improved. It was not a smooth transition. I still care a little, but I'm getting better.

Good luck with whichever path you decide to take from here, Mr. Rain Man.

Bingo.

[Rain Man]

Lemme ponder putting my original essay up. Personally, I liked it, but I also recognize that it probably didn't have the tone to be a winner now that I read what they liked. It also was just about football and not the NFL, which I suspect was a fatal flaw.