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.

[Discuss Thrower]

Originally Posted by Pam Oliver's Forehead

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!

Will Vera Lynn be playing in the background for all of this?

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by LoneWolf

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.

I don't like the conspiracy talk, either, and maybe I shouldn't have included it in the discussion since it tends to dominate. I included it because it's a logical next step as football transitions from sport to entertainment, and it's a little squishy as to how far they've moved toward that step.

My intended main theme is that there are no football people running football any more, and I think the sport is suffering as a result. I don't think the current NFL is acting as a steward of the game, and the league is more interested in profit. I mentioned in an earlier post that this might be a natural destiny, and that anything becomes a business when it hits ten digits in revenues. But for me, that's when I start checking out and finding something else to be my passion.

[LoneWolf]

Here's the rub. Football and all professional sports have always been businesses. Football fans are paying customers and teams exist and have always existed to turn a profit. Lamar Hunt was a businessman. It just seems different because the numbers are bigger, but if these teams never made money the league would no longer exist.

[BlackHelicopters]

Sack up, dude .

[Chief Roundup]

I noticed the differences starting with the Tuck rule and letting the Patriots clear an area for the kicker. Most people had never heard of the Tuck rule before that play. Most teams would have been penalized for clearing the snow for the kicker.
9/11 happens and all the sudden the Patriots win the SB.

[Chief Roundup]

Lets also keep in mind that the NFL is considered Sports Entertainment as well.

[SPATCH]

Ahhhh yes...

I call this the plight of modernity: living without illusions without becoming disillusioned.

No easy task.

[Chief Roundup]

Originally Posted by -King-

Yeah but at the time, why would the league want to help the Patriots? Tom Brady was just another QB at that time and the Raider. were probably a bigger team marketwise than the Patriots at that point.
Posted via Mobile Device

Their very name and what happened. Patriot...Patriotic....Patriotism....You know those things that this country was built on.

[Brock]

Originally Posted by Chief Roundup

I noticed the differences starting with the Tuck rule and letting the Patriots clear an area for the kicker. Most people had never heard of the Tuck rule before that play. Most teams would have been penalized for clearing the snow for the kicker.
9/11 happens and all the sudden the Patriots win the SB.

The raiders called time out. There isn't any rule against clearing snow.

[cosmo20002]

Originally Posted by Chief Roundup

Lets also keep in mind that the NFL is considered Sports Entertainment as well.

What does that mean and why keep it in mind?

[cosmo20002]

Originally Posted by Chief Roundup

Their very name and what happened. Patriot...Patriotic....Patriotism....You know those things that this country was built on.

The 9/11-Patriots thing is sadly ridiculous. Exactly why does the team name matter? This whole conspiracy revolves around the TEAM NAME.

Did people really tune in because the PATRIOTS were playing? Did people really rally around the PATRIOTS just because of the team name and 9/11?

It's childish nonsense.

[ciaomichael]

Originally Posted by LoneWolf

Here's the rub. Football and all professional sports have always been businesses. Football fans are paying customers and teams exist and have always existed to turn a profit. Lamar Hunt was a businessman. It just seems different because the numbers are bigger, but if these teams never made money the league would no longer exist.

That's true. In the days of the old AFL those guys were literally fighting for their existence. And when I say "those guys" I mean owners, coaches and players alike. As a result, the marketing was grass roots. The players were real people who genuinely inter-acted with the fans. Every team had its own distinct personality. It was a world of innovative football, especially in the AFL. And the game of football itself really wasn't distinguished from the business/marketing side - it was one and the same. And real, spontaneous things tended to happen back then - who can forget the famous Jets-Raiders Heidi game? Not even the brightest NFL marketing person could ever design such a stunt these days.

Some time around the late 80's/early 90's, the game started to become homogenized and then, later, sterilized. Instead of marketing being what comes naturally to entreprenuers, the so-called professionals took over. Marketing people love a story. But, the stories have to either be generated spontaneously or they're just re-cycled. I suspect that's the source of some of the OP's frustration. Like the re-cycled stories of the infirm/disabled children. The first few make for "feel good" stories, but after that become a bit obnoxious.

That's why I kind of enjoyed that Steelers coach jumping out on the field the other day. It may or may not have been rehearsed in the guy's mind, but it reminded me of something you might have seen in the old days. Of course, the fines and such imposed by the NFL were kind of over the top...should have just thrown an unsportsmanlike flag and called it a day.

[Chief Roundup]

Originally Posted by cosmo20002

What does that mean and why keep it in mind?

Wrestling is Sports Entertainment. Sports Entertainment focuses on the Entertainment aspect of the business not the Sports part of it.

[Bearcat]

Originally Posted by LoneWolf

Here's the rub. Football and all professional sports have always been businesses. Football fans are paying customers and teams exist and have always existed to turn a profit. Lamar Hunt was a businessman. It just seems different because the numbers are bigger, but if these teams never made money the league would no longer exist.

Stakeholder vs shareholder... or specifically for the NFL, the product and fans vs money. Yeah, there's always the business side of it and they have to make their money, but it can make a HUGE difference whether your focus is in the right place or solely on the money.

And actually, if the focus had only been about money back then, it probably wouldn't exist today. Like ciaomichael said, they were just fighting for relevance... and when you're fighting for customers, that's where your focus is at. You're just trying to make the product the best it can be and attract fans.

Well, now that they have all the customers they'll ever need and make eleventy billion dollars a year, they could focus on the game and fans, but they choose to focus on making 5% more money next year.

It's nothing new... maybe Lamar dreamed of making millions, but back then his passion had to be football, not money. Just look at the differences between Sporting's ownership and any NFL team, or most any (relatively) small company vs most any huge company.

[cdcox]

You left out the part about the compass in the stock and a thing that tells time. That would have made it better.