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.

[Just Passin' By]

Originally Posted by GoChargers

Disagreed. Clearly they must have gained some major advantage from doing it, because not only were they doing it for seven years under complete secrecy, but Belicheat's assistants have also tried to go back to doing it when they've gotten head coaching jobs (i.e. McDumbass in Denver, Charlie Weis and his laptop at Notre Dame).

Stealing signs was not the problem, and Ditka, among many, made that clear:

"To steal signals from the booth, everybody's done it," Ditka said. "There are a lot of ways to cheat, a lot of ways of stealing signals, and if a team's not smart enough to change their signals, they deserve to be stolen.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2...gnals-stealing

The issue was about camera placement.

[tk13]

Originally Posted by Just Passin' By

The Patriots were on the verge of blowing out the Rams in that SB, when Warner tossed a pick-6. That score would have made it 24-3. The officials, however, called a penalty on the Patriots, getting McGinest for holding Faulk. If there had really been a conspiracy to ensure the Patriots victory, they could have just picked up that flag.

I don't disagree. I'm not into the whole conspiracy thing... sometimes people forget the calls that go against the team the NFL is supposedly "for."

If you were going to get into that though... I think you'd be better off starting with something like the Super Bowl blackout. That was legitimately weird, a very rare event, that certainly appeared to help restore the competitive balance of the game. I think you'd be better off arguing the NFL does things to keep games competitive. I don't think that's the case, but at least it would make sense.

[-King-]

Originally Posted by LoneWolf

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.

This alone should shut down the conspiracy
Posted via Mobile Device

[-King-]

Originally Posted by Chief Roundup

In baseball when a team is caught cheating they get stripped of their championship. In football when a team is caught cheating to win a championship they just get a minor fine and draft picks taken away but get to keep their championship.

What the hell?
Posted via Mobile Device

[KCwolf]

Originally Posted by cosmo20002

I truly don't understand how someone could truly believe that NFL games are fixed yet still be a fan that follows the sport. If I really thought that the league would not allow KC to beat Denver/Manning or allow KC to make it to the SB, I would have no interest in following it.

You nailed it. However, message boards revel in this kind of negativity... it's how they thrive. There is ZERO chance the NFL is rigged, but let the braintrust who post on message boards think otherwise. Crazy.

[Nzoner]

Originally Posted by KCwolf

You nailed it. However, message boards revel in this kind of negativity... it's how they thrive. There is ZERO chance the NFL is rigged, but let the braintrust who post on message boards think otherwise. Crazy.

Never,ever,not one single game?

[GoChargers]

Originally Posted by KCwolf

There is ZERO chance the NFL is rigged

You are truly naive. An NBA ref has admitted to rigging games, you really think the same shit doesn't happen in other sports?

[-King-]

Originally Posted by GoChargers

You are truly naive. An NBA ref has admitted to rigging games, you really think the same shit doesn't happen in other sports?

One individual ref did that. And he wasn't very good at it at all.
Posted via Mobile Device

[lcarus]

I agree with basically everything Mr. Rainman has stated in this thread. This kind of corporate greed extends far beyond just the NFL too. Seems like every little thing in this country is all about the bottom line and making that extra penny - at ANY cost.

[cosmo20002]

Originally Posted by Nzoner

Never,ever,not one single game?

Originally Posted by GoChargers

You are truly naive. An NBA ref has admitted to rigging games, you really think the same shit doesn't happen in other sports?

Has a player or ref ever done anything? Sure. But on orders from the league itself? I very, very much doubt that.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

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.

Cosmo's "crusade" seems to have started right after his exchange with me and I'm not sure why. I don't think the NFL is rigged.

[cosmo20002]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

Cosmo's "crusade" seems to have started right after his exchange with me and I'm not sure why. I don't think the NFL is rigged.

You might of helped inspire it. Probably because you said something like the cards are stacked heavily against the Chiefs ever going to the SB. You also said there is a reason the Chiefs haven't drafted a good QB and implied it was some reason other than simply bad choices by the Chiefs.

Basically, you're one of the "not rigged, but biased" people, although I'm not really sure what that means. Either the league is directly influencing the game outcomes or not.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by cosmo20002

You might of helped inspire it. Probably because you said something like the cards are stacked heavily against the Chiefs ever going to the SB. You also said there is a reason the Chiefs haven't drafted a good QB and implied it was some reason other than simply bad choices by the Chiefs.

Basically, you're one of the "not rigged, but biased" people, although I'm not really sure what that means. Either the league is directly influencing the game outcomes or not.

The league is directing the outcomes of games, not determining them.

They're manipulating the rules to produce certain types of games, namely high-scoring offensive shows. This inherently favors the teams that are built to play that type of game. Hell, a smart team would do everything it can, within the rules (and maybe outside of them too) to build a team that is built to play that type of game.

Of course, that's not at all the same as rigging games to determine which teams win and lose. I don't believe games are "fixed". The league doesn't favor Manning and Brady, nor does it favor the Broncos or Pats. The league favors, for the most part, good QBs and having a great QB just further emphasizes that.

[Iowanian]

Stemming from the epidemic of bullying in schools, low self esteem prevention in youth and to prevent adolescent depression due to experiencing losing season things must change. In response to these growing concerns among the modern, typical transgender-american parents and in light of the suffering of Johnathan Martin, the NFL will implement a rule change starting in 2014 where no points are kept in games.

We cannot have players feeling dejected and sad, as these are causing more emotional damage than concussions. Players will also be issued new equipment, which includes 2 flags to be worn at the level of the hip bones.

To further reflect the state of the nation and make fans feel more welcome, the NFL will now only allow 2 hot cheerleaders, 3 average and 5 heavy to obese cheerleaders to better reflect society.

[Quesadilla Joe]

The Broncos offense is fourth in the league in penalties, their defense is 8th...