Football Football and My Crisis of Faith. - Page 2

**Rain Man** · 02:01 AM

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.

mikey23545 · 12-09-2013, 02:25 AM

I can only say this, Rainman...Your OP should have been your contest entry.

Redcoats58 · 12-09-2013, 02:30 AM

Well its absolutely entertainment and not sport. If you tried to sue the NFL for rigging a game you wouldn't have a leg to stand on because the NFL is deemed entertainment and can produce whatever outcome they want for any given game. Does that mean the players rig games? No, although I'm sure it's happened but not as likely as the refs fixing games. And you're right, Saints going to the big game after Katrina, fixed, Pats after 911, fixed. There are plenty more I'm sure.

Interesting article, if it has already been posted then I apologize. http://spaces.covers.com/blog/Maximu...or-Profit.html

12-09-2013, 02:37 AM

Hey, I presume this is a cleverly designed ruse to to make the NFL booger-pickers who spy on message boards select the Chiefs as the next SuperBowl winner due to your reverse psychological warfare! That's pure genious. You're like Hank Fan. Keep matriculating your words out into the interwebs, boys. Ah crap. Now they know we know.

cosmo20002 · 12-09-2013, 02:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Redcoats58

Well its absolutely entertainment and not sport. If you tried to sue the NFL for rigging a game you wouldn't have a leg to stand on because the NFL is deemed entertainment and can produce whatever outcome they want for any given game. Does that mean the players rig games? No, although I'm sure it's happened but not as likely as the refs fixing games. And you're right, Saints going to the big game after Katrina, fixed, Pats after 911, fixed. There are plenty more I'm sure.

Interesting article, if it has already been posted then I apologize. http://spaces.covers.com/blog/Maximu...or-Profit.html

Where exactly did you pick up that nonsense?

Also, the Saints got the Super Bowl 5 seasons after Katrina.

The Patriots did win the next SB after 9/11, but they also had a damn good team that went on to dominate most of the next 10 years. Anyway, wouldn't it have made more sense to fix the game for a New York team since they were the city attacked?

**Rausch** · 12-09-2013, 02:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cosmo20002

Anyway, wouldn't it have made more sense to fix the game for a New York team since they were the city attacked?

Exactly...

cosmo20002 · 12-09-2013, 02:51 AM

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.

cosmo20002 · 12-09-2013, 02:55 AM

And again--where is the Saints/Katrina thing coming from?

August 2005 - Katrina hits
2005 season
2006 season
2007 season
2008 season
2009 season - Saints make the SB, win in Feb 2010

Chiefspants · 12-09-2013, 03:02 AM

The Patriots "win" today may cause me to reexamine my love for the game. I have never seen the officials to blatantly give a team the victory as the refs did for the Pats today. Sure, there have been questionable calls in the past, (i.e. "the tuck rule", phantom holds, etc). But each I had seen contained acceptable amounts of grey area for me to believe that the destiny of the game was still in the hands of the players.

The referees gave the Patriot players and fans the win today, and unfortunately, I do not imagine these occurrences will cease anytime soon. When I was five years old, I fell in love with the gritty, ugly, and unpredictability of the game. The meaning of "Any Given Sunday" kept me occupied as a fan for the past fifteen seasons. However, it now feels as though the NFL has subverted its unpredictability for the benefit of its celebrities, marketability and narratives that allow it to create "must-see-TV".

Today the fans of Cleveland were robbed by a league that has turned its back on "Any Given Sunday" for the sake of the bottom line (though I imagine that Browns fans are already quite accustomed to this feeling).

Redcoats58 · 12-09-2013, 03:20 AM

Quote:

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.

I didn't say I believed every game was rigged but I do believe there are rigged games that are swung by the officials. There is too much money involved for it not to happen. I follow the Chiefs because they have been my team since I was a kid but if there was 100% proof tomorrow that the league has been fixing games I would stop watching.

threebag · 12-09-2013, 06:46 AM

Why is it that as a CHIEFS fan I always feel like I am holding Aces and Eights?

ChiefRocka · 12-09-2013, 06:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chiefspants

The Patriots "win" today may cause me to reexamine my love for the game. I have never seen the officials to blatantly give a team the victory as the refs did for the Pats today. Sure, there have been questionable calls in the past, (i.e. "the tuck rule", phantom holds, etc). But each I had seen contained acceptable amounts of grey area for me to believe that the destiny of the game was still in the hands of the players.

The referees gave the Patriot players and fans the win today, and unfortunately, I do not imagine these occurrences will cease anytime soon. When I was five years old, I fell in love with the gritty, ugly, and unpredictability of the game. The meaning of "Any Given Sunday" kept me occupied as a fan for the past fifteen seasons. However, it now feels as though the NFL has subverted its unpredictability for the benefit of its celebrities, marketability and narratives that allow it to create "must-see-TV".

Today the fans of Cleveland were robbed by a league that has turned its back on "Any Given Sunday" for the sake of the bottom line (though I imagine that Browns fans are already quite accustomed to this feeling).

That was a single bad PI call at the end of the game. Has happened before.

-King- · 12-09-2013, 06:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cosmo20002

Wait a sec---Katrina hit right before the 2005 season. The Saints won the Superbowl following the 2009 season. That's five seasons later.

For some reason, people always bring this up without really researching the year the Saints won.
Posted via Mobile Device

**loochy** · 12-09-2013, 06:58 AM

Rain man,

please send this essay to your local newspaper as well as the KC Star.

**Bob Dole** · 12-09-2013, 07:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cosmo20002

And again--where is the Saints/Katrina thing coming from?

August 2005 - Katrina hits
2005 season
2006 season
2007 season
2008 season
2009 season - Saints make the SB, win in Feb 2010

So you slept through all 492 versions of "New Orleans 5 Years Later"?

-King- · 12-09-2013, 07:04 AM

The ironic thing about this whole thing is that the league is way more competitive now that it ever was in the eras Rain Man is nostalgic about.
Posted via Mobile Device

12-09-2013, 12:54 AM
Rain Man Seize life. Be an ermine. Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: My house Casino cash: $-642449 VARSITY	Football and My Crisis of Faith. 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. Last edited by Rain Man; 12-09-2013 at 02:01 AM..
Posts: 145,450

12-09-2013, 02:25 AM	#16
mikey23545 MVP Join Date: Aug 2000 Casino cash: $10015321	I can only say this, Rainman...Your OP should have been your contest entry.
Posts: 12,314

12-09-2013, 02:30 AM	#17
Redcoats58 MVP Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Kansas City Mo. Casino cash: $10005055	Well its absolutely entertainment and not sport. If you tried to sue the NFL for rigging a game you wouldn't have a leg to stand on because the NFL is deemed entertainment and can produce whatever outcome they want for any given game. Does that mean the players rig games? No, although I'm sure it's happened but not as likely as the refs fixing games. And you're right, Saints going to the big game after Katrina, fixed, Pats after 911, fixed. There are plenty more I'm sure. Interesting article, if it has already been posted then I apologize. http://spaces.covers.com/blog/Maximu...or-Profit.html Last edited by Redcoats58; 12-09-2013 at 02:39 AM.. Reason: Posted wrong link
Posts: 5,234

12-09-2013, 02:37 AM	#18
Phobia Guest Casino cash: $	Hey, I presume this is a cleverly designed ruse to to make the NFL booger-pickers who spy on message boards select the Chiefs as the next SuperBowl winner due to your reverse psychological warfare! That's pure genious. You're like Hank Fan. Keep matriculating your words out into the interwebs, boys. Ah crap. Now they know we know.
Posts: n/a

12-09-2013, 03:02 AM	#23
Chiefspants World's Best Boss Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Bronco Country Casino cash: $3584654	The Patriots "win" today may cause me to reexamine my love for the game. I have never seen the officials to blatantly give a team the victory as the refs did for the Pats today. Sure, there have been questionable calls in the past, (i.e. "the tuck rule", phantom holds, etc). But each I had seen contained acceptable amounts of grey area for me to believe that the destiny of the game was still in the hands of the players. The referees gave the Patriot players and fans the win today, and unfortunately, I do not imagine these occurrences will cease anytime soon. When I was five years old, I fell in love with the gritty, ugly, and unpredictability of the game. The meaning of "Any Given Sunday" kept me occupied as a fan for the past fifteen seasons. However, it now feels as though the NFL has subverted its unpredictability for the benefit of its celebrities, marketability and narratives that allow it to create "must-see-TV". Today the fans of Cleveland were robbed by a league that has turned its back on "Any Given Sunday" for the sake of the bottom line (though I imagine that Browns fans are already quite accustomed to this feeling). Last edited by Chiefspants; 12-09-2013 at 03:08 AM..
Posts: 19,383

12-09-2013, 06:46 AM	#25
threebag Snacks Are Under My Apron Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: The Edge Casino cash: $-1072380	Why is it that as a CHIEFS fan I always feel like I am holding Aces and Eights? __________________ Smells like Up Dog in here. RIP HayWire Greatest Almost Mod Ever
Posts: 26,266

12-09-2013, 06:58 AM	#28
loochy Hey Loochy, I'm hooome! Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: PooPooKaKaPeePeeShire Casino cash: $-1709603	Rain man, please send this essay to your local newspaper as well as the KC Star. __________________ Hey Loochy, I'm hoooome!
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12-09-2013, 07:04 AM	#30
-King- ▓▓▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▓▓ Join Date: Jan 2009 Casino cash: $-1384257	The ironic thing about this whole thing is that the league is way more competitive now that it ever was in the eras Rain Man is nostalgic about. Posted via Mobile Device
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