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.

[KCUnited]

The worst are those emo pieces about some sick kid during the pre-games. I know you got to throw in something for all the wives out there, but just give me my fantasy projections.

[Mosbonian]

Simply put....you are over thinking this Rain Man.

[Aries Walker]

Have you tried getting interested in local, semi-pro teams? I worked for a while with a guy who played for the Carroll County (Maryland) Cannons, and those guys really played for the love of the game. It's like the movie Slap Shot, just with football.

And, you're in luck. there's a league in the KC area.

[notorious]

Tuck Rule was as blatant as it gets.

[-King-]

Originally Posted by notorious

Tuck Rule was as blatant as it gets.

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

[notorious]

I am not making a statement about any agenda, I just can not look at that play and see anything that resembles an incomplete pass.

It was against the Raiders, too.

[ChiliConCarnage]

Of course the NFL is a business ran by business people. If anything the NFL seems like the league least concerned with market size.

The only NFL game of import that looked possibly crooked to me was the Seahawks vs Steelers super bowl game. I can't really remember the specifics but I just remember the feeling that it seemed tainted to a guy who had no rooting interest either way.

[Imon Yourside]

Ya the game is rigged, the main reason I started working Sundays. I will never get that pissed off about a BS loss again.

[Ace Gunner]

fully where you are OP

*I am disgusted with all the ref face time & reviews

*no more contact, this game looks more like basketball & soccer

*Jamaal looks like a nostalgia clip inserted into today's game


I don't watch as much football these days. I travel for my work, often making travel schedules match games I wanted to attend. I used to attend 12 or more games per season and the past couple years that number has dwindled -- this season I have attended four games.

I don't make SB plans anymore. I didn't even watch SB45 two years ago, decided to work a project instead.

I like football because it is a high contact game mixed with strategy similar to chess & checkers. but now that contact is illegal, I have lost interest.

almost time to let go. I'll probably stop following after Jamaal retires.

[ChiefRocka]

What if we just enslave the gladiators and have them play each Sunday for their lives?

[Imon Yourside]

Originally Posted by ChiefRocka

What if we just enslave the gladiators and have them play each Sunday for their lives?

Bring them in for a look?

[InChiefsHeaven]

Originally Posted by Bob Dole

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

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

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

[Sannyasi]

Which team do you guys think should have won in 2009 that had their Super Bowl stolen from them? I recall the Saints being pretty good that year.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by -King-

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

It has parity. It's not competitive.

Yes, the individual games are closer. But the same teams, by and large, win most of those close contests, year after year.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by cdcox

1. Is there more than one way to build a winning team? I've beat the drum loudly that a franchise QB is the only way to build a team that can consistently compete for a SB year in and year out. I still mostly believe that, but with the way thigh paid QBs have impacted their team's salary caps, I'm beginning to think there may be another way. I don't have all the numbers in front of me, but it seems like the Ravens, Patriots, Cowboys, Packers, Giants, and Steelers are having trouble putting sufficient talent around their big $ QBs. SB championships over the last 10 years seem to be linked to being well rounded more than having a very top QB. I wish there was more balance between offense and defense and between passing and running, but air circuses haven't achieved a lock hold on winning the SB. There still seems to be some kind of balance.

SB championships over the last 10 years are ultimately linked to teams FINDING the very top QB. Once everybody KNOWS they're a top QB, they get paid, and like you said, that contract becomes a noose around that team's salary cap.

It's why a team should draft a QB in the first few rounds every single year.