Football Football and My Crisis of Faith. - Page 4

**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.

-King- · 12-09-2013, 08:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by htismaqe

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.

Well of course. That's going to be the case no matter what era you're talking about. But the number of teams that have a chance at the Superbowl is bigger now more than in any other era also.
Posted via Mobile Device

htismaqe · 12-09-2013, 08:11 AM

Honestly, my enjoyment of the game changed dramatically this past offseason while I contemplated everything that had happened and whether or not I still wanted to be a fan of the Chiefs.

I had to get the "it's all about the Super Bowl" idea out of my head. Primarily because I came to the realization that the Chiefs will likely never win one. The cards are stacked heavily against them.

htismaqe · 12-09-2013, 08:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by -King-

Well of course. That's going to be the case no matter what era you're talking about.
Posted via Mobile Device

So then, why are people Detroit fans? Or Cleveland fans? Or dare I say it, Chiefs fans?

Hog's Gone Fishin · 12-09-2013, 08:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rain Man

You mean, the year after Katrina when a Saints Super Bowl victory would be a huge marketing story?

Or the year that 911 occurred and the PATRIOTS won

**notorious** · 12-09-2013, 08:28 AM

You can see so-called conspiracies everywhere. I don't believe it goes that deep.

I see bias for stars and their teams, which happens in every sport. We need to be the team that has the star that gets the token calls every game.

"B b b but that team had a chance to win after the bad call!"

This is the NFL, a game can, and has been nudged toward the darling team by a biased call many, many times.

htismaqe · 12-09-2013, 08:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by notorious

We need to be the team that has the star that gets the token calls every game.

Never gonna happen.

We're the "feel good" story. Where guys like Joe Montana go to die. And where guys that weren't all that good in the 1st place go to "resurrect" their careers.

We're not ever going to be the lead actor in this play. We're part of the supporting cast.

Dayze · 12-09-2013, 08:33 AM

Rain Man essay > 90% of sports 'writers'

**notorious** · 12-09-2013, 08:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by htismaqe

Never gonna happen.

We're the "feel good" story. Where guys like Joe Montana go to die. And where guys that weren't all that good in the 1st place go to "resurrect" their careers.

We're not ever going to be the lead actor in this play. We're part of the supporting cast.

Indy did it, so we have that 1:11tybillion chance of getting lucky.

Drafting RT's isn't going to do it, though.

Hog's Gone Fishin · 12-09-2013, 08:36 AM

I have two comments, actually 3.

1) I can understand this feeling in general and my subconscience feels exactly what Rainman expresses.

2) This feeling I have found can be altered by drinking heavily on
Sundays.

3) If I were GM of a football team I would draft Defense heavily every year to keep my D young and fast. I would build my Offense around that Franchise QB that would have to be paid and plug in the rest through FA. It is a formula I've developed in theory during my long days at the farm when I have not too much to think about.

4) Oh yeah, I must add a 4th thought , sorry, but ,Peyton Manning.

cosmo20002 · 12-09-2013, 08:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by htismaqe

Honestly, my enjoyment of the game changed dramatically this past offseason while I contemplated everything that had happened and whether or not I still wanted to be a fan of the Chiefs.

I had to get the "it's all about the Super Bowl" idea out of my head. Primarily because I came to the realization that the Chiefs will likely never win one. The cards are stacked heavily against them.

What is stacked against them, other than choices the team itself made (signings, trades, draft picks)?

htismaqe · 12-09-2013, 08:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cosmo20002

What is stacked against them, other than choices the team itself made (signings, trades, draft picks)?

The general attitude of the fans, aka what they are usually satisfied with vs what they are not.

The size of the market they're in.

The location of the market they're in.

Off the top of my head.

cosmo20002 · 12-09-2013, 08:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hog Farmer

Or the year that 911 occurred and the PATRIOTS won

Yeah, it was rigged that a shitty team would win just because it's team name is Patriots.

Never mind that the team was great and basically dominated the next decade, or that having a New York team win would have been the more obvious storyline.

OrtonsPiercedTaint · 12-09-2013, 08:44 AM

There is a network where people spend hours watching people cook. I thought golf was bad

cosmo20002 · 12-09-2013, 08:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by htismaqe

The general attitude of the fans, aka what they are usually satisfied with vs what they are not.

The size of the market they're in.

The location of the market they're in.

Off the top of my head.

And so those things make it less likely to win the Super Bowl? How?

**Rausch** · 12-09-2013, 08:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by OrtonsPiercedTaint

There is a network where people spend hours watching people cook. I thought golf was bad

Attractive women and food.

Everything golf is not...

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, 08:11 AM	#47
htismaqe 'Tis my eye! Join Date: Aug 2000 Location: Chiefsplanet Casino cash: $8139900	Honestly, my enjoyment of the game changed dramatically this past offseason while I contemplated everything that had happened and whether or not I still wanted to be a fan of the Chiefs. I had to get the "it's all about the Super Bowl" idea out of my head. Primarily because I came to the realization that the Chiefs will likely never win one. The cards are stacked heavily against them.
Posts: 104,353

12-09-2013, 08:28 AM	#50
notorious Supporter Join Date: May 2005 Location: Who knows? Casino cash: $-934116	You can see so-called conspiracies everywhere. I don't believe it goes that deep. I see bias for stars and their teams, which happens in every sport. We need to be the team that has the star that gets the token calls every game. "B b b but that team had a chance to win after the bad call!" This is the NFL, a game can, and has been nudged toward the darling team by a biased call many, many times.
Posts: 88,578

12-09-2013, 08:33 AM	#52
Dayze Resident Glue Sniffer Join Date: Nov 2003 Casino cash: $1779358	Rain Man essay > 90% of sports 'writers' __________________ Life is 99% inspiration, 1% Perspiration, and 1% Attention to Detial. RIP & Godspeed: Saccoppo Lonewolf Ed Fire Me Boy
Posts: 37,460

12-09-2013, 08:36 AM	#54
Hog's Gone Fishin Fish are scared of me Join Date: Nov 2001 Casino cash: $-1529523	I have two comments, actually 3. 1) I can understand this feeling in general and my subconscience feels exactly what Rainman expresses. 2) This feeling I have found can be altered by drinking heavily on Sundays. 3) If I were GM of a football team I would draft Defense heavily every year to keep my D young and fast. I would build my Offense around that Franchise QB that would have to be paid and plug in the rest through FA. It is a formula I've developed in theory during my long days at the farm when I have not too much to think about. 4) Oh yeah, I must add a 4th thought , sorry, but ,Peyton Manning.
Posts: 40,647

12-09-2013, 08:44 AM	#58
OrtonsPiercedTaint MVP Join Date: Dec 2012 Casino cash: $10004980	There is a network where people spend hours watching people cook. I thought golf was bad
Posts: 5,994