Klosterman is late to this particular party. Sentiment among religious organizations for decades, has been the NFL reduces church attendance. I leave it to the more sophisticated whether we are better off. Television platforms pay premium prices for football is the appearance of spontaneity. With the ubiquity of betting, this quality may be called into question. From a business perspective, it would be intolerable. Also, games on Sunday and especially during the playoffs, provide a level of social engagement for people in an increasingly atomized society.
Great conversation. Was struck by the idea that three hours of NFL game time yields 11 minutes of action. Anybody who has gone to a Sumo match can relate. I saw an ESPN broadcast of Sumo, but just the action parts, thereby eliminating what makes Sumo worth watching.
"understanding why we think what we think, what influences we’re laboring under, how our own biases are affecting what we think, is incredibly important work. Maybe the most important work."
I feel so validated!! Thanks! I've been trying to understand these things since I was a teenager (now starting on my next half century) and always thought more people ought to be doing so. Hmph! Will check out Klostermans work!
His new book is great but I love his whole catalog. Depending on your age, you may like "The Nineties" a lot. All of his essay/reporting collections are great.
Uhm football? The last time I remotely cared about football was in the 1980s while I was on a ship. We were in port in the PI and my CO gave us an extra day off because the superbowl was happening on Monday local time. So, a day off. Didn’t watch the game and couldn’t tell you who played.
O. W. Shaddock: You and B.A. and all the rest of you coaches are chickenshit cocksuckers. No feeling for the game at all, man. You'll win, but it'll just be numbers on a scoreboard. Numbers, that's all you care about. Fuck, man, that's not enough for me.
Coach Johnson: I don't have to listen to this.
O. W. Shaddock: Oh, yes, you fucking do! You got to listen to me for once! All you coaches are chickenshit cocksuckers! You're all chickenshit cocksuckers! God damn you!
The media owns the gaming sports books which infect and influence the play. 100 million per game. How much is lost at 17-1 against? See Massachusetts Public health ad with suckers losing hundreds! National Gaming Commission and streamers never publishes the losses per game or per week. Read the Rose report.
Explain the inexplicable plays. No whistles on tush push. No more tackling. It is all hug and waltz. It is like acid on a battery. Ask Pete Rose.
I’m with you on the gambling. On stuff like player safety and officiating:
1. Go watch a game from 1985. The officiating is BAD. It’s just that a) there aren’t 50 kazillion cameras and angles to every little play and everything isn’t in high def; b) no one analyzed every little play (they didn’t break down every microsecond of whether something was a catch and a good chunk of the time it wasn’t but they gave it to the guy anyway); c) you didn’t have every game available to watch by anyone at any time- it was your local market and maybe another game or so and that was it; and d) there was no social media to amplify every call.
I’d argue that, when you consider all the stuff they have them looking for, they do a pretty good job, 7 guys trying to police 22 car accidents, a hundred times, once a week.
2. On tackling, I hate it. BUT….
No one wants to Patrick Mahomes or Tom Brady or whoever sit on the bench injured while Mitch Trubisky fills in. So you can have your favorite QB, or you can have “old school football”. But you can’t have both. (BTW, if you’re a fan of defense, scoring has been down the last several years, league wide- even with all the innovations and offensive records being set. Offense is as efficient as it’s ever been. But defense is too!)
After the concussion lawsuits, something had to be done.
3. Some of what you’re complaining about is the upshot of the salary cap. It’s fixed teams to prioritize certain positions over others. It’s also resulted in certain body types and skill sets being shifted. For example, fullbacks. Why aren’t there many FBs anymore?
Think about this: Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen are as big as Larry Czonka and John Riggins. Safeties aren’t really any bigger than they used to be. But Ironhead Heyward was a good FB I. His day. He’s got two sons- one’s a little bigger, the other a little smaller. They play DT and TE. 30 years ago they’d have been fullbacks.
If you can catch you’ll play WR. Doesn’t matter how good of a DB you’d be. Stuff like that changes the game too.
One reason why gambling is bad is that it makes all of these questions at least thinkable, if not actually likely. (On a player level, though, the temptation is enormous.)
Professional sports, however 'popular,' are now always, like it or not, rigged by the betting systems.
The just-missed touchdown conversion. The not-quite dunked basketball. The ineffectual home-run hit that didn't go far enough. Or . . . take your pick. You and I will never know how any game is rigged, for money.
It's now just entertainment. Showbiz.
Mencken was right. You'll never go broke underestimating the public taste.
Remember, I'm a cynic: a closet idealist longing to be surprised. Surprise me. Tell me I'm wrong. Then . . . prove it.
I have to say, before I'd seen the description of Klosterman's book, I had not thought of the idea of pro football as the nation's last bastion of a monoculture — but having been exposed to it, I can't stop thinking about it.
(Having not yet read the book, I'm curious if Klosterman will also address the ways that more traditional pop culture presences — thinking here of both Taylor Swift and Hailee Steinfeld — connect with the larger world of the NFL through their relationships with athletes currently playing in the league in question.)
Klosterman is late to this particular party. Sentiment among religious organizations for decades, has been the NFL reduces church attendance. I leave it to the more sophisticated whether we are better off. Television platforms pay premium prices for football is the appearance of spontaneity. With the ubiquity of betting, this quality may be called into question. From a business perspective, it would be intolerable. Also, games on Sunday and especially during the playoffs, provide a level of social engagement for people in an increasingly atomized society.
Off topic, but is the Bulwark Movie Club still a thing?
Great conversation. Was struck by the idea that three hours of NFL game time yields 11 minutes of action. Anybody who has gone to a Sumo match can relate. I saw an ESPN broadcast of Sumo, but just the action parts, thereby eliminating what makes Sumo worth watching.
"understanding why we think what we think, what influences we’re laboring under, how our own biases are affecting what we think, is incredibly important work. Maybe the most important work."
I feel so validated!! Thanks! I've been trying to understand these things since I was a teenager (now starting on my next half century) and always thought more people ought to be doing so. Hmph! Will check out Klostermans work!
His new book is great but I love his whole catalog. Depending on your age, you may like "The Nineties" a lot. All of his essay/reporting collections are great.
Uhm football? The last time I remotely cared about football was in the 1980s while I was on a ship. We were in port in the PI and my CO gave us an extra day off because the superbowl was happening on Monday local time. So, a day off. Didn’t watch the game and couldn’t tell you who played.
O. W. Shaddock: You and B.A. and all the rest of you coaches are chickenshit cocksuckers. No feeling for the game at all, man. You'll win, but it'll just be numbers on a scoreboard. Numbers, that's all you care about. Fuck, man, that's not enough for me.
Coach Johnson: I don't have to listen to this.
O. W. Shaddock: Oh, yes, you fucking do! You got to listen to me for once! All you coaches are chickenshit cocksuckers! You're all chickenshit cocksuckers! God damn you!
Phil Elliott: Far out.
Love North Dallas Forty
The media owns the gaming sports books which infect and influence the play. 100 million per game. How much is lost at 17-1 against? See Massachusetts Public health ad with suckers losing hundreds! National Gaming Commission and streamers never publishes the losses per game or per week. Read the Rose report.
Explain the inexplicable plays. No whistles on tush push. No more tackling. It is all hug and waltz. It is like acid on a battery. Ask Pete Rose.
I’m with you on the gambling. On stuff like player safety and officiating:
1. Go watch a game from 1985. The officiating is BAD. It’s just that a) there aren’t 50 kazillion cameras and angles to every little play and everything isn’t in high def; b) no one analyzed every little play (they didn’t break down every microsecond of whether something was a catch and a good chunk of the time it wasn’t but they gave it to the guy anyway); c) you didn’t have every game available to watch by anyone at any time- it was your local market and maybe another game or so and that was it; and d) there was no social media to amplify every call.
I’d argue that, when you consider all the stuff they have them looking for, they do a pretty good job, 7 guys trying to police 22 car accidents, a hundred times, once a week.
2. On tackling, I hate it. BUT….
No one wants to Patrick Mahomes or Tom Brady or whoever sit on the bench injured while Mitch Trubisky fills in. So you can have your favorite QB, or you can have “old school football”. But you can’t have both. (BTW, if you’re a fan of defense, scoring has been down the last several years, league wide- even with all the innovations and offensive records being set. Offense is as efficient as it’s ever been. But defense is too!)
After the concussion lawsuits, something had to be done.
3. Some of what you’re complaining about is the upshot of the salary cap. It’s fixed teams to prioritize certain positions over others. It’s also resulted in certain body types and skill sets being shifted. For example, fullbacks. Why aren’t there many FBs anymore?
Think about this: Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen are as big as Larry Czonka and John Riggins. Safeties aren’t really any bigger than they used to be. But Ironhead Heyward was a good FB I. His day. He’s got two sons- one’s a little bigger, the other a little smaller. They play DT and TE. 30 years ago they’d have been fullbacks.
If you can catch you’ll play WR. Doesn’t matter how good of a DB you’d be. Stuff like that changes the game too.
One reason why gambling is bad is that it makes all of these questions at least thinkable, if not actually likely. (On a player level, though, the temptation is enormous.)
Professional sports, however 'popular,' are now always, like it or not, rigged by the betting systems.
The just-missed touchdown conversion. The not-quite dunked basketball. The ineffectual home-run hit that didn't go far enough. Or . . . take your pick. You and I will never know how any game is rigged, for money.
It's now just entertainment. Showbiz.
Mencken was right. You'll never go broke underestimating the public taste.
Remember, I'm a cynic: a closet idealist longing to be surprised. Surprise me. Tell me I'm wrong. Then . . . prove it.
Remember: sports is " entertainment ", so all of the scenarios you sketched are quite possible, and for me they're plausible.
There's a new gambling related case charging twenty basketball players.
One of the players charged plays for Coppin State, a Maryland HBCU.
Coppin isn't a powerhouse by any means. They play in the MEAC.
The attempts to fix or influence point spreads at this level indicates that sports betting is going to corrupt every level.of sports, college and pro.
100% correct. It's now all tainted, at every level. And the major sports 'bodies' are complicit, as are the media, like it or not.
How profoundly sad.
I have to say, before I'd seen the description of Klosterman's book, I had not thought of the idea of pro football as the nation's last bastion of a monoculture — but having been exposed to it, I can't stop thinking about it.
(Having not yet read the book, I'm curious if Klosterman will also address the ways that more traditional pop culture presences — thinking here of both Taylor Swift and Hailee Steinfeld — connect with the larger world of the NFL through their relationships with athletes currently playing in the league in question.)