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Discussion for article #228372

Same problem, different year…After last years Bronco’s ahhemm…Loss…I wanted to swear off of them this year, regardless of the records Payton may break…I’m forever a John Elway fan, who despite his politics was arguably the best quarterback to come along since the early days of the NFL…Bias, yes indeed…I am now facing a choice of letting my 11 yr old grandson play next year…I do not want him to play, because “heads up” football is not being taught, and I don’t think it will help a great deal…That said, I would like to see the Big Sports Complex to start to use their enormous profits for research…Pay corporate taxes…and become a regular Patriotic, and supportive corporation, not like the greedy, inhumane folks they are now…

I’ve been a football fan for years; first the Colts before the midnight run to Indianapolis (grrrr) and then the 49ers after I moved to NorCal. But, this year, after the synergy of concussion-caused-crippling and NFL-wink-wink-to-violence I decided to abandon football.

It turns out that it was more than easy. Every new revelation (various 49ers involved in domestic violence, the Peterson saga, etc) did not wrench my spirit like it used to; I could say “Good choice Thad.” And I get several chances to do that every week; and it’s actually more satisfying than seeing the 9ers win a game.

I confess that I did enjoy the tremendous planning and sophisticated play that is NFL football. It is a highly-funded startup; every weekend. But, on the other hand, there are plenty of other – and truly better in every respect – adventures to follow.

Someone should note the Sports radio-ization of political talk radio.

It’s all pretty much the same hyperbolic, airtime filling venom.

The author has been trying to sell his book since the beginning of the season. I guess TPM let him have some space. His opinion about football and why he watches really doesn’t merit this kind of coverage. Too much analysis. If you enjoy it for whatever reason follow it. If not tune it out. Please don’t write a book about your yearning.

I used to watch NFL ball. Watched for years. But then I began to question the game. Actually, the NFL forced me to question their product. The final blow came in a game at Cincinnati at the beginning of a season several years ago. The game opened with five straight penalties. Five in a row.

And I had already begun to realize that the NFL is little more than a fraudulent marketing machine, what with its corporate stadiums (paid for by taxpayers); its constant commercial interruptions; its vast merchandising schemes.

But the real clincher, the reason I much prefer to watch soccer and rugby? The clock. An NFL game runs about three hours and change. Official game time is one hour. So right there you have two hours of folderol and filler. But go deeper. Take a stopwatch to your next viewing. Start it at the snap of the ball on each play. Stop it when the ref blows the play dead. What you come up with, and this is a generous number, is about fifteen minutes of actual play. Fifteen minutes out of three hours. That’s it. That’s all you really get.

The rest is replays, commercials, seven referees calling increasingly arcane penalties and more of them, more commercials, more self-promotion from the NFL, more sales pitches, endless penalty reviews. But football play? Maybe fifteen minutes. If you’re lucky.

Pro soccer? A solid ninety minutes of play by 22 players, overseen by one referee. Rugby? Eighty minutes of continuous play, overseen by one referee. In both cases a continuous emotional flow, a continuous involvement in the game for the fan.

NFL? It may be popular, but it’s a fraud.

I had the opposite reaction to my favorite team’s loss. I won’t recount the game. That’s boring. I was a huge fan,and my team had come out of oblivion to go deep into the playoffs. Very tough loss. I took a long, long walk that night and never cared too much about about sports ever since.

Its easy not to like the NFL: The teams are too similar. The games are too similar. The hype is over the top. The league has more than its fair share of thuggish players, and a fascist streak that is pretty noticeable.

If you think about quitting your team, you’re not truly passionate about it, or about the game Y.ou can change your political views, your wife, your religion, but not your team, it’s too radicated in your childhood experience. If your even talking about the idea of quitting you’re not a real fan, so your opinion couldn’t be put together with the other supporters. Being like that it’s like enjoying an actor, or a singer. You follow his or her work since it’s good and then you move on to other more interesting things. But you’re not a fan

What kept me hooked was the limbic tingle familiar to any football fan, the sense that I was watching an event that mattered.

Perfectly said. I don’t even much care for the game of football–I’m a baseball man for life. But I have it on every Sunday and Monday night, just to feel like I’m part of something bigger. I might not ever watch two plays in a row while I go about my business, but there’s that sense of being connected to something festive that lots of other people are doing at the same time. And unfortunately, no matter how many of us might be that kind of fan, that fandom can’t just be transferred wholesale to some other (better, less functionally awful) thing.

You sound like you’re defending a religion.

Might seem like that. But I know a lot of people like this. If you get hooked when you’re like 4 or 5, it’s for life. If you quit your team it’s because you get disinterested in the game, and you grow apart from it. That’s common within the process of growing old. But if you find yourself at thirty still enjoying the game there is no escape. It’s something rooted in your identity, an everlasting bond between you, your family members that share with you the same passion, your friends and your city. When you grow old you can find yourself missing some games, but that tingling in the stomach you have when a game is on the line, it’s never going to fade.
I know it might seem hard to understand.

I have found that in the time it takes to lay around watching drugged out millionaires play one of two games, I can take a five mile hike and during game two I can play two games of football ( American or otherwise) with my friends. I don’t miss the money grubbing self aggrandizement a bit. Too bad it took me sixty plus years to get it.

Dear sweet merciful FSM.

There are people who think like this? Really? You’re that wrapped up in a game? One that in the larger scheme of things means absolutely nothing?

You guys need to get out more.

Out here in Wisconsin, football gets us through shitty winters. Plus, we are the only fans who literally own the team. We won means something even though the we put on no cleats nor helmet. Packers - Bears contests are not just games, these are events. When Aaron Rodgers drops back, we are there with him in our own version of Walter Mitty. If people want to drop away from the game, go in peace, but I am staying right here.

Having cut my American football teeth on perfection-- as a Miami Dolphin fan in the 60s/70s as a pre-adolescent and teen-- I came to the realization early-on as a fan that the experience was likely once-in-a-lifetime.
I supported Don Shula through the end of his tenure; it wasn’t too hard with annual playoff flirtations courtesy of the greatness that Dan Marino’s cannon right-arm proffered.

I had moved through my teens and 20s from MIA to ATL and landed in HOU where I reside today.
The Oilers could be exciting at times but their owner Bud Adams was such a tightwad-jerk I could never sellout to them as a fan.

In '84-'85, Jack Pardee’s USFL Houston Gamblers with QB Jim Kelly and a host of NFL-wide-receivers-to-be? That? Was as much fun as I’ve ever had watching football. With a wide open, high-scoring, Mouse Davis Run&Shoot offense-- that was a blast.

The Houston Texans? I’m OK with them as an organization. They’re a bit slow on the uptake-- a by-product of the personality of their former head coach Gary Kubiak. 12-years-on I’ve gone from believing in an expansion team-- to accepting that they’ll be above average at best for the foreseeable future.

I DVR the games. Watch without commercials if they win. Delete it if they lose. My time can be spent more wisely than rooting for a known outcome that displeases.

I did, once more, find ‘that magic’ I experienced initially with the Dolphins as a kid.
With the '93-'94 & '94-'95 back-to back NBA Champion Houston Rockets.
Grit and determination were the backbone of those Rudy Tomjanovich-led squads.
And it didn’t hurt to have possibly the second-most-dynamic individual player to ever lace-them-up in Hakeem Olajuwon.
But that’s now 20 years in the past.

I was long a dedicated NFL fan.
But it’s no longer personal for me anymore.

About 8 years ago I became a futbol fan.
Thanks to the athletic poetry of a striker by the name of Thierry Henry, I began following Arsenal Football Club; a soccer team based in London.
Arsenal, the Gunners, were a team that in the '03-'04 season had accomplished what my Dolphins had in 1972-- they went undefeated over the course of an entire season.

The team is run the ‘right way’.
Their manager Arsene Wenger has led the club for 18 seasons in the English Premier League (EPL); where the next-most-tenured manager has but 3 seasons in tow.

Finding a team that can represent the best aspects of any sport is nearly impossible in the mega-money present-day.
But I’ve found one that I can embrace.

And I don’t believe I’ll find that again in the NFL-- or elsewhere, ever.

jw1

Any Raiders fan who wants to be honest with the football gods should at least metnion in passing the infamous Ben Dreith.

http://www.boston.com/sports/football/patriots/extra_points/2014/09/flashback_friday_its_still_tough_to_look_back_at_r.html

The ‘Tuck Rule’ may or may not be a good rule. But the fact is that that the rule is the rule. What whiny Raiders fans are claiming is that they should somehow be exempted from rules that work against them. Boo, hoo.

Moreover, earlier that same year of 2001 the Patriots lost a game vs the Jets when the Tuck Rule call went against them.

Isn’t reality painful???

Actually, one head-ref, 2 linesmen, and a 4th off-field ref-- all connected by two-way communications-- with input to the head-ref.

But no doubt-- soccer, for me, is a much more enjoyable game to watch athletically.

jw1

Encapsulated nicely my trouble leaving behind a team in Washington that never wins and has a racist name… but still I watch.

I’m quitting. And I’ve been a NY Jets fan for 50 years. I vividly remember frantically switching channels on my black and white TV to try to figure out what happened to the Jets/Oakland game when they cut away to Heidi. I still have my childhood football cards.

But the game is too anti-social in too many ways for me to love it any longer. Ta-Nehisi Coates’ essays on football awhile ago helped crystallize my thoughts on this; Steve Almond’s enjoyable book is reinforcing them. I’m not telling anyone else what to do, but I just can’t reconcile the NFL (or NCAA Division I) with my own personal values and worldview.

Moreover, football CAN be quit. Through October I have the joys of baseball, but after that, I will find other things to keep me more productively and happily busy on Sundays.

Never understood the appeal of sports in general. Always seems like religion and politics - just a surrogate for nationalism, and a divisive force.

As for the football thing, that’s the last sport on the list of what I consider enjoyable/watchable. Folks say it isn’t boring like baseball, but it is much worse, not only is most of the game committee meetings - its watching committee meetings! How is that more exciting than baseball?

No Thanks.