Why Football?

I love football.

I don’t just passively sit there for three hours on Sunday just to watch my Dolphins play (isn’t that ridiculous? “my” Dolphins), although my fiancé would probably really appreciate if it was just that. My fascination with the sport runs deep. I have never taken the time to sit down and try to calculate how many hours I spend a week doing research for my fantasy team, watching games, highlights, and reading articles about football. But I fear that if I did, it would be an unjustifiable amount of time. The fact that I need to calculate it, means it is an unjustifiable amount of time.

Currently, I am in four fantasy football leagues, I probably watch close to eight hours of football every Sunday plus the Monday and occasional Thursday night game, my drives to work are frequently accompanied by football podcasts, I can name third string bench players from teams I don’t even follow, I can recite player statistics like scripture… seriously, I have a problem.

I have been watching football since 2007. If I would have taken the amount of time I have put into football-related media and invested it into just about any arbitrary activity, like, let’s say… education? I would probably have couple of PHDs by now.

But why? Why do I do this to myself?… asked no one, ever.

Well, I’m going to tell you anyways.

I guess I would have to go back to when I knew I loved the sport. There’s actually a date for this and it was November 26, 2007, the date in which one of the worst football games ever played took place.

This was a Monday night game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the worst team the Miami Dolphins ever fielded. That’s no exaggeration; while the Steelers went on to win ten games and eventually lose in the wild card round of the playoffs, the Dolphins “achieved” a 1-15 record, nearly going win-less until they managed to squeak out a victory in the last game of the season. To put it in perspective, our defense was the silver lining of that team, and they ranked 28^th in a league made up of 32 teams. This was the worst record the Dolphins ever had… and I watched all of it. Every. Fucking. Game.

God that season was brutal.

But I digress…

For some context, Monday night football is one of the great American sports tradition. The first Monday Night Football game ever played took place in September 21, 1970 when the Cleveland Browns hosted and defeated the Joe Namath-led New York Jets, 31 to 21 ­- This information is only peripherally relevant to this post and you’ll likely find no use for it in your life much like I have, but I have it in my head and I’m nothing if not generous, so I wanted you to be cursed with knowing that too – The game itself was fun and exciting, it drew a large audience that only grew through the years. Some of the best games ever played happened in prime time Monday Night Football. The country was watching. It became almost an expectation that when teams played on Monday night, they would bring their ‘A’ game.  And for the most part they did, except on November 26, 2007. No sir. The win-less Dolphins were not about to allow such a storied American sports tradition go untarnished.

I am not going to bog you down with all the details of the game but… it was bad. Really bad.

Heinz field, the home of the Pittsburgh Steelers and the scene of the crime, had been freshly sodded the day before. It rained mercilessly all day leading up to the game. The loose grass was giving way to the mud underneath before the players even stepped onto the field. It was a disaster.

The players were falling and slipping every other play. Chunks of grass and mud would be flung into the air every time someone hit the ground. Offense was non-existent for both teams. No one could move the ball. There were injuries and potholes. It was Ypres.

By the time the clock showed a minute left, the score was 0-0.

Zero. Fucking. Zero.

The Steelers got the ball with time expiring, they put together a drive and managed to get within field goal distance. On fourth down, with twenty seconds to go, Jeff Reed made the kick to put up the only points in what would be the lowest scoring Monday Night game of all time. The final score was 3-0. Dolphins had lost.

… and I enjoyed the game…

WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!

I sat and watched one of the worst games ever played and I had enjoyed myself by the end. What does that say about me? Does that make me a psycho? A masochist?

Regardless of what it is, that’s when I knew. If I could sit through whatever that game was and enjoy it, I would love football for a long time. And I have. But now I wonder.

Listen, I get it, from an outsider’s perspective, it looks like a dumb fucking sport. I may be a lot of things, but I certainly don’t lack the self-awareness to understand why someone watching a bunch of giant genetic anomalies wearing tight pants and running into each other at full speed might seem a little silly, not to mention dangerous. But that’s only because it is.

That’s my conflict with the sport. My enjoyment of it comes from the drama, the strategy, the schemes, the narratives. But ultimately, all that comes at an ethical cost. By watching the sport I am actively contributing to an enterprise that makes ungodly amounts of money at the expense of the mind and bodies of the athletes that play the sport. In recent years, we have learned more about the long-term health effects that these men endure as a result of banging their heads into each other hundreds of times throughout their careers. Some of the stories of former players are horrific. The slow loss in memory, the speech impediments, the depression and suicidal thoughts… Yeah these guys get paid a lot of money to entertain us on Sunday, but is that a reasonable expense for the viewers to demand? That these athletes sacrifice their health and quality of life for our entertainment? – Fuck yeah it is! Get those helmets on boys; daddy needs ten points to cover!

Seriously though, it’s a question I do struggle with. Football has served as more than just entertainment in my life. I came to this country as a young kid and in a lot of ways I just didn’t fit in a lot of environments I was exposed to. Football served as a bridge, something I could use to relate to a lot of friends I met in school – Yeah I may not be like you, but hey I know about this thing you also like. – That imprinted on me. It became tradition to watch the sport six months out of a year, and I did this season after season and never once did I consider: Hey, these guys are sure fucking each other up out there; I wonder how their bodies hold up? Turns out; not that well.

Now, that is not my only issue with football. There are other, more nuanced and institutional problems that I find objectionable within the NFL itself. But all of those pale in comparison to the actual human cost of being a professional in football. I think it is often easy to forget about the humanity of those guys under the helmets, in part because we don’t see them, and in part because of their role in society. In so many ways, football players are highly paid entertainers. Some might say that putting their bodies on the line is the cost of doing business and they get paid very well for it. But do they? Is it worth having chronic joint pain and difficulty walking your entire life? Is it worth not being able to tell your wife you love her because you can’t formulate words anymore? Is it worth looking across the table at your child and struggling to remember his name?

We act like this was a choice for a lot of these players when in reality it was the only choice for many. That’s not to say that most football players come from underprivileged households and football served as the only means to get out; although that may very well be the case. But if you were endowed with massive physical advantages, if you found yourself to be larger, faster, and stronger than your peers, and you realized that this physical ability and skill in a game could be the path to financial security for the rest of your life; is there really a choice there? Now add to that, the reality a lot of these players face coming from the places they often come from. If you go to school and get a degree, you can get a decent job making respectable money and able to forge a respectable life. But, if you’re good at football, you can leave school and make enough money to pull your mom out of debt, to pay for your brothers schooling, to buy your parents a new house, to give more than just yourself a respectable life. What to do then?

Of course I understand that not all these players have the best and purest intentions. The draw of fame and personal fortune cannot be understated. But even then, I sit there and watch them play. I watch them put down their helmets and crash violently into each other. And I cheer. I watch men tick years of their lives away… and I cheer.

So, I guess the question remains: Why football?

I don’t really know.