Why We Love Football

It’s Baaaaaaccccckkkkk!

If there’s one thing the majority of US sports fans go crazy for, it’s NFL football.  There’s nothing like it….nowhere.  Sure, there’s Rugby, there’s Australian Rules football, Canadian Football, and there’s futbol, but none of those are the NFL.

I have baseball season tickets.   I am a college hoops junkie.  I love watching the Flyers beat the Penguins and Playoff hockey.  I grew up obsessed with Bird, Magic, Doc, Gervin and Jordan, but there’s something different about the NFL.

What makes the NFL America’s game, aside from the betting?  Why do we love it so?  We all have our reasons, but here’s a few that I think add to our love.

SCARCITY
MLB give us 162 games.  The NBA & NHL teams play 82.  The NFL gives ya 16 games.  16 stinkin’ games.  It’s like the debut of the new iPhone or Xbox with limited initial availability.  We get one game a week and that’s it!  The fact that it’s not readily available instantly creates an increased demand.  Each game feels special like it should be cherished.  Even if your team gets to the Super Bowl, the team is only playing a quarter of the games in hoops or hockey.  Ya can’t take the games for granted and miss one!  If you miss one game you’re out of the loop for a week’s worth of water-cooler discussions about the game…an outcast! That’s why I got married on a bye week. 

RITUALS
The single weekly occurrence makes the games special, an event.  Events lend themselves to rituals.

Some watch with family, some with friends.  The wife or husband can’t complain if you’re going out with buddies because it’s once a week.  I guess some can, but they’ll probably be single in the near future.

Football seems to be more about bonding with family or friends than any other sport.

People have their food rituals like wings, pizza, hoagies, etc.  And…there’s almost always beer.

Even if your ritual is sitting alone on the couch on Sunday for three hours that your special place.

BLACKOUTS
The fact that there is a possibility that your favorite team’s game will not be locally televised adds to the mystique of the NFL.  I remember games against teams like Arizona where you’d have to watch or listen to the news hoping that the local TV station would swoop in at the last hour and purchase the remaining thousand or so tickets.  This takes some major balls by the NFL.  Can you imagine the Phillies or Sixers refusing to televise games that weren’t sellouts?  We’d see no games this year of either team.

The NFL is basically saying that our product is so good that if you don’t give us the sellout we deserve then we will punish your city and not let you watch our amazing product…We don’t need you.  If you live in a market where the team struggles, then every televised game is like a gift that can be taken away if your city doesn’t behave itself and sellout the stadium.

SPORTS HATE
Chances are your dad, uncle, brother, mom or grandfather hated the Cowboys—probably all of them.  I knew of rivalries with the Bruins and Celtics, but hating the Cowboys was instilled since birth.  It’s an all around hate that feels great, greater than in any other sport.  It’s a hate that bonds family members, friends, and all Philadelphians.  Football allows you to channel that hate into bone-jarring tackles and hits.

BRUTALITY
This sport is so brutal that it can only be played once a week because the bodies need to heal. Football is also played no matter the weather conditions, barring dangerous lightning.  How great is it when you see the pre-snap breaths of the linemen in the frigid cold?

Football has blitzes, face-masking, crackback blocks, horse-collaring, clotheslines.

The people who play, must crazy.  Hence, I must watch!

TELEVISION
No other sport translates on television better than NFL football.  It may be the only sport that I actually prefer watching on television.  The instant replays of the of the collisions, catches, and tackles can make you wince, groan, or drop your mouth open in awe like no other sport.  There’s nothing like seeing a defensive player like Troy Polamalu throw himself into the air with the sole purpose of colliding head-on with an opposing team’s running back.

NFL FILMS
I could watch NFL Follies and Highlights from NFL Films for hours as a kid, probably still could.  John Facenda’s voice sounded as if God himself was narrating the highlights.  NFL Films made a spiral football floating through the air set to classical music a true thing of beauty.  I don’t think the same could be done with a puck, basketball or baseball.  You knew when the ball came back down to earth someone would catch it while running in full stride or leaping up to meet it.  This gave me and thousands of others a deeper appreciation for the game.

CHEERLEADERS
Let’s get one thing straight.  I appreciate the fact that the Pittsburgh Steelers don’t have cheerleaders.  However, I’d be lying if I said they didn’t add to the initial attraction of the game.  I mean, come on.  As a hormone-raging, gawky kid in the middle of puberty, scantily clad attractive cheerleaders didn’t hurt.

THE WEATHER
No matter what Mother Nature brought—rain, sleet or snow—you could always play football as a kid.  Football saved the day when the weather made most other activities impossible.  Some of the best days were playing football in a snow storm or on a muddy field and you’d come home with your clothes soaked.

HEADSETS
That’s right, name me another major sport where the coach has to wear headsets to communicate with assistants perched high above the field of play (maybe there is another, but bear with me here).  This is no ordinary sport….this is chess played with intense physical specimens.

SUPER BOWL
The Super Bowl is one and done.  This is the event of the year.  This is the culmination of months of battles ending in one final clash between the last two standing teams.  This isn’t best of five or seven.  This is it and the world watches.

For me, football is the ultimate combination of brute force, laser-like precision, and athletic beauty.  As a kid, I spent countless hours flipping through my Baseball Encyclopedia memorizing stats from players who died long before I could read.  However, a book about the NFL’s history was always my childhood favorite.  I think for the pictures alone.  The visuals of football have no equals.  I still remember a picture of Lester Hayes covered in Stickum (see above) and one of Tom Dempsey kicking a 63 yard field goal with half a foot.

And, there’s always the classic picture of Chuck Bednarik standing over a broken Frank Gifford.

NFL football remains magical and mystical for these and countless other reasons that I failed to mention.  Each weekly contest feels like a battle between warriors from competing villages taking place before frenzied spectators in some Netherworld arena.  I can’t get enough of it.  As a country, we can’t get enough as it’s televised four days a week now.

It’s back.  It’s here.  Happy Football Season!

E-A-G-L-E-S!