NFL: A theater of two defining American obsessions: War and Law

[JackRiddler]

Two over-specialized high tech armies arrive to the field with large trains of officers and service personnel. As flag-and-standard bearing populations assemble to drink and ballyhoo, eleven-man armored infantry units are deployed by their respective high commands to battle violently for territory, but under strict terms set by an all-powerful and often arbitrary State. A thousand-page rule book lays out the Law, including meticulous details on the difference between clean and dirty HITS. Americans LOVE the idea of war as a civilized, regulated, repeatable activity with a clear end and no doubt as to the winner! Captains bark commands until the moment of engagement and up to fifty percent of the infantry will go down as casualties in the course of each campaign. Every play ends on the Sheriff's whistle. Most are followed by significant official rulings of different kinds: ball placement, in-bounds and out, possession calls, clock setting, and, of course, an average of ten to twenty penalty calls that often determine the outcome. The rulings occasion many deliberations and have given rise to a body of precedent and jurisprudence. Unresolved cases are sent to an appeals court in the booth. There is a Supreme Court in the form of the Commissioner's Office and a Legislature of team owners. (These bodies play a more pronounced role in determining field action than in other sports.) In recent years, the opposing generals have also been given the right to pursue litigation in game. And on top of it all, the corporations who broadcast and finance the show by selling advertising get to dictate the time structure. It's all a vehicle for the profiteers, with 70 minutes or more of lucrative commercials and in-game promotions in just three hours' air time. But every minute from the Warplane Flyover to the postgame presentation of the Winners' Booty and Bling celebrates the Glory of the Only American Way.

(Refer to Professor Carlin's discourse on the comparative merits of football and baseball.)

[Echo In Light]

1. K&R

:popcorn:

[Octafish]

2. Metaphorically - Baseball, the game of Life. Football, the game of War.

Speaking as a 44-year fan of the Detroit Lions, you are spot-on.

We have had our moments, none of which involved lying America into a game.



Great post, JackRiddler.

[Bill McBlueState]

3. I like the NFL because of the socialism

Of the major American sports leagues, the NFL has the strictest rules about salary caps, revenue sharing, etc. It keeps the on-field action more competitive, unlike baseball, where a perpetual class of "haves" dominate the game.

[JackRiddler]

4. But really it's cartel capitalism - socialism for the rich.

Is a salary cap and no general principle of guaranteed contracts a better thing for the labor? And how about those ticket prices? At any rate, I believe the percentage that goes to labor total is similar in both sports.

And in case you didn't notice, football produced a superpowered dynasty this decade (although the Giants achieved a perfect season for the majority of Patriots haters!), while baseball has seen a different champion every year - including the zero-budget Marlins and the mid-market Diamondbacks both beating the Bronx Aristocrats, the long-suffering poor team from the "wrong side" of Chicago making it in 2005, and the 82-80 Cardinals of 2006, who I believe fully deserved it (as a tough-playing organization that made the playoffs six years out of seven). Not to mention the current champion from Philly, a city that is the benchmark for blue collar. (We'll omit the Red Sox, since they are hardly poor.)

All that being said, it's hard to deny that ML baseball is largely feudal in its structures and conventions!

[JackRiddler]

5. An off-season bump!

[Raskolnik]

6. Wait...I'm confused. Is football like war, or is football like litigation?

You may have changed metaphorical horses midstream, as it were.

[JackRiddler]

7. Read the title.

[Raskolnik]

9. I see the title, but you are still trying to shoehorn two unrelated concepts.

Your post reads like you started out with an observation that football is like war, then realized halfway through that you were actually saying football is like litigation. The former observation has been made countless times before, and the latter doesn't really hold up.

Every organized sport has detailed rules. Baseball, basketball, hockey, golf, soccer, curling, etc. all have extremely detailed and exacting rules that the officials attempt to follow. I fail to see how the existence of rules and/or a review process is unique to football.

[JackRiddler]

11. The concepts are related and it's the sport that has successfully shoehorned them.

Live long and prosper, okay?

[Raskolnik]

12. Not sure I'm buying it.

You haven't addressed any way in which football is any more legalistic than other sports.

[JackRiddler]

13. Baseball umpires often get calls wrong, with game-changing consequences.

Officials play a huge role in all sports, and any sport can be fixed if its officials can be corrupted. And yeah, the rules books are long in all of them, and of course define the essence of each game. No rules, no game, right?

But there simply isn't another sport where the intervention of the officials is as automatic, frequent, extensive, legalistic, deliberative and collaborative as in NFL football. In an average game, they spend more time determining their rulings than the ball spends in play.

That being said, it wasn't my point. I even bolded my point. American Football is an explicit theater of war for territory, highly violent, but cast as a rules-bound and regulated activity where the law reigns supreme and the winners are obvious. This is a big part of its popularity and its social functions, including as a not-so subtle vehicle for patriotic exhortations and military recruitment. And yeah, they play the national anthem and do warplane flyovers at baseball games, too, but as additions. They do not fit the essence of the game. Baseball as metaphor and reality does not fit the same metaphors to the same degree. Though I suppose anything that gets you rooting for one side to beat the other shares in them.

But go ahead and generalize the view to all other sports, I have no objection.

[jmg257]

8. Of course most times people engaging in football don't die - that is a pretty cool difference. nt

Love playing football. War? Probably not so much.

[JackRiddler]

10. That tends to be true of theater in general.

Actually, many thousands of people are fucked up by the football industry as a whole -- funneling millions of minors through public educational institutions into a sport with extremely high injury rates, falsely encouraging a great many of them to believe they have a chance of making the NFL. And I suppose in any given decade a few hundred die, not so much on the field but from later complications.

But that's not what this post was about, really. The theater of war and actual war theaters are two different (if realted) things, as I'm sure we're both aware!

EDIT: Related. Not realted! (I have a stadium to sell you in New Jersey, if you like.)

[underpants]

14. As much as I think George Will is a joke

he said that football had the two worst elements of American society-violence and committee meetings

[Baclava]

15. Baseball sucks!

Go Steelers!

[JackRiddler]

16. Enchante.

[Baclava]

17. Likewise

I bring sweets

[JackRiddler]

18. Yum!

[Romulox]

20. Agreed.

[JackRiddler]

19. bump