2024-02-12-posts.md 6.0 KB
title: American Football slug: american-football description: Today I learned how much the ball is 'in play' during an American football game. <!--- authors:
- name: David Windham title: Something Else url: https://davidawindham.com image_url: https://davidawindham.com/wp-content/themes/daw/img/opengraph_image.jpg --> tags: [sports, football] image: https://davidawindham.com/wp-content/themes/daw/img/opengraph_image.jpg hide_table_of_contents: true ---
Today I learned how much the ball is 'in play' during an American football game.
The NFL Championship Super Bowl LVIII[^1] was last night, so I had to check in on the scores this morning to see if I'd won my three $1 bets. I won them on a hunch given my lack of attention to the pigskin Xs and 0s. I don't watch or follow football. The reason I'm giving it attention here is simply because it popped up in several of my recent conversations because of the Super Bowl. It's not that I don't like football, it's just really low on my priorities and I'm in the minority on this one given the fact that it was the most-watched television broadcast in history with 123 Million viewers[^2].
Before I took the $1 bet on the Chiefs, my neighbor had informed me that an average American football game only has less than 10 minutes of action, so I went digging for the stats to confirm. It seems absurd that a four-hour event might only have ten minutes of action and in the case of the championship, fifteen minutes of entertainment. In 2010 the Wall Street Journal reported that there was only 11 Minutes of Action[^3] while the average game is a little over three hours long. The average play is just four seconds and the rest of the time is split between an average of 100 commercials and seventy-five minutes of commentary while players and coaches loiter on the field.
I was mildly obsessed with football as a kid likely because my dad loves football. He started college to become a football coach and helped coach my junior football teams. I had wallpaper of all of the NFL helmet designs in my childhood room and we watched Inside the NFL[^4] religiously. The slow-motion plays put to music mighta done it:
I recently listed Inside the NFL and my childhood wallpaper on my list of influences[^5], so I'm doubling up here by tackling football before I write up the major essay. I fondly remember going to the University of South Carolina games, but the last time I remember playing football as a kid was getting knocked out around 7th grade and deciding I was done. I quit playing football after that season and haven't paid any attention to it since. I do like sports and I coach a local tennis team. I like the character development in sportsmanship and the psychology of competition. In some ways, I think that playing a game with very little consequence is characteristic of an advanced society.
The history of football is closely tied to our elite American universities and deeply engrained in our culture. In the late 1800s, rules had to be made to prevent violence like players from attaching nails to their shoes which evolved into the NCAA. The 1905 season had 18 deaths from football injuries. Theodore Roosevelt summoned the coaches of the Ivy League teams to the White House to curb the violence since his son was playing for Harvard. The golden age of American football occurred between the two world wars likely because of the analogy with military might. After WWI the game took center stage in American sports. Television came along and created football celebrities. Jack Kemp, President Gerald Ford, and Vice President nominee Jack Kemp were popular because of football. Hershal Walker made a run at it recently and his last paid football gig was under Donald Trump's failed US Football League. Bill Cosby once told Andy Griffith on The Tonight Show that he purchased the rights to his top 10 recording of What It Was, Was Football[^6] because he had performed it in school and gotten an A. Taylor Swift was just another football sideshow for the championship this year.
I try to keep the criticism of football to a minimum, but given the amount of attention paid to it by institutions, the media, and the general public... it's almost unavoidable. Because I texted a group thread my action stat, I had a response and follow-up revolving around a Malcom Gladwell presentation[^6] in which he argues quite convincingly that we should turn to football coaching if we want to build a fair future for all based on the fact that raising the bottom makes for a better team. It's worth a watch. The one valuable understanding I've gained is that if a person is a sports person, they will operate on a tribal primitive pack mentality. I think that our modern sports teams have just filled a void in our sense of belonging... be it regional, national, social, religious, or familial. I only tone down my criticism of the game to avoid being an outcast. I try to find my connections on basic common human experience which unfortunately seems to be barely a notch more encompassing than football.
[^1]: National Football League - Super Bowl LVIII - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl_LVIII [^2]: List of most watched television broadcasts in the United States - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_watched_television_broadcasts_in_the_United_States [^3]: 11 Minutes of Action - (2010) Wall Street Journal - https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704281204575002852055561406 [^4]: Inside the NFL - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inside_the_NFL [^5]: Lists / Influences - /lists/influence [^6]: What It Was, Was Football Andy Griffith - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_It_Was,_Was_Football [^6]: What world awaits Gen Z? - Malcolm Gladwell - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AaQn3FOrfY