Chuck Klosterman and I grew up on football, the Notre Americano, the United States, and NFL version. As such, the two of us are about as far from objective as two people can be on a discussion about football. Chuck Klosterman spends a majority of his book Football celebrating the NFL’s era of almost uncontested dominance, and I smiled and nodded throughout his walk down memory lane. The NFL was and is so dominant that most of us thought their reign would pretty much last forever, but as Football points out, nothing lasts forever.  

We both grew up thinking the NFL was the perfect league running the perfect sport, but I did that comparing it to baseball in the Major Leagues and basketball in the NBA. Klosterman takes his thesis in another direction, comparing it to the other most prominent football league in North America, the Canadian Football League (CFL).

My obsession with the NFL is so myopic that I never even considered the idea that someone might think there is a better professional football league out there. If we were to make the argument that the NFL is perfect though, we would have to use some comparative analysis, and there is only one other league of professional football worth including in such an argument, the CFL. Before we attempt to compare the two, I must confess that I’ve never made it through an entire CFL game. I’ve watched it for the novelty and to watch some of my favorite college football stars who didn’t make it to the NFL. Once the novelty wore off, and I watched those players a couple of times, I flipped the channel. I did not watch enough CFL to establish an informed opinion of the league. Thus, it’s impossible for me to imagine the flip side: a Canadian watching enough NFL to develop an informed opinion on the NFL and walking away with the thought that the CFL game is superior. My myopia on this is the very definition of subjectivity though.

There are BIG reasons that I think the NFL is superior. The iconography the NFL game, its teams, and its players have achieved is not only nationwide, intercontinental, and worldwide. The CFL has never and will never match the NFL in popularity, and I don’t think I need to qualify that statement. What percentage of Parisians are aware of the Cowboys, the Chiefs, or the Jets? That number might be lower than I think, but number would be so much higher than those aware of the Argonauts, the Alouettes, and the Stampeders that it wouldn’t be an interesting survey. How many Londoners know the names Tom Brady, Patrick Mahomes, and Peyton Manning when compared to Nathan Rourke, Andrew Harris and Justin McInnis? Some could characterize my opinion as subjective, as I watched those elite college athletes mature into NFL stars, but I don’t think it’s subjective to say that the NFL is the go-to place for elite athletes in football. If you argue that point, you’ll have to provide me a ratio of elite college athletes in football who chose to play in the CFL over the NFL, when the NFL wanted them. After that argument is over, you’ll also have to give me a ratio for the number of elite athletes, in their prime, who have left the NFL for the CFL, and when you come up with that insignificant number, I’ll provide the number of CFL stars who have left the CFL for the NFL, when they NFL decided to give them a shot at making an NFL roster. Even if we include suspended NFL players, those in contract disputes, or the attempts aging players have made to revive their career in the CFL, the number of elite athletes who want to play and stay in the NFL for as long as they can is an argument no CFL fan would enter with a straight face.

Even with all that, the primary reason to watch the NFL over the CFL is that to get a first down in football, the NFL provides its teams four downs (chances or tries) and the CFL provides three, and four downs provides more drama.

“Ok,” you, the dispassionate observer might say, “if four is more dramatic than three, wouldn’t five downs be more dramatic?” To paraphrase Klosterman, five downs would probably feel like too many and three feels like it’s not enough. “Four just feels perfect,” Klosterman writes. I agree, because four downs allows for more incremental progressions, or a running game. The CFL’s three-down pass-oriented game almost makes the running game unnecessary and even strategically unwise.

Casual football fans routinely complain that the running game “Is the boring part.” Those of us who grew up in the 80s and 90s, heard this from our friends in Nebraska who hated the Cornhuskers in college football and loved the Joe Montana-led 49ers.

Those who didn’t grow up in Nebraska have no idea how tough it was to maintain allegiance to the Huskers in the 80s and 90s. We were teenagers and early twenty-somethings during this era, and when you’re in that demographic, you don’t like what everyone else does. My teenage friends, and the kids I wanted to befriend, loathed the Huskers, because their dads, teachers, uncles, and everyone else they knew loved the Huskers. It was deemed “uncool” to like the Huskers. We had a teacher ask the class “Who is a Husker fan?” I was the only one who raised his hand. 

The kids I knew also hated them, even after they won national championships, because running the ball was so boring. I watched the same 49er games they did, and I knew that a twelve-yard pass play was sexier than a twelve-yard running play, but I never made the leap with them to the 49ers. I never considered the running game boring, and I still don’t. 

Their the type who say that if the NFL wants to be more popular, they should do everything they can to create a climate in which NFL teams pass more, if not all the time. As a football fanatic, I disagree that running plays are boring, but if I am going to provide an objective perspective, I must admit that a twelve-yard pass play is sexier than a twelve-yard running play. Also, the NFL’s Competition Committee (NFLCC) has made strides in various rules to try to make the passing game more prominent.

As I wrote, I haven’t watch a CFL game, but I attended an Arena Football League (AFL) game. The AFL passes the ball 70% of the time, and the NFL passes the ball 53.3% of the time. I didn’t know that stat when I attended this game, and I didn’t spot the huge difference for the first couple of quarters. I just considered it a fast paced game that was actually pretty exciting to watch at first. As the game progressed, the game lost some of its sex appeal, and I didn’t know why, because I wasn’t looking for it. Somewhere around the fourth quarter, it dawned on me that exciting, sexy plays lose their definition when they occur an overwhelming percentage of the time. The running game is the ebb to the flow of the passing game. Their relationship is intertwined with one another, as one strategically sets up the other and vice versa. When I attended the AFL game, I was excited to attend an AFL game, and I was bored about 50% of the way through it. There was just too much passing involved. The CFL is a passing game, largely because they only have three downs to secure a first down, and that, in my opinion, is the primary reason it will never be as popular as the NFL.

Klosterman’s book also illustrates the NFL provides the superior game, because the CFL has the rouge. I must confess ignorance here, as I never heard of the CFL’s rouge before reading this section in Klosterman’s Football. The rationale behind the rouge, in my humble opinion, is to give the most boring play in football, the punt, some excitement. The rouge allows for a point to be awarded if a punt, field goal attempt, or kickoff ends up with the ball landing in the touchdown area with no return by the opposing team. The rule discourages teams from simply kneeling or letting the ball fall into the end zone. The CFL believes this promotes excitement, strategy, and field position battles, especially in close games. I must award some theoretical points in this scenario, because I imagine that it might add some small parcel of anticipation amid the otherwise depressing fact that my team is conceding that they cannot secure a first down by punting. Other than that, the rouge just feels like a gimmick that the CFL developed to compete with the NFL, even though it was first implemented over 160 years ago. In my independent research on the rouge, I learned that there have been regular season games decided by a last-second, walk-off rouge, and I also learned that there was a rouge-only game in which Montreal beat Ottawa 1-0. To try to achieve some level of objectivity, I must admit that it’s an interesting quirk, but if my favorite team won a game by a rouge, I can’t imagine it providing so much satisfaction that I would celebrate it. I would categorize it as a win for my team and never talk about the details of it ever again.

Another distinction is that while the NFL only allows eleven players on either side of the line of scrimmage, the CFL has twelve. My initial reaction is that this would lead to a crowded appearance, but the CFL adopted a wider and longer field. If it’s wider, longer, and more populated with players, does that make it better or more popular? The NFL draws more viewers within the nation of Canada than the CFL does.

The only rule I see that favors the CFL is motion toward the line of scrimmage before the snap. The NFL’s Competition Committee states that it provides too much advantage to the offense, and I understand that, but they’ve passed so many rules that favor the offense that I don’t understand why they never passed this one.  I’m sure if I dug deep, I could find other reasons, but this is the only CFL rule I wish the NFL would adopt.

The CFL’s play clock is 20 seconds as opposed to the NFL’s 40 on most plays. This allows for a quicker pace, of course, but again, we go to the drama. Whether the typical fan sees it or not, there’s a lot of pre-snap drama that affects the pace of the game. Watching AFL, CFL, and NFL, you see the drama and the pace that favors the NFL game.

NFL purists still complain about the relatively recent rules the NFL Competition Committee put in place to promote more offense and more passing in the game. The rules committee also inserted rules for player protection, particularly the QB, and most NFL fanatics loathe them, but when comparing them to CFL rules, the NFL still provides the superior product. As I wrote, I’ve never watched a CFL game, but I imagine that watching one would tell me how perfect the allowances and limitations the NFL rules are.

The NFL is Doomed 

“The NFL is doomed!” was author Chuck Klosterman’s pitch to get us to buy his book Football. It worked on me, but I am such a Klosterman fan that I would probably purchase a cook book from him. He writes that the NFL’s implosion will not happen today, tomorrow, or within a couple of years. It will happen decades from now, long after our generation goes down.

The sociopolitical theory Klosterman posits for the NFL’s downfall is that there are so many elements of football that we do not want for our culture. He lists a variety of elements of football that we could label political in nature, and he concludes each element with the sentence, “This is not what we want.” We apparently do not want a violent sport, a sport exclusive to male participants that is only loved in the U.S. He also writes that football does not reject toxic masculinity, celebrates the ability to ignore pain and injury, rewards domination of the weak, shuns individuality and identity, and it is authoritarian and militaristic, and hierarchically controlled, with objective outcomes.

“This is not what we want,” Mr. Klosterman asks after listing each characteristic of football. My question to Mr. Klosterman apes a question my uncle used to ask us when we’d say “we” when talking about sports, politics, or any other element of life for which we developed an affiliation of some sort.

“We really need a touchdown here,” we’d whisper while watching our favorite NFL team on TV, for example.

“Who’s we?” my uncle would ask with a mischievous smile on his face. “What do you have a mouse in your pocket?” That joke wasn’t funny. It wasn’t funny when he first said it, and it grew exceedingly less funny the more often he said it. We could classify it as somewhat, sort of clever, in an excessively obnoxious vein, but it was never, ever funny. I think a few of us may have smiled when we first heard him say it, but I don’t think anyone ever laughed. Check that, he laughed. Based on the fact that he said it so often, he obviously considered it one of the most successful rhetorical parries ever created, but if he learned how to read focused groups, he might have discontinued this line of questioning. I don’t think anyone ever thought it was as poignant or provocative as he did either, but his decades-long replies did have one unfunny point, ‘Who do you think you are when you’re dropping your we on us? Who do you claim to represent here?’ 

When I ask who is we, some might guess that I’m accusing Klosterman of political proselytizing, but I’m not necessarily doing so. I’m suggesting that Klosterman is citing group thought when he says ‘we’, but it’s his group’s thought, or the group he knows. Without putting extensive thought into it, I can come up with three ‘we’s of group thought. My we and Klosterman’s we might parallel each other for some distance, but we perpendicular at a certain point. The difference between our similarities and differences are nowhere near the definitions of the ‘we’s that exists within the two sides of my extended family. I realize that’s anecdotal evidence, but that’s kind of the point. If we travel outside my family into the greater variations of we known throughout the country, we find that the country is not only bifurcated on ‘we’s, or trifurcated, it’s absolutely balkanized on so many topics. As one of my friends who was born and raised abroad, and has lived in several states throughout his adult life said, “The United States is almost, almost fifty different countries.” The country is so balkanized on so many subjects Klosterman discusses that I can’t believe he has the confidence, the temerity, and some might say the audacity to write ‘we’ in this manner. Time will bear this out, but Klosterman’s suggestion that his definition of we is more in touch than mine, or the two sides of my family, or those living in this balkanized country just wreaks of subjectivity. 

The much stronger argument Chuck Klosterman should’ve made is that the young ‘uns just aren’t watching football anymore. When I first heard his doomsayer “The NFL is doomed!” marketing pitch for Football, I thought this would be the crux of his argument. And I dreaded reading it, because I didn’t want to read that viewpoint backed or bolstered by analysis, data, and other facts. I read through Football, the book, as I would a horror novel, thinking that that big bad monster was coming, but it never did. If I wrote this book, this argument would be my final death knell, if I thought the end of the NFL was coming. I would approach my analysis from a ‘they’ viewpoint, as opposed to the ‘we’ however. My anecdotal information comes from the young adults around me defining my ‘they’, and the theys I know are very close to entering that key demographic, aged 25-49 that Klosterman admits set trends even though they don’t have any money. When they watch the NFL, or college football, and they don’t very often, they do so with passing interest and little in the way of “we-like” loyalties. They’re in and out of even the most crucial games, and they don’t even bother watching what they consider irrelevant regular season games. When they do watch anything under the football heading, it’s typically a YouTube broadcast that focuses on highlight packages. 

To bolster my point that the NFL is doomed, I would cite a story on a news program that had a 60 Minutes format. It had three separate and distinct stories in the manner that news program does, and one of the stories focused on the Super Bowl of gamers. I considered the story relatively irrelevant, but I asked my twenty something nephew about it, and he lit up. He began talking about the game they played in this Super Bowl of gamers, and he spoke about the individual who led his team to victory in the manner I would Peyton Manning and John Elway. I listened to my nephew’s extensive knowledge and enthusiasm for the game and the individual gamer with a lump in my throat, knowing that my beloved NFL was doomed. 

My nephew also reinforced the idea I had that we’re not only bifurcated or trifurcated, but balkanized, almost as balkanized as we were back in the Theodore Roosevelt administration 1901-1909, when there was no TV, no movies, about 9,000 motor cars in the country, and an overwhelming majority of the American public never traveled thirty miles away from their homes throughout their entire life. Citizens who called Roosevelt president, in their present tense, had print if they could afford books, newspapers, and various other periodicals in common, but that was about it. We had Buggs Bunny, Happy Days, Cheers, Frasier and Seinfeld, and we had the NFL throughout. Some of us say we watched the same shows, because we had three channels, but we had cable. The distinction we know now is that almost every show on cable sucked. We watched major broadcast shows, because they had all of the talented writers and stars, and when we went to work the next day, we talked about those shows with everyone else who watched them. We referred to these conversations as water cooler talk, and the generation that Klosterman and I share can now look back on that era as a very special time. We all shared a cultural zeitgeist, a collective consciousness, a shared cultural literacy, or to put it simply ‘a shared cultural common ground’. However we phrase it, we had those very special connections with a wide swath of the people we talked to for a long time in our lives, and now that it appears over, it almost feels like an hourglass type of timeline that will never be duplicated. The citizens in the Roosevelt administration had little-to-nothing in common in the early 20th century, because they had little in the way of travel or technology, and at the beginning of the 21st century we have little-to-nothing in common because, it could be argued, that we have so much technology that our definitions of entertainment are so fractured or splintered that we’re not reading, watching, or listening to any of the same things anymore. 

This spells doom for the NFL in the sense that it will no longer be the King Kong/Godzilla cultural behemoth of ratings dominance in future generations. When I write that, your next logical question would be, ‘Ok, well, what’s going to replace it?’ Nothing and everything. I know that’s a cop-out answer, but when we talk to those nearing the key demo, we learn that they don’t watch something. They watch everything. ‘Who’s your favorite influencer on YouTube?’ we ask them. They tell us that they don’t really have one. ‘Ok. What’s your favorite type of program, theme, or subject matter that you watch?’ First off, they’ll tell you that they don’t necessarily watch things on YouTube, Netflix, or any other streaming service. They have no loyalties in that regard. They also don’t have a type of program, theme or subject matter. Some of them will come up with something in the face of our disbelief, but if we ask them the same question a month later that will likely change. The final answer we walk away with is they don’t have a focus, and they never really thought about that fact until we asked that question.

Anytime we deal with high-minded questions such as is the NFL doomed, we feel compelled to come up with high-minded answers that lead our loyal readers to the notion that they got their money’s worth. I loved the first half of Football, as I loved the walk down memory lane, but I didn’t really connect with the ‘we’ answers in the second half. I write that, because I remember when the ‘they’s wanted to be a ‘we’ with me. They cared what I thought, wanted to learn from me, and they copied much of what I did, because they used me to define what adulthood meant, and if I might go bold, I think they considered me so cool that they thought it would be cool if I considered them a ‘we’. They tried to watch the shows I watched, they watched the sports I watched, and they even cheered on the NFL teams I cheered on. Those days are over, all of them. They now have their own identities, and their free will. They don’t care what my ‘we’s think, what Chuck Klosterman’s ‘we’s think, or anyone else’s from our generation. They’re going to do what we did and form their own ‘we’. I don’t think their definition of “we” will spell doom for the NFL, but I do think the NFL’s seemingly permanent engraving atop the highest peak of the Mount Olympus of the entertainment world will start to chink, decay and rot away when they take over, as they watch nothing and everything. And if the NFL were to call me and hire me as a consultant on the future that’s what I would tell them they should fear the most. If they then asked me how they could combat that, I would have to confess that I have no idea.