Post by Coach Campbell on Mar 26, 2006 6:52:55 GMT
THE RELIGIOUS FACTOR IN FOOTBALL
When news came that the pro football's strike of 1970 was settled, it was a source of great relief for millions of fans. For a while it looked as if there would be no season. Sports pundits were predicting a season of re-runs, replays, computer games and other absurdities, and football owners and television networks were going crazy, having "withdrawal of revenue" nightmares. But finally an accommodation was reached and the pros were to play for us again.
This great scare phenomenon is extremely interesting. Since the fans would still have had college football to watch, they would not have been deprived of all television football. The reason the threatened strike seemed calamitous, I think, is that professional football is more than a mere sport -- it is a religion of sorts which expresses a philosophy that orients viewers to the world and explains how it "runs."
College football, in this respect, is like a lay church. It functions the same way, but without a professional clergy it is not quite as satisfying.
When we say, for example, that a football team is finally "putting it all together," we are suggesting that it is functioning well. But if you take the phrase in a philosophical manner we are asserting that somehow the world makes sense. Football fans do not agree with existentialists who argue that life is absurd and the world meaningless. To the football fan the idea of grown men knocking themselves out chasing an inflated oval (the heresy of reductionism is implicit in this description of the game) is not at all silly or absurd.
The tackling and body-contact tell us that while the world is full of conflicts and obstacles, we can often overcome them. One important aspect of the game is that there is stratification -- with some jobs being more glamorous than others. The backfield is the aristocracy and the line is the peasantry. Linemen are seldom holdouts in salary disputes, the moral equivalent of the prodigal son.
From the instant replays we get the idea that time is somehow "recoverable," that it can be repeated and is not lost once it passes. (This suggests immortality.) The past keeps on repeating itself. Football on television is not very far removed from esoteric films such as Last Year at Marienbad.
When news came that the pro football's strike of 1970 was settled, it was a source of great relief for millions of fans. For a while it looked as if there would be no season. Sports pundits were predicting a season of re-runs, replays, computer games and other absurdities, and football owners and television networks were going crazy, having "withdrawal of revenue" nightmares. But finally an accommodation was reached and the pros were to play for us again.
This great scare phenomenon is extremely interesting. Since the fans would still have had college football to watch, they would not have been deprived of all television football. The reason the threatened strike seemed calamitous, I think, is that professional football is more than a mere sport -- it is a religion of sorts which expresses a philosophy that orients viewers to the world and explains how it "runs."
College football, in this respect, is like a lay church. It functions the same way, but without a professional clergy it is not quite as satisfying.
When we say, for example, that a football team is finally "putting it all together," we are suggesting that it is functioning well. But if you take the phrase in a philosophical manner we are asserting that somehow the world makes sense. Football fans do not agree with existentialists who argue that life is absurd and the world meaningless. To the football fan the idea of grown men knocking themselves out chasing an inflated oval (the heresy of reductionism is implicit in this description of the game) is not at all silly or absurd.
The tackling and body-contact tell us that while the world is full of conflicts and obstacles, we can often overcome them. One important aspect of the game is that there is stratification -- with some jobs being more glamorous than others. The backfield is the aristocracy and the line is the peasantry. Linemen are seldom holdouts in salary disputes, the moral equivalent of the prodigal son.
From the instant replays we get the idea that time is somehow "recoverable," that it can be repeated and is not lost once it passes. (This suggests immortality.) The past keeps on repeating itself. Football on television is not very far removed from esoteric films such as Last Year at Marienbad.