Why we love football

Conflicted thoughts on America's game, plus my weekly shareables: the falling man, a Prince documentary, and the comedy stylings of James Earl Jones

Two event reminders to start the day:

• If you’re anywhere near West Jefferson, NC, I’ll be talking about DOGLAND at the Ashe County Public Library on Thursday as part of the On The Same Page Literary Festival. The whole festival is excellent, and the incredible Ashe County Cheese shop is nearby, so you can’t lose. More info on my event here.

• I’ve had many people asking about my appearance with Wright Thompson on Sept. 29 at Park Road Books in Charlotte … we’ll be talking about his stunning book THE BARN, which centers on the place where Emmett Till was murdered in 1955. I promise you will come away enlightened. And entertained.

  
  

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My dear friend Joe Posnanski has a football book coming out on Tuesday. WHY WE LOVE FOOTBALL is about the greatest players and moments in football history, but beyond that, it’s about the joy and beauty of the game, the way it has burrowed into the hearts of millions of football fans in America and now, increasingly, around the world.

I, too, am a deep and devoted football fan. A lot of other sports have fallen away for me—I don’t watch much baseball anymore, only the occasional NBA game, golf and tennis only a couple times a year. But football—especially college football—is still as compelling to me as it was when I started watching it, so long ago that you had to actually walk over to the TV to change the channel.

Over the past few weeks, my newsletters have included several football-related items—you could probably sense how excited I was at the start of a new season. Last week, in the comments, a brilliant Shedhead named Valerie responded.

As a loyal subscriber and fan of your excellent writing, i must tell you it is difficult for me to read anything of a sport i believe is not only responsible for encouraging and glorifying violence, but is responsible for untold injuries to the developing brains of young people and the undermining of education in America. I say this as the daughter of a former football coach, mother of a high school football player, cousin of several NFL and college players and someone who suffered a devastating cerebral injury and knows intimately the results of such “accidents.” To enjoy as “entertainment” this brutality and damage to young people is painful for me to watch and read about. I hope to continue to read your lovely prose, but your commentary on football hurts my feelings. Just IMHO.

That was on Sunday. On Thursday, Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa took this hit in a game against the Buffalo Bills:

(A haunting side note: the Buffalo safety who delivered the hit was Damar Hamlin, who nearly died on the field of cardiac arrest after taking a blow to the chest in a game in January 2023.)

Tagovailoa left the game with a concussion. It was at least his third concussion in the NFL and he has barely started his fifth season. He has been hit so hard and so often that even a current NFL coach said he should retire. That’s a rare moment of naked honesty in a league that prides itself on toughness.

Valerie is right. Football is a brutal sport. Countless young people give their bodies to it every season and come away broken. Sometimes the injuries are obvious; other times they linger in the brain for years before stealing memory and judgment. There is so much you have to sweep under the rug, so much you have to rationalize, in order to enjoy football.

We all, I suspect, are hypocrites about some things. Football is one of my things.

I love the way a team brings together people—players and fans—who might have nothing in common otherwise. I love the tailgaters and watch parties and the roar of the crowd on a Saturday night.

I love how football is an endless struggle where, so often, hopes and dreams get ground into dust at the line of scrimmage … except in those rare and glorious moments where someone breaks the open field.

I think you can learn all the wrong lessons about life from watching or playing football. But I also think you can learn a lot of the right ones.

This is not an airtight defense, I know. I don’t pretend to claim the moral high ground. But as I said to Valerie, I do find something beautiful and connective and even redemptive in football, despite all the suffering it causes. I want it to be safer, even though I know it will never be safe. I want kids to stop playing it so early. I wonder if the violence in football will someday force it to the background for me—like boxing, which I can’t bring myself to watch anymore.

Why we love football is a beautiful concept in my friend Joe’s hands. It is also a complicated thing. And I wear those complications every time I watch this game I love, despite everything.

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10 things I wanted to share this week:

1. My guest on this week’s SOUTHBOUND was Alice Driver, whose new book LIFE AND DEATH OF THE AMERICAN WORKER is a gutting look at chicken-plant workers in her home state of Arkansas. Plus we talk about her upcoming book based on a decades-long correspondence between her mother and Maurice Sendak of WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE.

2. My weekly for WFAE was about going backwards on affirmative action.

3. This week marked another observance of 9/11, and it would be wise every year at this time to read (or re-read) Tom Junod’s story “The Falling Man,” one of the greatest magazine stories ever written.

4. My own small contributions to 9/11 writing: a piece I did for ESPN about how sports helped heal us back then, and can still heal us now. One of the great honors of my career is that a line I wrote in that story was displayed for a while at the September 11 Memorial and Museum: This is the blessing of sports. They help you remember when you want to remember, and they help you forget when you need to forget.

5. Ezra Edelman, who made the brilliant documentary on OJ Simpson, spent years making a nine-hour documentary on Prince. We might never get to see it. (NYT Magazine)

6. A thoughtful history of Charleston, told through rice. And race. (Food and Wine)

7. I subscribed to Jon Ronson’s newsletter based solely on this post about how he organizes his research. His desktop has only two folders! Plus there’s a great discussion of Stanley Kubrick’s custom-made cardboard boxes. (Nonfiction Storytelling with Jon Ronson)

8. RIP James Earl Jones, the voice of Darth Vader and Mufasa and “This … is CNN,” the soul of FIELD OF DREAMS, one of those actors that, when he showed up on screen, you knew you were in good hands. His appearances on David Letterman were some of my favorite moments on that show—he turned that booming voice and dead-serious expression into comedy gold. Here’s the top 10 things that sound cool when James Earl Jones says them:

   
   

9. RIP Frankie Beverly, one of those artists who belonged to Black America in a special way. Despite a ton of great songs, he and his band Maze never quite crossed over to white audiences … but to black fans—especially those, ahem, of a certain age—he was a superstar. His track “Before I Let Go” was covered by Beyoncé, but my favorite is “Joy and Pain.” (The Guardian)
   

10. The record I’ve been playing in the car all week is MJ Lenderman’s MANNING FIREWORKS, a damn near perfect slab of indie rock with the sharpest lyrics I’ve heard on a record in a long time. “Please don’t laugh / only half of what I said was a joke,” from “Joker Lips,” is as good a manifesto for the lovelorn as I can think of. But “She’s Leaving You” is the song that got me … there’s a moment right at the end, where the guitar noise clears away and a single clear voice breaks through, that just about took my breath.
    

    Have a great week, everybody.

—TT