As a USA American* I know that I’m supposed to like the NFL and by extension the Super Bowl is supposed to be the biggest sporting event of the year but sorry to report that it just doesn’t do it for me.
I grew up playing (American) football every morning before school. When I lived in Alaska, a bunch of us kids would meet at the bus stop 30 minutes before school started and we would play tag football with a foam Nerf football. You’re probably scoffing at me for using a nerf but it was cheap, easy to put in my locker at school, and we could play with it in the freezing Alaska weather.
It was probably quite a sight for the other kids: a bunch of people running around at 7 in the morning, pitch black except the streetlights, on the streets which are 6 inches of packed snow, in pretty much full winter weather gear, throwing a nerf football to each other. But I loved football when I was growing up.
My neighbor kid was outside yesterday at half time of the super bowl doing something similar: him and a buddy were tossing around a nerf ball. It’s kind of a thing that some kids do here in the USA.
When I got to High School I tried out for the football team. I was a small guy. At 14 I think I was 5’6″ and just about 120lbs. But since the High School I went to was somewhat rural (we lived in goat roper country) they basically had more slots to fill than they did applicants and I made the team. I played just one year, my sophomore year. They put me in the weight room, though, and got me benching 220lbs. But I was still small and I played just one game. I guess everyone had to get to play at least one game.
But by the time I was 17 or so, I had fallen out of love with football. It had become boring to watch, training was a pain in the ass, the pads sucked, I didn’t like taking and giving hits (even in the pads) and I didn’t get to play much. Organized football was a far cry from those glorious Alaska mornings, where I was making the game winning touchdown catch under the streetlights.
So, I stopped watching it and instead I took up skateboarding and going to punk shows. Yes, I am a basic 80s kid.
From about 1988-present I think I’ve watched a handful of Super Bowls but I can’t really remember them. I watched all the ones that the Seahawks were in for sure, and since they were my team when I was a kid, I was stoked when they won. Not like some of my friends who were literally crying, but I was happy, it was something I never thought I’d see in my lifetime.
None of this is to say “look how cool I am because I don’t watch NFL”, it’s just my story. Honestly, I probably don’t remember many of the Super Bowls because I drank so much for so many years. I probably watched a lot more than I remember! Getting blackout drunk has its drawbacks.
And I’m not here to tell you not to watch The NFL because it’s racist (surprise! A business that’s owned by an old boys network of nearly all white billionaires is racist!) or because it doesn’t actually care about the players (surprise, a multimillion dollar sports industry doesn’t actually care about the players) or whatever. You can decide that for yourself, you’re an adult.
But I am here to beg you to please, please, please don’t try to conflate the Rams winning the Super Bowl with Arsenal doing anything in the Premier League. These sports are so incredibly different and the business environments are worlds apart, that it’s impossible for Arsenal to “pull a Rams”.
Of course parallels are going to be drawn and there is one way that Arsenal could “be like the Rams” but in general it’s not very helpful or clever to pretend that a team from a system like the NFL – which has a draft instead of buying players, which has a hard salary cap, where teams are able to up and move from one state to another, where those same teams can get the taxpayers to fund their stadiums, where they have revenue sharing, and in which all of the teams are franchises in a closed monopoly – is comparable to a team which plays in the Premier League.
The NFL is actually more fair than the Premier League from a purely sporting perspective. Because of the salary cap, any team can win the Super Bowl if they are smart with their resources, hire the right guys, draft well, pay a settlement to the old city that they were in, get a city to help fund their new stadium, and also have a little bit of luck. And look, it’s not impossible for a Premier League team to do those things and also to win the League and the Champions League. Liverpool did! Let’s be honest as Arsenal fans and say that Liverpool did just about everything right these last 7 years or so and it paid off big time. And it’s also possible for a club to just have one great season out of the blue and win the League, Leicester did it! But in general, money talks, and there are four teams in the Premier League who are able to spend money as if it doesn’t even matter. If money talks then Man City, Newcastle, Chelsea, and Man United have diarrhea of the mouth.
But on top of that two of those teams aren’t dumb with their money. Chelsea are one of the best teams in the world right now at buying and selling talent. Man City buy the right guys and have one of the best managers in the world. Of course, those systems could fall apart. Roman Abramovich could die or he could have his assets seized. The world could switch away from oil (lol).
But until those things happen, for the rest of the League, the objective is just to be super smart with your money, stay competitive, buy the right managers and players, and hope to get a little bit lucky. Yes, in that way, we could “pull a Rams.”
And by god (Thierry Henry) I hope we do one day.
*As opposed to a Canadian or someone from Latin America, America refers to the continent, not just the United States. And while we are at it, are the states really even that united?
I just love the hair-shirtedness of this blog.
Ivan and qwerty are the icing on the cake.
Ivan the gorilla? From the B&I? You know I worked there when he was in captivity. It was really sad.
On a serious note, what do you mean that I’m hair-shirted? That I punish myself?
I saw a movie about that. It was Disney-fied but still sad.
Frank Lloyd Wright coined the phrase Usonian. Which still sounds better than what we are but better than “American.”
FLW was a genius!
Some of us US Americans don’t, uh, have maps. Give us a break.
Usonians learn geography when we invade a country.
Tim, it seems all or most of the Kroenke owned teams have been doing well lately.
Can we at least make the conclusion that the Kroenkes are now serious about the sporting ambitions of their teams ? Wouldn’t that address the biggest gripe Arsenal fans had ?
Hello Josh! wink wink nudge nudge say no more!
LOL
no thanks!
“These sports are so incredibly different and the business environments are worlds apart, that it’s impossible for Arsenal to “pull a Rams”.”
Unfortunately, I think this is exactly what Josh Kroenke doesn’t understand. The parallels are there to be drawn. Hire young coaches and GMs, and ‘spend’. Whether in the form of trading picks or in the market. Really, that is the extent of the similarities. But KSE believe it is a winning formula. Before we hired Arteta, Josh Kroenke made similar comparisons between Unai Emery and Sean Mcvay, crazy as that sounds. It seems to be something he has in mind as ‘The Process’
Happily* enough, I believe he’s prepared to throw money at this until he can point to it being a success. Contrary to what they say, and what those who believe in it…uhhh….believe.. I think it’s going to prove to be an unsustainable way to run the club.
*I am not happy
Loved the stories about playing in the dark in Alaska! I grew up a lover of American football. I played for 4 years, and my hometown team the Steelers won 4 Super Bowls in a decade. What was not to love? But I switched to the other football in high school because I despised the macho culture USA football espoused. You were encouraged to be violent, and ridicule people who struggled as being weak or “pu$$ies” It was anti-intellectual, sexist and vulgar.
I still watch American football but the Steelers playoff run a few years back, which included a game where a promising player was paralyzed, and then Antonio Brown was concussed with a dirty hit, marked the last straws for me. It’s an ugly game, and still suffers from the same issues I encountered when I was a kid. The league’s racism and its cover up of CTE injuries demonstrate the old boy network effect the owners still have on the sport. For me American football is now more like meeting an old flame and thinking “How was I ever attracted to her?” I find most games tedious and am disinterested.
The PL is far from perfect, but it gives me joy to see a multicultural group of people join together to perform acts of skill and beauty. Where the fans really have an impact – their rejection of the Super league was magnificent – and the league makes taking a knee a requirement before every game, to make their position on racism explicit.
Ironic then, that I chose to support a team owned by the Kroenkes. As Tim says, I’m hoping they spend enough to prove they can win a PL championship and the sell to someone who actually cares about the club.
And yeah, this LA guy rooted for the Rams, but mostly because no Steelers fan past/present/future can root for the Bengals.
Thought I spotted you in a hospitality box, munching on $1000 sushi, sipping fine Napa Valley grapes, and rubbing shoulders with a Hollywood starlet. Was I mistaken? 😊
I would’ve – but the $3000 parking spaces let me penniless.
Growing up in South East Asia, I never grew up liking or even understanding Gridiron Football at all. Just about the only thing I know was that people on the Internet was calling it handegg and comparing it to Rugby.
I only started appreciating it after reading a Japanese manga called Eyeshield 21, which I loved (third favourite manga, but this is not the place or time to discuss this). Since then, I’ve tried actually watching the damn thing, but I never properly understood the schedule and format of the NFL, so I relegated myself to watching the Superbowl. The Superbowl tended to take place super early in the morning (something like 4-5am ish?), and I tried watching it once a couple of years ago.
While the spectacle was incredible, I was most surprised (and disappointed) by the amount of downtime the game had. Nowadays, I have relegated myself to just watching highlights as I can’t stand the amount of ‘nothing’ that goes on in live games. I still really enjoy the match itself, just not the things surrounding the match!
Saw this is the Guardian today about Wenger and PSG … Color me intrigued/excited.
“All the while, Zinédine Zidane – who the club see as their next coach – is apparently unimpressed with the way the club is run and would prefer to work with Arsène Wenger, who the club have also pursued for some time, should he join.
A Zidane-Wenger ticket at PSG looks increasingly likely, with Pochettino’s exit this summer seemingly assured.”
I love Wenger, this would be a surprise if you ask me.
How would it affect Wenger’s perception if he went and joined PSG after all the ‘values’ he talked about ?
Responding to Claude from last thread
I’m not a philosopher. I just know that we humans, as much as we might try and SHOULD try, are utterly incapable of objectivity, particularly when it comes to moral objectivity. Take something very simple. An orange. Anyone can see that an orange is an orange. That’s as close to absolute truth as you can get. Now place that orange in the context of a game between two sides where the object of the game is to roll the orange as straight as possible. Maybe one side develops a particular cultivar that is more spherical and rolls more true. Is this a genius invention or cheating? A legal code is now required to define what is an orange. Depending on your particular background, etc you might feel strongly one way or another. Note the word feel. It’s not that you have any special gift that allows you greater insight into what truly makes an orange an orange. Sure there are extremes in both directions that a majority would agree with, but there are also outliers in both directions and at the end of the day it’s all subjective, driven by how you feel. After all, we don’t have a dictionary of the universe to consult for absolute truth, only Webster’s. It’s that our beliefs about what an orange is are formed in childhood and solidified through shared experience. Hardly the stuff of scientific rigor. People way smarter than me have written about this.
Now imagine putting a single human being in charge of adjudicating how much any single fruit is actually an orange or not. Inevitably, their judgment will anger a certain percentage of people who believe otherwise. Sometimes even the majority. And who is right? There’s really no such thing. It’s about the interpretation of events through a lens of shared experience and precedent. Most of the time there’s a clear answer when viewed from that lens. Is it universal truth? No. But at least by convention most of the bell curve of human response would agree.
None of this means that we should not STRIVE for objectivity of thought when it is in keeping with our moral compass, in the same way we should strive to live up to virtues and values we hold dear. It does mean we should simultaneously humbly accept our inherent limitations. Put plainly, my issue is not that folks want to be objective. That’s the noble attempt to see the world as simply as possible. But we cannot remove ourselves from the role of observer and therefore cannot claim objectivity for ourselves. More than that, my issue is if people confuse their moral convictions with objectivity. I don’t need to give you examples of this, I’m sure.