“Football imitates American society by generating a sensation of chaotic freedom within an environment of near-total control.”
Chuck Klosterman’s meandering missive on America's actual national pasttime can feel a bit dense and esoteric -- while somehow managing to be hilarious and absorbing. "Football" is an eclectic mix that works, with the author dropping surprise bits of wisdom into discussion of the vagaries of six-man football.
Along the way, the author also manages to almost perfectly capture my feelings toward the Miami Dolphins.
“ … I sometimes fear I’m experiencing the most bottomless version of fandom, where I love a team I don’t even like, emotionally betrothed against my will.”
Klosterman peppers the prose with fortune cookie-ish sayings, giving the work heft interspersed with nostalgia, concern, and doubt.
“Pervasive institutional control, so entrenched that it’s become unremarkable, is both the facilitator for society’s overall enhancement and the reason so many individuals within that society feel alienated by the very things making their life easier. Everything was upgraded and nothing got better.”
Klosterman closes with an entirely plausible scenario that predicts the eventual disappearance of the game, serving as a fitting ending to a fascinating read.
“If football did not already exist and was being invented today, there’s no way this amount of idle loitering would be included. The elevator pitch would seem like a joke: ‘Let’s create a complicated, violent game where nothing happens during 94 percent of the telecast, shown from a camera perspective that limits the viewer’s ability to see what’s happening.’”
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