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| Photo Cred - Gerry Melendez |
I love the conversations around football. Something this popular also, simply put, holds a mirror to "our" society. Recent NFL seasons have exposed what we are willing to be complicit about in order to maintain "our" entertainment that is the sport of football. That list of what we're complicit about is incredibly long. Sports can challenge our understandings of masculinities, race, gender violence, sexual orientation, socioeconomic disparities, mental health, military, and all of those at once even if at times they feel like separate topics. It's one of the simplest ways to engage in important societal issues, and you can do this by simply asking, "Hey, what do you think about Kaepernick and what he stands for?" Simple and complex.
The topics above have been hashed out, re-hashed, and revisited as new information comes out. I'm not here to make a stance (although I have one). I'm here to explore something a little deeper that keeps surfacing for me year after year during football season. What I want to explore is the question: Is football something I actually enjoy or something that I learned to enjoy?
When I think about my childhood, football took three phases: Playing it, watching it, and video games. Each arena was a competitive environment.
Playing: I played a ton as a kid, both with family and with people in the neighborhood. I was scrawny until I graduated high school. I would never physically intimidate someone. But I was fast, had a high degree of body control, and smart. Although never enough to be the first draft pick, I was always in the mix. I made up for not being the biggest dude by finding other ways to contribute. I get an innate sense of accomplishment being an underdog. Give me the team that has no chance on paper, but with the right amount of leadership can overcome a better team. I loved playing that role. This is how I got my acceptance with my peers.
Watching: Most of my memories growing up watching football is with my dad and his friends, not so much my peers. I think witnessing the passion they had when they came together to eat, drink, and cheer was something I just wanted to be a part of. Looking back, I took on a couple of cues for how to belong in this group. I needed to know the rules, the players, where they're from, where they've been, the coaches, and team history. Still today, when he watches a pro game my dad knows who played when and where and for who. And I personally assigned a lot of value to that. I felt like it gave my dad an edge in conversation with his friends. I've learned that skill myself and today, my partner wonders what I would be able to accomplish if I replaced all of my football data with useful and meaningful information (like her birthday).
Video games: This is another arena of competition between me and my friends, but often I would play against the computer because video games just made us mad at each other. Football (and other sports games) were in constant rotation in my cartridge collection. I really liked being able to assume control of the calls and the players. Combining the meta game of managing a team by calling plays with real-time skill was right up my ally. I spent hours playing Tecmo Super Bowl and Madden. Outside of the immediate satisfaction of winning, it was another way to familiarize myself with players and teams to use when watching the game with others.
Looking back, it seems like a mix. I enjoyed football as entertainment, but there are some things I had to learn to enjoy. It seems that football was a vehicle for me to feel connected and confident during a time where I felt very little of both. So like anyone who wanted to fit in, I had to at least learn to pretend to like something initially, but eventually it just became second nature. On the other hand, there are inherent aspects of football that I genuinely enjoy, both then and now. Where it gets complicated for me is now that I know more about myself and my values and am aware that my consumption is inherently political, I have to balance my enjoyment of football with being complicit in "locker room talk" (misogyny and homophobia) and "shut up and play" (white supremacy). Is that even possible to balance?
I can't ever remember a time when something was happening in the world of football that translated to intense introspection about major societal issues like it has been this year or two. To see white male season ticket holders burn tickets and paraphernalia because players are taking a knee should be closer examined. After watching a bunch of them, the anger seems so hollow and empty. I honestly believe that when men - and in this case, white men - feel like they're losing control of something, we find ways to try to gain control. Check out the traffic on PornHub during and after Super Bowl 50. When people in North Carolina felt like the game was lost, the PornHub traffic spiked. Although I would argue porn is another violent way to get control back, these unhealthy reactions hint at a deeper sense of loss. If football was supposed to be an escape, then what players do before and after the game shouldn't matter. But since it's infused with "Patriotism", military, and "respect for the flag", it was never an escape in the first place. Watching football was an affirmation of "American" values. And maybe without even consciously knowing it, this was an affirmation of Whiteness and it's control of American values. I can see no other explanation for anger at NFL players from the fans.
So maybe like the game of football has changed dramatically in the 30 years I have been consuming it, the way we watch must change as well. I would argue that we should never have been passive consumers of football since these issues were probably present when I was a child, but now more than ever, we have to learn to enjoy the conversations that surround football for change to happen. Good thing I've had practice learning how to enjoy things.
When I think about my childhood, football took three phases: Playing it, watching it, and video games. Each arena was a competitive environment.
Playing: I played a ton as a kid, both with family and with people in the neighborhood. I was scrawny until I graduated high school. I would never physically intimidate someone. But I was fast, had a high degree of body control, and smart. Although never enough to be the first draft pick, I was always in the mix. I made up for not being the biggest dude by finding other ways to contribute. I get an innate sense of accomplishment being an underdog. Give me the team that has no chance on paper, but with the right amount of leadership can overcome a better team. I loved playing that role. This is how I got my acceptance with my peers.
Watching: Most of my memories growing up watching football is with my dad and his friends, not so much my peers. I think witnessing the passion they had when they came together to eat, drink, and cheer was something I just wanted to be a part of. Looking back, I took on a couple of cues for how to belong in this group. I needed to know the rules, the players, where they're from, where they've been, the coaches, and team history. Still today, when he watches a pro game my dad knows who played when and where and for who. And I personally assigned a lot of value to that. I felt like it gave my dad an edge in conversation with his friends. I've learned that skill myself and today, my partner wonders what I would be able to accomplish if I replaced all of my football data with useful and meaningful information (like her birthday).
Video games: This is another arena of competition between me and my friends, but often I would play against the computer because video games just made us mad at each other. Football (and other sports games) were in constant rotation in my cartridge collection. I really liked being able to assume control of the calls and the players. Combining the meta game of managing a team by calling plays with real-time skill was right up my ally. I spent hours playing Tecmo Super Bowl and Madden. Outside of the immediate satisfaction of winning, it was another way to familiarize myself with players and teams to use when watching the game with others.
Looking back, it seems like a mix. I enjoyed football as entertainment, but there are some things I had to learn to enjoy. It seems that football was a vehicle for me to feel connected and confident during a time where I felt very little of both. So like anyone who wanted to fit in, I had to at least learn to pretend to like something initially, but eventually it just became second nature. On the other hand, there are inherent aspects of football that I genuinely enjoy, both then and now. Where it gets complicated for me is now that I know more about myself and my values and am aware that my consumption is inherently political, I have to balance my enjoyment of football with being complicit in "locker room talk" (misogyny and homophobia) and "shut up and play" (white supremacy). Is that even possible to balance?
I can't ever remember a time when something was happening in the world of football that translated to intense introspection about major societal issues like it has been this year or two. To see white male season ticket holders burn tickets and paraphernalia because players are taking a knee should be closer examined. After watching a bunch of them, the anger seems so hollow and empty. I honestly believe that when men - and in this case, white men - feel like they're losing control of something, we find ways to try to gain control. Check out the traffic on PornHub during and after Super Bowl 50. When people in North Carolina felt like the game was lost, the PornHub traffic spiked. Although I would argue porn is another violent way to get control back, these unhealthy reactions hint at a deeper sense of loss. If football was supposed to be an escape, then what players do before and after the game shouldn't matter. But since it's infused with "Patriotism", military, and "respect for the flag", it was never an escape in the first place. Watching football was an affirmation of "American" values. And maybe without even consciously knowing it, this was an affirmation of Whiteness and it's control of American values. I can see no other explanation for anger at NFL players from the fans.
So maybe like the game of football has changed dramatically in the 30 years I have been consuming it, the way we watch must change as well. I would argue that we should never have been passive consumers of football since these issues were probably present when I was a child, but now more than ever, we have to learn to enjoy the conversations that surround football for change to happen. Good thing I've had practice learning how to enjoy things.
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