An open letter to Chuck Klosterman
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by user Barkingclam
Chuck,
I just read your essay on ESPN, and it’s one of the better things I’ve read in quite some time.
As I understand, the NFL is a big deal in the US, and that’s putting it lightly. Up here in Canada, it gets moderately better treatment than professional basketball; It’s on TV on a regular basis, but there’s only 2 or 3 games a week.
However, I disagree with it’s what people want; I don’t think that the average person knows quite what they’re watching. They may be able to rattle off the name and numbers for a famous running back, but they can’t name any of the big men up front who do the heavy lifting.
When people see something that is different from the norm on TV, I assume that they see it differently. For example, I just watched a fake trailer for a pseudo-movie called Hobo With A Shotgun (it’s on YouTube, if you want to watch it). Several people are shot and killed, often quite graphically.
And I laughed. I laughed at the absurdity of it, at it’s cheesy one-liners, at the almost cartoonish violence. I laughed, never once considering the consequences of any of the hobo’s actions.
However, it was just a fictional movie on the Internet. If I had personally witnessed any one (or a combination thereof) those events, I’d be horrified.
The same goes for football. If any of us could, as you put it, experience a rhino that can run like a deer and who may be drugged up beyond all comprehension first hand, they would be shocked. But they don’t, so they aren’t. To the average fan, the most players are just there – maybe they saw their names at the beginning of the game; maybe they read their bio in a game program and maybe they heard Mel Kiper talk about them on the radio. But at the end of it all, professional football players are just something they watch on TV.
But they can’t identify with them, not like they can with famous players. The only time they see them in on Sundays, on their TV.
Unlike Barry Bonds, or even Ben Johnson (who, despite a recent ad campaign where he pitched Cheetah Energy Drinks, saying “I cheetah every day’, is still persona non grata to most Canadians) people don’t identify with them; they don’t live vicariously through their success. Nobody cheered when Todd Saurbrun made a 50+ punt; he was just doing his job, nothing else. But people cheered when Nick Goings would make a 5, 10 yard run. He was a success, a famous player.
This is why I think that at some point the NFL will collapse if it stays on this route. Sooner or later, some famous player will either be busted publicly or will have a disastrous reaction to steroids (I don’t mean breaking out in a rash, I’m talking about a Clint Malarchuk situation on the field) and the NFL will be unable figure out why all of a sudden the fans are upset.
People identified with Mark McGuwire and they lived through his successes. This is why I feel that his steroid allegations have been so negative. But nobody cares when some third-rate bullpen arm tests positive. Nobody loves a punter they way they love a superstar. People will care when something happens to someone who isn’t just a blob on the screen.
And that day better come soon, for the good of the NFL and for the good of its players. I’m sure that you’ll agree that one Andre Waters story is enough.
