Cultural Voyeurism

My wife and I have now lived about 7 decades each. In that time expertise has been developed by only one of us, in only one field. My wife was a better than average pediatric occupational therapist. Except for that we have lived totally superficial lives. As an example of our lack of knowledge neither of us could say if merlot is white, pink, or red. Rather than delve at length into anything we have sought variety in our experiences. We have skimmed lightly over the surface of activities. We are dilettantes. We think of ourselves as cultural voyeurs. We have played bingo on a Saturday night at the fire hall in a small town on the Oregon coast. We have been supernumeraries in a production by the Seattle opera company. We have passed a New Year’s Eve putting flowers on a parade float in Pasadena, CA. In two days we will host a cultural voyage for some friends into the realm of professional American football. People not often found at sporting events are coming to our house to watch a playoff game between the Chicago Bears and the Seattle Seahawks.



From the participants' perspective professional football combines strength, speed, agility, conditioning, honed skills, and brains. Not withstanding the myth of baseball as the intellectual’s game, football is clearly the most cerebral of American sports. I would guess that the average football play takes 10 or 15 seconds to run. The teams then have 30 seconds to plan what they will attempt next. Though they seldom use all 30 seconds, it is clear the actual time that play is going on is less than half the minutes in the game, not counting time outs. Football is mostly a planning activity and of course the planning that goes on between plays is nothing as compared with the planning, and study that happens between games and between seasons. This is true for both offense and defense. Football contains a very highly refined intellectual component.



Football is also the king of the team sports. In baseball where there are nine players on the field only one or two are doing anything most of the time. The rest are just waiting. Even when the ball has been hit and is in play many field players will not really have anything to do while at least five members of the team at bat will necessarily be seated on the bench. Always. Basketball is the same. Most of the time not more than two or three players on each team are involved in the action. Frequently only one offensive player is active with only one or two defensive players opposing his efforts. In football every player is active on every play and the actual outcome of any given play is dependent on the success or failure of most of the players on both teams. What players know in a deep visceral way as the game advances and what fans barely glimpse is how each guy is doing against his immediate opponent. Are you mostly winning those small battles or are you mostly getting beaten? Football games are won and lost by the blockers and those who would be blocked, or not. The spectators, with their eyes on the drama of where the ball is, miss most of the real show.



Our cultural voyage on Sunday will not be into the realm of players and coaches. It will be into the realm of the fans. From the fan’s perspective football involves sitting (mostly), snacking, and vocalizing. We can surmise that the intensity of the fan’s experience is substantial given the time and money devoted to it. That intensity is related to two things. One is identification with the team. It is apparently possible for people of ordinary intelligence to ignore the fact that nobody on “their” team has ever even heard of them, let alone actually cares about them. There is a curious asymmetry between fans and players. While the fans know something about the players, the players know nothing about the individual fans. Somehow fans manage to overlook the fact that they have almost nothing to do with how well the team does and instead feel personally fulfilled by success and chastened by defeat. This remarkable suspension of disbelief underpins the modern sports industry. Billions of dollars are spent on account of it, I am sure.



The other pillar on which the sports industry stands is gambling. In this case caring about the outcome is at least sensible. My father was a lifetime gambler, mostly on sporting events. Although he had a couple of good scores over the course of 70 or 80 years he must certainly have been a net loser in the long run. In any case he never got into trouble from his gambling. I now see his gaming as a savings program which paid a negative interest rate and provided random withdrawals. Almost every night he had a handful of “tickets” on one or more games. Each ticket had possible scores for the competing teams and when the end result of the games matched his ticket, he won. Buying the tickets was his “savings account deposit". Winning represented a “withdrawal”. Though the effective interest rate was negative, the randomness of the withdrawals made it way more fun than any bank account. Typically when a withdrawal occurred he would use the money to buy something he wanted. Thus he saved up for many of the tools I now have.



Our friend Ellie, who knows a lot about a lot of topics, including that brevity is the soul of wit, replied to our invitation as follows. I will come “as long I don’t have to either KNOW what a tight end is, or HAVE one.”