The Joy of Watching Football

My husband is a professional ethicist and teaches classes on the ethics of technology. He didn’t get a smartphone until we were deep into the coronavirus pandemic, when we didn’t know anyone else without one. He’s careful and intentional and constantly makes decisions against the grain of culture and trend. So you can understand my shock when, five years ago, he practically begged me to agree to get a large flatscreen television.

“What are you talking about?” I stammered. “We’re not big TV people. Just a few years ago we talked about not having a TV at all, and now you want one above the fireplace that takes up half the wall?”

He looked sheepish and replied, “I just … need something to look forward to every week.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. Our lives were full of meaning. My husband loved his job as a college professor, we had four young children, and we were still in those weighty early years of parenting where every decision feels morally tinged. We were careful about screen time and did lots of art projects; we limited candy and maximized reading and singing. In short, we were making all the right decisions! Who was this husband in front of me who suddenly said that a big television would bring something special and meaningful into his life?

What he was talking about, dear reader, was watching the Pittsburgh Steelers play football. No matter if they’re winning or losing, no matter if they have good draft picks or busts, no matter who the coach is or how long it has been since a Super Bowl, my husband and his family follow the Steelers and watch every single one of their games. Last year’s Christmas sermon at my in-laws’ church was about searching, from the wise men searching for the baby king to what our Google searches say about our need for meaning and connection. Of the top five Google searches in the Pittsburgh area last fall, the number one search was “The Steelers” and the fifth most popular search topic was “The NFL.”

Sports – and in the United States, football – fulfills deep and significant longings in many people. Church in the morning, home for lunch, then football: it’s just what people do on Sunday. Spiritual needs checked off at church, physical needs taken care of between lunch and game time snacking, and emotional and social needs met in the highs and lows of the National Football League all afternoon and evening among family and friends. I have two close friends who have told me that the time they talk with their dads the most is during football games. While the more intellectual or emotionally healthy among us might scoff at a parent-child relationship grounded in televised sports, maybe we should step back and think about why people love football so much, and celebrate the bonds that football builds.

Photograph by ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo.

Naysayers may watch the spectacle of an American football game and see a waste of time and resources: drunk fans carousing in the parking lot and stands; overpaid players arriving at the stadium blinged-out with jewelry and tailored suits; injured athletes getting the very best medical attention when other sick people wait weeks or months for treatment.

The naysayers are right to criticize the drinking culture of football fans and the tremendous amount of money involved in nearly every aspect of the NFL. More recently, traumatic head injuries have justifiably gained attention as former players of all ages describe the suffering they’ve endured because of repeated hits over years of playing football. The NFL is trying to address this dire health issue by spreading awareness, providing better equipment, and enforcing strict concussion protocol. But there is no denying that football is violent, and we need to admit we enjoy a sport that involves so much pain.

But look again, and you’ll see joy, loyalty, determination, perseverance, love, graceful athleticism, and a game that has so many twists and turns that it makes Dungeons & Dragons look like hopscotch.

My husband rarely makes financial requests, so I was happy to acquiesce to his desire for a new television. But his plaintive appeal for “something to look forward to every week” has stuck with me. On one level it was funny because of course our lives were clearly already full of significance, and he didn’t mean that he only looked forward to football. But on another level, I knew this description of football was all too accurate. We live in western New York, home of the Buffalo Bills, and like the region defined by love for the Steelers, this area is blue collar and gritty and hangs on every play our team makes on the gridiron.

Sometimes it seems like the mental health of western New York is tied up in the fate of the Buffalo Bills. When they lost to the Kansas City Chiefs in the playoffs this past January, I knew several people who told me they cried – one friend of mine said, “I left the living room and sobbed in my kitchen.” There was a pall of disappointment hanging over Buffalo after that loss, and the midwinter dreary chill felt just about right as we fans mourned the end of a season that started with such high expectations. It all ended with a thud: a few bad calls and a few missed catches and a field goal that suddenly went astray, missing the upright by a couple of feet in a gust of icy January wind.

In the Netflix documentary Quarterback, produced by football legend and all-around nice guy Peyton Manning, camera crews follow three NFL quarterbacks through the 2022 season to give viewers a close-up look into their lives and families, their workout regimens and chiropractor appointments, and their post-game debriefing sessions. Reviewers and fans of the series have commented on getting to know three-time Super Bowl MVP Patrick Mahomes through his interviews and the hot mic that catches some of his salty language in the middle of intense games.

As a Bills fan, I didn’t want to like Mahomes – he and his Chiefs teammates have humbled Buffalo in the playoffs too many times these last few years, and we all feel a little wounded by his astounding and irritating athleticism. But I was unexpectedly touched when he said in Quarterback, “I love football because it’s just me going out there with a band of brothers, working together for a common goal. It’s like we’re going to war.”

This idea helped me crystallize what I think my husband and millions of other fans love about football. Football brings people together by geography in a way that we’ve come to miss in the divisiveness of angry and ugly political ideologies of recent years. This geographic loyalty is especially significant because, more than ever, we live on our devices, disconnected from our place. We yearn for rootedness in a particular land and area; cheering for a team from where we live or where we were born helps us feel connected to “our” people and gives us a sense of belonging in “our” place. Being a football fan gives us a tribe – a band of brothers, as it were – when many people struggle to know where they fit.

The movie Chariots of Fire tells the story of track star Eric Liddell, who was born to a Scottish missionary family in China and ran for the United Kingdom in the 1924 Olympic Games. The most well-known storyline in the movie follows Liddell’s decision to withdraw from the 100-meter race, his specialty, when he realizes it has been scheduled on Sunday. Liddell takes a principled stand not to violate God’s commandment to keep the Sabbath holy, so his coach puts him in the 400-meter race instead, which is held on a different day. But another drama in the movie is Liddell’s struggle with the religious culture of his family – devout Christians who cannot understand why Liddell would dedicate time and energy to sports at all when there is missionary work to do. In a moving scene with a backdrop of the Scottish Highlands, Liddell pleads with his sister: “Jennie, you’ve got to understand. I believe that God made me for a purpose, for China. But he also made me fast. And when I run I feel his pleasure. To give it up would be to hold him in contempt. To win is to honor him.”

American football is no twentieth-century footrace – from a cultural and moral standpoint, it can be problematic. These issues surrounding football aren’t easy to resolve, but that doesn’t mean we should walk away from it, throwing up our hands at its ethical complications.

Apart from the sense of belonging and connection that football gives, it’s just plain fun. There’s nothing quite like watching Patrick Mahomes launch an unexpected bomb seventy yards down the field to a receiver running so fast down the sidelines that his legs are a blur. In my case, seeing Mahomes do this makes my stomach lurch with dread, but watching him and his coaches and teammates work together to outsmart and outplay another tight-knit crew is theater at its best. I can only hope that this season, my team comes out on top in the suddenly strategic, suddenly explosive game of war and play that is American football. My husband and I will be watching on the big screen above our fireplace, cheering against Patrick while admiring the abandon and joy with which he plays the game.