# Why Football Matters with Chuck Klosterman

An episode of [NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/680904259), 25 May 2026, 44 min.

Audio: https://pdrl.fm/91be81/podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/claritaspod.com/measure/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/9ce11dad-e86a-444f-ba83-ae27003475be/4864bc8e-9985-4488-a214-b45101472ce5/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=deff018f-4b51-4501-937c-ae27003475d1

Gregg Rosenthal is joined by bestselling author Chuck Klosterman to talk about his new book "Football". Gregg and Chuck take a deep dive into the fandom around the sport of football, Chuck growing up a Cowboys fan and how being on the wrong side of a moment like "The Catch" can change a fan forever, the future of football globally and more! NFL Daily YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/nflpodcasts See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:04] Speaker 1: Welcome to NFL Daily, where we are always excited to
[0:08] Speaker 1: talk about a new, great football book. My guest today
[0:12] Speaker 1: doing something a little different after this holiday weekend, is
[0:17] Speaker 1: to welcome in Chuck Closterman.
[0:20] Speaker 2: I'm a longtime fan.
[0:21] Speaker 1: He is the best selling author of a new book
[0:25] Speaker 1: football that's like right in my background, but also the
[0:28] Speaker 1: author of a gang of book sex Drug in Cocoa Puffs,
[0:31] Speaker 1: which I really enjoy, the nineties Fargo, Rock City, a
[0:34] Speaker 1: couple novels, including Downtown Owl. But Chuck, you're here because
[0:40] Speaker 1: you wrote a book about football, and let's start there.
[0:43] Speaker 1: I feel like we need more good current books about football, Like,
[0:47] Speaker 1: why don't we have more current books about football?
[0:50] Speaker 3: Well, it's funny you mentioned that, because when I brought
[0:53] Speaker 3: up the idea of writing this book, the publisher was
[0:57] Speaker 3: not exactly enthusiastic, based on concept that football books don't succeed.
[1:03] Speaker 3: But there is this cliche. I guess maybe it's not
[1:06] Speaker 3: even cliche. Maybe it's true that in sports journalism, sports writing,
[1:12] Speaker 3: if you want something to be successful, you want to
[1:15] Speaker 3: use a game with the smallest possible ball. So there's
[1:20] Speaker 3: lots of books about golf. Okay, there's actually a lot
[1:23] Speaker 3: of books and lots of writing about tennis, some about baseball,
[1:27] Speaker 3: but as you move up it kind of dwindles off.
[1:31] Speaker 3: And I don't know why that relationship exists, but it
[1:33] Speaker 3: certainly seems to. And you know, not only is a
[1:37] Speaker 3: football and medium sized ball, it's a very odd shaped ball.
[1:40] Speaker 3: Perhaps that plays a role. But there I agree there
[1:43] Speaker 3: are less I think there are less good books or
[1:49] Speaker 3: great books about football because the understanding of the game
[1:54] Speaker 3: does sort of I guess repelled maybe the casual fan
[1:58] Speaker 3: to some degree. I mean, like, you know, if you
[2:01] Speaker 3: read an interesting football book at tends very I mean
[2:03] Speaker 3: this one doesn't. But they often really get into the
[2:06] Speaker 3: excess no's and things, and I don't know if that's
[2:09] Speaker 3: as as you know, as reader friendly maybe as some
[2:13] Speaker 3: other games. But but you know, it does doesn't really
[2:17] Speaker 3: affect my would I do so.
[2:20] Speaker 1: Yeah, they I wonder about that because it's one of
[2:23] Speaker 1: the reasons I when I started working in football, and
[2:26] Speaker 1: it wasn't my favorite sport growing up, and then I realized,
[2:29] Speaker 1: you know, starting to cover it, I like to cover it,
[2:31] Speaker 1: and you you start your book really with this point
[2:34] Speaker 1: of like there was the biggest gap I thought between
[2:37] Speaker 1: the people that cover it and the people and the
[2:40] Speaker 1: coaches that play it, which for someone going to work
[2:42] Speaker 1: and I thought was exciting, Like you're you're trying to
[2:45] Speaker 1: build that gap. There's almost like a need for someone
[2:48] Speaker 1: to understand it as well as possible. But even then
[2:51] Speaker 1: I have a limit as someone who never played, never coached,
[2:55] Speaker 1: to understand it. You point out it's just unique among
[3:00] Speaker 1: and just so few people have played it. You played
[3:02] Speaker 1: like a different version of it growing up. I think,
[3:04] Speaker 1: what was it six man football? I played man nine
[3:07] Speaker 1: man football?
[3:07] Speaker 3: Six six man is like, you know, I write about
[3:10] Speaker 3: six man because that's like, you know, central to Texas
[3:13] Speaker 3: and all that. You know, for real, small schools in
[3:16] Speaker 3: the Midwest, if you have a small enrollment, you know,
[3:18] Speaker 3: a rural school, you play nine man. Nine man is
[3:22] Speaker 3: an attempt really to simulate what happens in eleven man football.
[3:26] Speaker 3: The goal of nine man football is to look exactly
[3:29] Speaker 3: like eleven man football. The calls are very similar. Basically,
[3:32] Speaker 3: on offense, you're removing the offensive tackles and playing with
[3:35] Speaker 3: a two tight end set, so it's still a five
[3:37] Speaker 3: man line. And on defense, you pull out the corners
[3:41] Speaker 3: so the strong safety usually covers the wide out. And
[3:43] Speaker 3: you have a freeze safety. But if you didn't know
[3:45] Speaker 3: any better, if you were just kind of just kind
[3:47] Speaker 3: of glancing by a field, it might seem tad empty,
[3:50] Speaker 3: but it would look the same. You say, you never
[3:53] Speaker 3: played football at all, So let's really I'm curious about this.
[3:57] Speaker 3: So the idea of things like oh, the way the
[4:01] Speaker 3: backs are numbered, with the way holes are numbered, how
[4:04] Speaker 3: did you acquire that? No, Like, was there was there
[4:09] Speaker 3: some text that you read as a young man, or
[4:11] Speaker 3: or did you know it's like, because there's a whole
[4:14] Speaker 3: sort of interior semantic language of football that I feel
[4:18] Speaker 3: is really hard to sort of understand. Nless you had
[4:22] Speaker 3: some personal a small amount of personal experience.
[4:25] Speaker 1: Yeah, I had a horrible strategy, which was read every
[4:30] Speaker 1: football book possible. And so I actually do think like
[4:33] Speaker 1: football literature is underrated. You write about I think, well,
[4:39] Speaker 1: it helped me learn about the game. And I think
[4:42] Speaker 1: the New Thinking Man's Guide to Football by Paul Zimmerman
[4:44] Speaker 1: by Doctor Z like those those are like the tomes
[4:47] Speaker 1: where I think you do start to understand the sport
[4:49] Speaker 1: and you understand the history. And I actually want to
[4:52] Speaker 1: do an episode this summer of just like the Greatest
[4:54] Speaker 1: football bucks ever, because there are many but in terms
[4:59] Speaker 1: of like the exit and know's Like I tried to
[5:01] Speaker 1: read Finding the Winning Edge by Bill Walsh and like,
[5:05] Speaker 1: how do you? But I only think you get so
[5:07] Speaker 1: much to me you just learned by watching it over
[5:10] Speaker 1: and over and listening to smart people. But I always
[5:13] Speaker 1: am impressed by the people like a Ben solac Is
[5:16] Speaker 1: at ESPN.
[5:17] Speaker 2: He's a guy who does a great job breaking down
[5:18] Speaker 2: next to them.
[5:19] Speaker 1: He didn't play football and he does understand it on
[5:22] Speaker 1: that Glaniar level.
[5:23] Speaker 2: I just accept that there's a difference.
[5:26] Speaker 1: But also a lot of the people, like the people
[5:28] Speaker 1: I work with that NFL network, they understand x's those incredibly,
[5:31] Speaker 1: but they don't pay attention to the game nearly as
[5:33] Speaker 1: closely as I do anyways, and so that that can
[5:36] Speaker 1: make up a lot of ground. But I always just
[5:38] Speaker 1: accept that there are a lot of things I will
[5:41] Speaker 1: never understand about what happens on a play to play basis.
[5:44] Speaker 3: Well, you know that Bill Wolf's book, for example, Yeah,
[5:47] Speaker 3: in a you know, I think at the center of
[5:50] Speaker 3: that book, he's really writing that book for other coaches.
[5:54] Speaker 3: And you see this a lot with like books that
[5:56] Speaker 3: are written by coaches. You know, there's some books and
[6:00] Speaker 3: stuff he wrote or at least we took part of
[6:02] Speaker 3: in high school or whatever, and they're really like essentially
[6:06] Speaker 3: manuals for the coach, you know, for another coach, for
[6:08] Speaker 3: a guy who's trying to kind of put a scheme together.
[6:10] Speaker 3: Then they're like, you know, you have a daily podcast,
[6:13] Speaker 3: so you're really tied into sort of the narrative news
[6:17] Speaker 3: of you know, like transactions, injuries, what's happening, what is
[6:22] Speaker 3: sort of where everythink's going right now, and then there's
[6:24] Speaker 3: sort of like what this book I think is closer
[6:26] Speaker 3: to is just probably in some ways the abstraction of football.
[6:32] Speaker 3: By saying that, I can hear imagine someone listening to
[6:34] Speaker 3: this being like, well, that sounds terrible, But what I
[6:36] Speaker 3: mean by that is it's like, like I think that,
[6:42] Speaker 3: you know, football plays a very unique and special role,
[6:48] Speaker 3: not just in the world of sports, but in the
[6:50] Speaker 3: world of American society, the way the American society operates.
[6:54] Speaker 3: It's there's so many things about it that separate it
[6:57] Speaker 3: from all the other games, not just popularity, but maybe
[7:01] Speaker 3: the reasons that popularity happened. So it is it is
[7:04] Speaker 3: kind of a hard needle to thread in some ways,
[7:07] Speaker 3: because there's a certain kind of person and I can
[7:09] Speaker 3: imagine being like this podcast listener to this is like
[7:13] Speaker 3: I want to read about football and learn something I
[7:15] Speaker 3: did not know yesterday, Like I want to know something
[7:18] Speaker 3: about you know I, you know about shell zone coverage
[7:23] Speaker 3: that I didn't understand. And there's another kind of person
[7:25] Speaker 3: who's like, well, I like football because everyone does. It's
[7:29] Speaker 3: on every weekend, I'm on my office, you know, fantas
[7:31] Speaker 3: in the league or whatever. It's hard to find that
[7:34] Speaker 3: sort of middle groove between the person who watches football
[7:38] Speaker 3: because it's inescapable and the person who looks at football
[7:41] Speaker 3: basically as something that is only valuable to them if
[7:44] Speaker 3: they almost understand it in like a clinical, almost medical way.
[7:49] Speaker 1: Right, And I think and there's some people that just
[7:51] Speaker 1: want to follow it almost as a soap opera, a
[7:54] Speaker 1: storyline that they can understand. Like I would include my
[7:57] Speaker 1: parents in this category. I'm the most basic level, and
[8:00] Speaker 1: yet they're massive fans, but they're not among you give
[8:05] Speaker 1: the numbers out, like one million people play high school football.
[8:08] Speaker 1: That turns to eighty thousand in college, like a twenty
[8:10] Speaker 1: seven hundred as a pro. And it did get me
[8:12] Speaker 1: thinking just how few people really do understand it. And
[8:16] Speaker 1: for our listeners, by the way, having to chuck on
[8:19] Speaker 1: because I want his book has done great. It was
[8:21] Speaker 1: the best selling book, it's still it's still selling. But
[8:25] Speaker 1: I want people to read books that come out currently
[8:28] Speaker 1: about football because I want more of them as a reader.
[8:30] Speaker 1: One thing I note like there were a lot of
[8:31] Speaker 1: great football books back in the seventies, eighties, you know,
[8:35] Speaker 1: especially in the sixties seventies that really got inside the game,
[8:38] Speaker 1: and you just don't see as many of them anymore.
[8:42] Speaker 1: You wrote about Friday Night Lights. Did you reread that?
[8:45] Speaker 1: And that's part of like a bigger Texas football chapter,
[8:50] Speaker 1: But it does still kind of stand out to me
[8:52] Speaker 1: as the best of its kind.
[8:55] Speaker 3: Well, okay, I soon asked me, just like, what's the
[8:57] Speaker 3: best football book of all time? I think my reflective
[9:00] Speaker 3: answer wouldn't be Friday Nite Lights. And I think it's
[9:02] Speaker 3: a kind of a common answer. But what's tricky about it,
[9:05] Speaker 3: of course, is that what is the big compliment people
[9:08] Speaker 3: give about Friday Night Lights? Oh, it's not really about football,
[9:12] Speaker 3: Like football is the center of the story, but it's
[9:14] Speaker 3: really about socioeconomics. It's really about race, It's really about
[9:18] Speaker 3: sort of the experience of growing up somewhere where the
[9:21] Speaker 3: entire communities dictated by this game. These guys who play
[9:25] Speaker 3: high school football in this town then like going to
[9:28] Speaker 3: play college football, you know, and it just feels empty
[9:31] Speaker 3: to them because like even you know, being in Texas,
[9:33] Speaker 3: A and M doesn't feel like it did in high
[9:34] Speaker 3: school or whatever. It's all these strange things. So that
[9:39] Speaker 3: that's you know, there is a lot of football in
[9:41] Speaker 3: that book, but so often in sports writing and sports
[9:45] Speaker 3: journalism in general, the goal seems to be to transcend
[9:48] Speaker 3: the genre, right, just somehow go beyond that. I think
[9:52] Speaker 3: what you're talking about is the the kind of the
[9:55] Speaker 3: complexity or the lack of books that are really about football.
[10:00] Speaker 3: It's not a use football to describe some other thing.
[10:03] Speaker 3: It's like, well, this is what the thing is. And
[10:05] Speaker 3: it's tough because of the just intense level of complexity
[10:12] Speaker 3: that is possible, Like there's almost no ceiling how deep
[10:15] Speaker 3: into the weeds you can get on these things. And
[10:17] Speaker 3: I think a lot of times writers struggle with like, well, okay,
[10:23] Speaker 3: who am I talking to with this? Am I only
[10:25] Speaker 3: you know? Am I only talking to offensive coordinators?
[10:27] Speaker 4: Now?
[10:27] Speaker 3: When I write this section or you know, it's.
[10:30] Speaker 1: But I know what you're saying, you know, yeah, I
[10:33] Speaker 1: mean one of those books was I mean, I read
[10:35] Speaker 1: Bill Bullech Belichick's dad's book Football Scouting Methods that one's
[10:41] Speaker 1: helped to try to understand it when when you think
[10:45] Speaker 1: of Texas football, though you you kind of talked about
[10:48] Speaker 1: that dynamic of that. The afterward of that book Friday
[10:52] Speaker 1: Night Light sticks with you more than anything else because
[10:55] Speaker 1: it's a little sad almost about the players that that
[10:58] Speaker 1: was like the peak of their life.
[11:00] Speaker 2: What that made me think?
[11:01] Speaker 1: And I don't know if there if this aspect is
[11:04] Speaker 1: in other parts of high school sports or whatever, but
[11:07] Speaker 1: their their experience almost mirrors, you know, professional football, Like
[11:11] Speaker 1: professional players always say they experience some sort of death
[11:17] Speaker 1: when their career ends. In the high school players like
[11:20] Speaker 1: that is the peak for some of them, you you
[11:22] Speaker 1: write about of their entire lives. They don't get the
[11:25] Speaker 1: financial benefits, but they kind of get all of the
[11:27] Speaker 1: other benefits of just meaning and adulation and attention and
[11:31] Speaker 1: something bigger than yourself and then it's just over. Did
[11:37] Speaker 1: you like experience any of that from from your football
[11:40] Speaker 1: experience playing or just writing about it?
[11:44] Speaker 2: How do you think about that?
[11:45] Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I you know, I came from rural
[11:48] Speaker 3: North Dakota much like you. I mean, you know, football
[11:53] Speaker 3: is my favorite sport to consume it. As a player,
[11:56] Speaker 3: I cared about basketball more so. I didn't really have
[11:58] Speaker 3: this thing like these kids didn't eg But what you
[12:01] Speaker 3: mentioned is it's an intriguing thing. I mean, okay, at
[12:04] Speaker 3: the NFL level, you say, like, these guys experience a
[12:07] Speaker 3: kind of death when they retire, and you know part
[12:10] Speaker 3: of that is because to become the person who gets
[12:13] Speaker 3: in that position, you have to have sort of this
[12:16] Speaker 3: all consuming drive that's impossible to turn off simply because
[12:20] Speaker 3: you realize your body is starting to deteriorate. You know,
[12:23] Speaker 3: It's like their whole life has sort of been about like, well,
[12:26] Speaker 3: if there's forty guys on this team, I need to
[12:29] Speaker 3: be the best guy in this team. And now I'm
[12:30] Speaker 3: at high school, Well now I got to be the
[12:32] Speaker 3: best player in the region. I go to college, I
[12:34] Speaker 3: need to get drafted. All these things. The thing that
[12:36] Speaker 3: drives them is the impossible thing to stop. And you
[12:38] Speaker 3: see guys going on too long and we almost talk
[12:41] Speaker 3: about it's embarrassing for them. But like in their mind,
[12:44] Speaker 3: it's embarrassing to stop. They're never at a point in
[12:48] Speaker 3: their life that happened. The high school situation is different
[12:51] Speaker 3: because obviously it is finite. When I played high school football,
[12:56] Speaker 3: you know, we had a good team. We won the
[12:58] Speaker 3: state title when I was a sophomore. But it was
[13:00] Speaker 3: never this idea that somehow this was the pinnacle of
[13:04] Speaker 3: my life or that or that these these memories I
[13:07] Speaker 3: had was, you know, what would be the defining memories
[13:10] Speaker 3: of my life. Now, maybe paradoxically, a lot of those
[13:14] Speaker 3: things are the things I remember about my life. But
[13:17] Speaker 3: I never viewed it as sort of like, oh, now
[13:19] Speaker 3: it's out over, you know, now this is over. I
[13:23] Speaker 3: think guys at the college level probably might in some
[13:27] Speaker 3: ways have one of the weirdest experiences because, assuming they
[13:30] Speaker 3: don't go to play professional football, you know, they spend
[13:34] Speaker 3: sort of this period of your life when for most people,
[13:38] Speaker 3: I don't know where you went to college, but I'm guessing,
[13:40] Speaker 3: I'm just guessing that your memories of college are like
[13:43] Speaker 3: pretty positive and pretty fun and like the relationships you had,
[13:46] Speaker 3: or like maybe some of the stile relationships you have now,
[13:48] Speaker 3: and it was maybe the first time you were an adult,
[13:50] Speaker 3: but you were still a young person, whereas the college
[13:52] Speaker 3: football player essentially has well now a real job or
[13:56] Speaker 3: they're getting paid, and college now is just sort of
[14:00] Speaker 3: a like a just an institution that has no meaning
[14:05] Speaker 3: except that this is where I go to practice and
[14:07] Speaker 3: play games. Or so when that ends for them, they're
[14:11] Speaker 3: like a full on adult, Like you're a twenty three
[14:14] Speaker 3: or twenty four year old person. They're supposed to live now,
[14:17] Speaker 3: and they'd spend all this time thinking really just one
[14:21] Speaker 3: thing that is a simulation of reality.
[14:26] Speaker 1: Yeah, I went to Tulane, so you know, we're enjoying
[14:29] Speaker 1: the nal Aile era, but I also, yeah, enjoyed myself
[14:34] Speaker 1: quite a bit in college in a way that would
[14:36] Speaker 1: like never be able to replicate you. You talked about
[14:41] Speaker 1: like that. I love the chapter on Texas if it
[14:44] Speaker 1: wasn't clear, and yeah, the book goes and it hits everything.
[14:47] Speaker 2: That's what I like about it.
[14:48] Speaker 1: It's football, like right now, you talk about where gambling
[14:52] Speaker 1: is at, you talk about college football. You know, at
[14:57] Speaker 1: some point I think, who did you compare? It was
[15:01] Speaker 1: Brian Kelly to a character on Little House in the Prairie,
[15:04] Speaker 1: So that like a character.
[15:06] Speaker 3: From an old Lordyole book. Yes, that is true.
[15:09] Speaker 1: I'm just saying you're not gonna find that in any
[15:13] Speaker 1: other in any other books. You you grew up though,
[15:17] Speaker 1: like a big Staback fan, and you talk in that
[15:20] Speaker 1: Texas chapter about like the Cowboys kind of in general,
[15:23] Speaker 1: I do feel like Staback you have that in common
[15:25] Speaker 1: with Bill Belichick, that you're a monster Starbuck fan who
[15:29] Speaker 1: I feel like is a little lost to the average
[15:33] Speaker 1: fan history right now, just as like the guy and
[15:37] Speaker 1: also a legitimately like great quarterback, one of the greatest
[15:40] Speaker 1: quarterbacks ever. So I wanted to give you the chance
[15:42] Speaker 1: to just like talk Staback and make the case for
[15:45] Speaker 1: Stabach as someone so vital to the history he had
[15:47] Speaker 1: the game.
[15:48] Speaker 3: Well, I appreciate you doing that, Okay. So, like Bill
[15:50] Speaker 3: Chick's thing was different because his dad was at Yeat,
[15:53] Speaker 3: So Bilichick would like throw the football with stay from
[15:56] Speaker 3: like Rug Patards stuff while he was there, like he
[15:59] Speaker 3: is a it's a little easier Undertand I mean for me,
[16:03] Speaker 3: you know, okay, it's it's a strange thing because when
[16:05] Speaker 3: I'm born in nineteen seventy two, Roger was already thirty.
[16:10] Speaker 3: Like he really does in many ways belong to the
[16:12] Speaker 3: generation that predates me. But I got into football at
[16:16] Speaker 3: a young age, and you know, he was just to me,
[16:20] Speaker 3: he was sort of what a person was supposed to be, like,
[16:23] Speaker 3: I mean, every quality he possesses a football player, but
[16:26] Speaker 3: also sort of it is just sort of like a
[16:28] Speaker 3: person living in the world. It was. It's kind of
[16:32] Speaker 3: seemed like one of these things that were used to
[16:34] Speaker 3: feeling are too good to be true. Okay, like there's
[16:37] Speaker 3: no one who's really like this or whatever. Well, he
[16:40] Speaker 3: teeth retires. I think I'm in second grade. They got
[16:43] Speaker 3: beat by the Rams and the playoffs, and he had
[16:46] Speaker 3: to tell a lot of the concussions and was already
[16:48] Speaker 3: older because he, you know, been in Vietnam and all that.
[16:51] Speaker 3: So he retires, you know. So to some people, it's
[16:54] Speaker 3: very strange, My like, my hero or whatever is this
[16:58] Speaker 3: person who I only watched a handful of times, you know.
[17:02] Speaker 3: But I mean, I really am of the belief that
[17:06] Speaker 3: it's weird for an adult man to have a hero, like,
[17:09] Speaker 3: even if they do heroic things like we're not I
[17:12] Speaker 3: don't like to use that word. Now, you need a
[17:14] Speaker 3: hero when you're eight, and who your hero is when
[17:18] Speaker 3: your age is kind of your hero for life. So
[17:21] Speaker 3: that's that's just so like Roger Steubach is still I
[17:24] Speaker 3: guess my hero if you're gonna call that, but I
[17:27] Speaker 3: just what makes me so happy. But like you say,
[17:30] Speaker 3: a little bit lost to to people, Well, that's almost
[17:35] Speaker 3: every player, right, Like it's hard to think of the
[17:37] Speaker 3: guys to really stay interestingly. You know, people used to
[17:40] Speaker 3: sometimes compare and contrast Stabach with Joe Namath, not just
[17:45] Speaker 3: because they were both great quarterbacks, ones in the ANFL,
[17:48] Speaker 3: ones in the NFL, but you know, one was sort
[17:50] Speaker 3: of a playboy and sort of like kind of countercultural
[17:53] Speaker 3: idea big kind of mutt chops and starback is you know,
[17:56] Speaker 3: crew cut, clean cut, you know, Catholic, all of these things.
[18:01] Speaker 3: I do suspect that the name Joe Namath is more
[18:06] Speaker 3: familiar to a young football fan now than the name
[18:10] Speaker 3: Roger Stopbach. I think that by associating himself with the counterculture,
[18:15] Speaker 3: that tends to be what the media likes to sort
[18:17] Speaker 3: of go back and sort of reinvestigate later. It's like
[18:21] Speaker 3: when we look at the history of the NFL, very
[18:24] Speaker 3: often the names that come up are the very greatest
[18:27] Speaker 3: players and the players who somehow sort of bucked authority
[18:31] Speaker 3: or added something new that hadn't been seen before that
[18:35] Speaker 3: they maybe their entry in the league had some kind
[18:37] Speaker 3: of racial connotation or all these things. Now that's kind
[18:39] Speaker 3: of how we work and reverse and I don't know
[18:42] Speaker 3: if if this will happen to stop back as much.
[18:46] Speaker 3: It's you know, I think you could certainly argue that
[18:50] Speaker 3: he was the best quarterback of the seventies. I mean,
[18:54] Speaker 3: there are other names can throw in there, but I
[18:55] Speaker 3: think that would be you could certainly meant. He'd be
[18:57] Speaker 3: a candid but you know, like get you know, the
[19:01] Speaker 3: best running back of the seventies was Okay Simpson. I
[19:03] Speaker 3: don't know, but we're gonna talk about his career.
[19:05] Speaker 2: You know.
[19:05] Speaker 3: It's like some sometimes things just change, right, I don't
[19:10] Speaker 3: get It's it's amazing and sort of intriguing why some
[19:15] Speaker 3: people get remembered and other guys don't.
[19:17] Speaker 1: Yeah, and stomach should be I mean, you're right, he
[19:20] Speaker 1: probably was the greatest quarterback of the seventies. People thought
[19:23] Speaker 1: that back then when you're making those lists of like
[19:25] Speaker 1: the greatest quarter like he might have been on top.
[19:27] Speaker 1: And because football is always getting better, like at the time,
[19:30] Speaker 1: people thought maybe he's the greatest quarterback of all time.
[19:33] Speaker 1: Johnny Unitis had that title for a while, then Joe
[19:35] Speaker 1: Montana had it for a while, and now no one
[19:38] Speaker 1: even kind of when people make the list, no one
[19:41] Speaker 1: even puts Montana in the top five anymore. You made
[19:44] Speaker 1: the argument it was intriguing that Jim Thorpe is the
[19:48] Speaker 1: greatest football player of all time, partly just because when
[19:51] Speaker 1: he was doing all the Jim Thorpe's things that he
[19:55] Speaker 1: was doing, that's when the sport was sort of being created,
[19:58] Speaker 1: and he was doing it at a level and athleticism
[20:02] Speaker 1: that we don't have proof for, but ultimately was like,
[20:06] Speaker 1: you can't really replicate it now. It'd almost be like
[20:09] Speaker 1: if Shohei Otani was dropped into nineteen thirties football and
[20:13] Speaker 1: just did everything.
[20:15] Speaker 3: I mean, that thing about Jim Thorpe really is an
[20:17] Speaker 3: argument about the idea or the word great or greatness,
[20:23] Speaker 3: more so because the fact of the matter is the
[20:25] Speaker 3: way physiology changes, technology changes, the fact that we always
[20:30] Speaker 3: can use the past as a way to get further.
[20:32] Speaker 3: The greatest player of all time is always going to
[20:36] Speaker 3: be whoever is the greatest player right now? If we're
[20:39] Speaker 3: talking literally, who's the best person on the field, the
[20:42] Speaker 3: actual skills, Like you know, in twenty years from now,
[20:47] Speaker 3: who's ever the best player in the NFL twenty years
[20:49] Speaker 3: from now will have been sort of that's the furthest
[20:52] Speaker 3: any football player would have went athletic. But that's not
[20:55] Speaker 3: how you can think about these things. It doesn't make sense.
[20:58] Speaker 3: It's kind of a meaningless as nation. If it can
[21:01] Speaker 3: change and evolve that easily, it's got to be sort
[21:04] Speaker 3: of against the person's peers, and more importantly, it has
[21:09] Speaker 3: to be the first elite rendering of greatness that still
[21:15] Speaker 3: appears or applies to the most modern version and some
[21:19] Speaker 3: of the early things that Jim Thorpe did because that
[21:22] Speaker 3: was sort of the you know, the building block of
[21:24] Speaker 3: the games. It's eleven on eleven touchdowns or six first
[21:28] Speaker 3: downs or ten. It's wasn't the modern game the way
[21:30] Speaker 3: we think of it, but in many ways it had
[21:32] Speaker 3: all the rudiments of what football is. And when you
[21:35] Speaker 3: see someone running a football now, carrying a football in
[21:38] Speaker 3: the open field, breaking tackles and all these things, you
[21:41] Speaker 3: are in some ways seeing Jim Thorpe. You're seeing the
[21:44] Speaker 3: residue of that because he was the first player who
[21:49] Speaker 3: was really in that many which perceived as this is
[21:52] Speaker 3: the best football player who ever lived. There are guys
[21:54] Speaker 3: before him that you could have said that about. But
[21:57] Speaker 3: that's kind of where it begins, you know, And I
[22:02] Speaker 3: just I don't know. You know, there's a section in
[22:04] Speaker 3: that essay or I kind of make comparison to the Beatles,
[22:08] Speaker 3: I talk the idea of the Beatles greatness, and you
[22:11] Speaker 3: know how this can kind of be applied to Jim Thorpe.
[22:13] Speaker 3: That could have been reversed. It could have been an
[22:15] Speaker 3: entire essay about the Beatles with one paragraph about Jim Thorpe.
[22:19] Speaker 2: But you know I would read that too.
[22:22] Speaker 1: I am thinking of the part because you talked about
[22:26] Speaker 1: growing up, you know, a Cowboys fan, and you you
[22:30] Speaker 1: were on the other side of the catch, so you
[22:32] Speaker 1: know that that's who the forty nine ers beat in
[22:34] Speaker 1: that game, and it's devastating, and the Cowboys actually get
[22:38] Speaker 1: the ball back briefly, but but they lose that game.
[22:40] Speaker 1: And that's a that's a moment that I think a
[22:42] Speaker 1: lot of readers can identify with that. There's maybe like
[22:47] Speaker 1: one game as a kid where you realize, oh, this
[22:50] Speaker 1: can really hurt you. I it's fresh on my mind
[22:53] Speaker 1: because my son just went through that in the playoffs
[22:56] Speaker 1: last year. He has become a Houston Texans fan for
[22:59] Speaker 1: no particular reason other than he just liked C. J.
[23:02] Speaker 1: Stroud and that loss that they had to the Patriots
[23:04] Speaker 1: for some reason like sent them into a devastated state.
[23:07] Speaker 1: That like, it made me wonder And it's kind of
[23:09] Speaker 1: what I think about with with my job in general.
[23:13] Speaker 1: It's like, why why do we want it so much?
[23:15] Speaker 1: Why do we want it so much?
[23:16] Speaker 2: As a kid?
[23:17] Speaker 1: Why do like why do why do we care so much?
[23:20] Speaker 1: Did you have you ever gotten to any bottom of
[23:22] Speaker 1: that question?
[23:22] Speaker 3: Well, I mean that's that's a pretty exsistential question, like
[23:25] Speaker 3: why it matters so much? There is something about being
[23:28] Speaker 3: a kid. I mean that loss in nineteen I guess
[23:31] Speaker 3: I've been eighty two, eighty one season when Dallas lost
[23:35] Speaker 3: to the forty nine ers. You know, it's like him
[23:39] Speaker 3: that game changed me as a person, Like where do
[23:45] Speaker 3: it say it? But it did? I mean I was
[23:47] Speaker 3: in fourth grade and you know, I know Roger was gone,
[23:51] Speaker 3: but I love getting white now and all this and
[23:54] Speaker 3: since that game, I don't think I've ever been able
[23:58] Speaker 3: to I know I haven't. I've never been able to
[24:01] Speaker 3: invest myself into any team the way I did at
[24:06] Speaker 3: that age, Like, I just I can't care as much.
[24:10] Speaker 3: It doesn't matter who's playing, it doesn't matter what they represent,
[24:13] Speaker 3: it doesn't matter where I live. It's never going to
[24:16] Speaker 3: be like that, Okay. And I think that, like, you know,
[24:24] Speaker 3: in a way that sort of makes me a little sad.
[24:27] Speaker 3: I think some people are able to hang on to that.
[24:30] Speaker 3: But it's odd because when you see an adult just
[24:33] Speaker 3: that shattered by a loss, there's something a little unseemly
[24:37] Speaker 3: about it or strange. It's like, you know, yeah, you almost,
[24:41] Speaker 3: but it's just a hard thing. You know. It's like
[24:43] Speaker 3: whether you're talking about you know, sports or music or
[24:49] Speaker 3: film or you know, relationships you had, and you think
[24:53] Speaker 3: back to the first one that really mattered in any
[24:57] Speaker 3: of those things. You'd like to tell yourself that like, well, okay,
[25:02] Speaker 3: well I was young when that happened, and then you know,
[25:04] Speaker 3: everyone later became more and more important. But in some ways,
[25:08] Speaker 3: it's always the first one that matters most because that
[25:11] Speaker 3: sort of creates your understanding or the framework for what
[25:14] Speaker 3: these feelings mean. You know, I think that that, you know,
[25:19] Speaker 3: when I watched that, like I don't know what I
[25:21] Speaker 3: thought when that game started, like, did I think that, like, oh,
[25:24] Speaker 3: Dallas is going to win even though they're on the road,
[25:26] Speaker 3: or if I thought like I deserve this somehow, or
[25:28] Speaker 3: like San Francisco sort of struggled for a bunch of years,
[25:31] Speaker 3: they can't be that good. I don't know what it was,
[25:34] Speaker 3: but all I know is that after that game, it
[25:39] Speaker 3: just sort of been like, well, boy, I still love
[25:41] Speaker 3: this sport. I wish I didn't, almost like I almost
[25:44] Speaker 3: wished I didn't care.
[25:45] Speaker 2: I feel it now times I do too.
[25:49] Speaker 3: It feels strange to me how important football is to me,
[25:54] Speaker 3: Like I'm almost I mean, I hate to use the
[25:58] Speaker 3: word as shamee, but it's like it's like I don't
[26:02] Speaker 3: I spend my entire autumn trying to avoid things so
[26:07] Speaker 3: that I can stay home to like watch like a
[26:11] Speaker 3: like a Mac game like Toledle playing you know, mill Norm.
[26:14] Speaker 3: I don't even know why. I just want to see it.
[26:18] Speaker 3: I I just always want to see it in a
[26:21] Speaker 3: way that seems to make me feel that anything else
[26:24] Speaker 3: can be pushed to the side, and I just I
[26:27] Speaker 3: don't know. It's it's a it's a the one thing.
[26:30] Speaker 3: I guess it's good about living in the US. Is
[26:32] Speaker 3: it's acceptable to be this way? Like we accept to
[26:34] Speaker 3: be obsessed about football.
[26:36] Speaker 1: It's okay, It's totally fine. I mean, I I feel
[26:39] Speaker 1: like I'm want, you know, when it's football. Okay, well
[26:41] Speaker 1: that's work. But I do feel ashamed about like when
[26:43] Speaker 1: the Celtics make me that sad that I'm not over
[26:46] Speaker 1: that yet. I think your reaction to that football game,
[26:49] Speaker 1: the catch is my reactions more to my first breakup.
[26:52] Speaker 1: I then I won't let myself get that emotionally invested.
[26:54] Speaker 2: But sports I still will.
[26:56] Speaker 1: The Boston Celtics, I still will let myself get that
[26:58] Speaker 1: emotionally invested.
[27:00] Speaker 3: So are you Is basketball your favorite sporting? Football is
[27:03] Speaker 3: your job? Is that? No?
[27:05] Speaker 1: I love I love football the most, but I don't
[27:07] Speaker 1: feel as emotionally connect. I like different teams, I like
[27:12] Speaker 1: different stories. I am a Patriots fan, but it doesn't
[27:15] Speaker 1: hit me the same way because it's been work for
[27:17] Speaker 1: so long. Also, maybe just because I've gotten to see
[27:20] Speaker 1: them win so much and I don't I don't really
[27:21] Speaker 1: know in a way that like the basketball experience is
[27:25] Speaker 1: more just I feel like a pure fanom it's the
[27:27] Speaker 1: one team that for some for whatever reason, has has
[27:30] Speaker 1: like maintained that childish feeling. I wonder, did you when
[27:34] Speaker 1: you're writing though, like making it your job for a minute,
[27:38] Speaker 1: change your relationship to to stay at home and watching
[27:41] Speaker 1: You know.
[27:42] Speaker 3: Well, it did a little bit, although not maybe in
[27:45] Speaker 3: the way you think like part of it. Wall Is
[27:50] Speaker 3: writing the book, I almost felt like, you know, what if,
[27:56] Speaker 3: what if something changes about football so dramatically that I
[28:02] Speaker 3: have to like completely reinvent my thinking about something like
[28:05] Speaker 3: what if I'm watching a game and someone does die
[28:07] Speaker 3: on the field, or like, honestly, a lot of what
[28:10] Speaker 3: has happened with college football complicates my writing about the
[28:15] Speaker 3: college game because when I think about college football, when
[28:21] Speaker 3: I you know, I actually one is one of these
[28:23] Speaker 3: people who prefers the college game the pro game. You
[28:26] Speaker 3: know that when I think about what I love about
[28:28] Speaker 3: college football, it does a lot of it was illusionary,
[28:33] Speaker 3: like some of the things were fake, but like you
[28:34] Speaker 3: could accept you could live with that illusion, like we
[28:37] Speaker 3: would pretend and now all that pretending is done. Now
[28:40] Speaker 3: college football is just semi pro professional football. It's just
[28:43] Speaker 3: no there's you know play it's and it kind of
[28:47] Speaker 3: it was odd because at times, like you know, I
[28:48] Speaker 3: wanted to write about college football at times, and they'd
[28:51] Speaker 3: be like, well, well, this just now seemed like nostalgia
[28:55] Speaker 3: because essentially what I'll be describing is something that doesn't
[28:59] Speaker 3: and cannot exist anymore.
[29:01] Speaker 1: You know, did you write this book as just like
[29:05] Speaker 1: a long excuse to have the essay where you just
[29:09] Speaker 1: destroy three down football and like take down all of Canada.
[29:13] Speaker 2: For some reason, I wanted.
[29:17] Speaker 3: To write about Canadian football because it comes up in
[29:19] Speaker 3: my life every year, and I mentioned this in the book.
[29:22] Speaker 3: Every summer, at some point after the NBA Finals, I
[29:26] Speaker 3: find myself, Oh, there's a Canadian football came on. This
[29:30] Speaker 3: is the year I'm gonna start watching Canadian football. Because
[29:33] Speaker 3: I always think to myself, it's like this will like,
[29:35] Speaker 3: you know, I'll be able to do it casually. Be
[29:39] Speaker 3: At the same time, it's still a lot like football
[29:41] Speaker 3: the way I understand it in the US, But it
[29:44] Speaker 3: never works out. It always comes down to this three
[29:47] Speaker 3: down issue and how how much that changes the game.
[29:50] Speaker 3: Even though it's very easy to understand why the CFL
[29:54] Speaker 3: uses three downs. There's a historical argument and there's also
[29:57] Speaker 3: sort of like a practical argument. We all kind of
[30:00] Speaker 3: agree that the most exciting part of offensive football is
[30:04] Speaker 3: the passing game, so it might seem reasonable to say, like, well,
[30:07] Speaker 3: let's just create something that spurs passing causes more pass
[30:11] Speaker 3: but it doesn't. It's got to be four downs. Five
[30:13] Speaker 3: wouldn't work either, It's got to be four. But just
[30:17] Speaker 3: in terms of writing the book in general, like it
[30:19] Speaker 3: was I say this in the book, it is true,
[30:22] Speaker 3: like I've written now at fourteen books or whatever. This
[30:25] Speaker 3: was the most fun I had writing a book since
[30:29] Speaker 3: the very first one, because the old the similarities between
[30:33] Speaker 3: those two books that was called like Farbarocks City. It's
[30:36] Speaker 3: about like listening to air metal bands, you know, and
[30:38] Speaker 3: like poison and guns and roses and stuff. Both of
[30:41] Speaker 3: those situations where these these pursuits that I had unconsciously
[30:49] Speaker 3: spent my whole life thinking about, Like I mean, I
[30:51] Speaker 3: have been thinking about football four now I'm fifty, going
[30:55] Speaker 3: to be fifty four, so I'm guessing for forty years
[31:00] Speaker 3: or whatever, you know. And it was strange in some
[31:05] Speaker 3: ways how easy it came, like like like how much
[31:09] Speaker 3: you know? Because I always talk about writing sort of
[31:11] Speaker 3: like I mean almost like in your brain there's like
[31:15] Speaker 3: a ball of yarn and then writing is like pulling
[31:18] Speaker 3: the string and straightening the you know, straightening the thread.
[31:22] Speaker 4: And I just had a lot of things I thought
[31:24] Speaker 4: about football over this time, you know a lot of
[31:26] Speaker 4: things that you know, I I it seemed to imbue
[31:33] Speaker 4: my sense of reality so many times throughout my life,
[31:36] Speaker 4: both when I was really little now as a middle
[31:39] Speaker 4: aged person, but every kind of every step along the way,
[31:44] Speaker 4: you know, So it was like it was I wouldn't
[31:49] Speaker 4: say it was cathartic or anything, but it was.
[31:51] Speaker 3: It was just it. It wasn't like a struggle. So
[31:54] Speaker 3: often when you're writing something, it's like you sit down
[31:57] Speaker 3: and you're like, damn it, how am I going to
[31:58] Speaker 3: do this today? It's like what's what? I this is this? What?
[32:02] Speaker 3: That wasn't like that, Like this book just I could
[32:04] Speaker 3: just do, you know, like I wrote it real fast
[32:08] Speaker 3: five months.
[32:09] Speaker 2: That's that's outstanding.
[32:11] Speaker 1: And yet like, look, one of the things I liked
[32:13] Speaker 1: about it was it was a good it's a thought exercise,
[32:16] Speaker 1: it's thinking kind of taking a step back. But it
[32:18] Speaker 1: also is very much like I haven't seen a long
[32:21] Speaker 1: essay about Matt Like the way you play Madden, incidentally,
[32:25] Speaker 1: is an insane style where you're more worried about making
[32:30] Speaker 1: it look like, uh like real football rather than winning.
[32:34] Speaker 1: I was thinking, but you have which is a wild
[32:37] Speaker 1: way to play you but you play like there's stuff
[32:39] Speaker 1: on Madden. You have like a chapter about kind of
[32:43] Speaker 1: how much gambling has changed everything in some ambivalence there.
[32:47] Speaker 1: But I know, as we wrap up here, I don't
[32:50] Speaker 1: have you all day that you're here on NFL Media.
[32:54] Speaker 1: You know that that's who produces this podcast, and you
[32:56] Speaker 1: you have a whole chapter with a speculative idea of
[32:59] Speaker 1: how football all is just going to end or professional
[33:03] Speaker 1: football could potentially And do you know that almost feels
[33:07] Speaker 1: transgressive to me that you are on NFL media after
[33:10] Speaker 1: writing that we're all going down in like fifty years
[33:13] Speaker 1: what here maybe last?
[33:15] Speaker 3: Here's what I find interesting about that. Okay, there is
[33:19] Speaker 3: one section of the book near the end where I
[33:22] Speaker 3: do talk about how I can imagine not football disappearing
[33:26] Speaker 3: entirely but completely receding from the center of the culture
[33:30] Speaker 3: where right now it's like the only monoculture there really is,
[33:33] Speaker 3: like that maybe Taylor Swift or whatever, it's the only
[33:35] Speaker 3: things where it's like a person who doesn't even care
[33:39] Speaker 3: is kind of forced to know about it. So I
[33:41] Speaker 3: write this little section. It's not that long's you know,
[33:44] Speaker 3: but there everybody who's interviewed me wants to talk about that.
[33:49] Speaker 3: They want to talk about that specific section, and it
[33:52] Speaker 3: in some ways, like inadvertently illustrates the point I was
[33:56] Speaker 3: trying to make, which is that, you know, there's this
[34:00] Speaker 3: phrase you sometimes hear, like anti capitalists say, they'll be like,
[34:04] Speaker 3: it's easier to imagine the end of the world than
[34:07] Speaker 3: it is to imagine a world without capitalism. Kind that's
[34:10] Speaker 3: one of these things they say. People cannot fathom the
[34:14] Speaker 3: idea of football, not like I'm a little surprised actually
[34:20] Speaker 3: how angry some people were by that. And I'm saying
[34:23] Speaker 3: this is going to happen in seventy years. I'm basically
[34:27] Speaker 3: saying in sixty or seventy years, at least a couple
[34:30] Speaker 3: generations removed, you know, so maybe fifty years that the
[34:34] Speaker 3: world is going to change, and the culture of television
[34:36] Speaker 3: is going to change, and the way we sort of
[34:39] Speaker 3: the interpersonal relationship most people have with the game, not
[34:43] Speaker 3: just as something like I think we're increasingly moving to
[34:47] Speaker 3: a world where football is just like an entertaining distraction
[34:50] Speaker 3: that people don't feel a real personal relationship to that
[34:53] Speaker 3: this is going to changing, and people just cannot not
[34:57] Speaker 3: see that, you know, like it's it's I don't I'm not.
[35:02] Speaker 3: I can't even think of what a comparison would be
[35:04] Speaker 3: that people were so alarmed by a theoretical possibility that
[35:08] Speaker 3: would happen after they die, and they're like, I will
[35:11] Speaker 3: not accept that.
[35:13] Speaker 2: I was not angry. I thought it would. I thought
[35:15] Speaker 2: it was just funny to think about.
[35:17] Speaker 1: It's like Chuck Closterman, NFL's worst nightmare.
[35:22] Speaker 2: You've You've ended football, Chuck.
[35:24] Speaker 3: Well, I mean nothing that I could do about it.
[35:26] Speaker 3: I mean, I'm just I don't want it to I'm
[35:28] Speaker 3: hoping that when I die people are annoyed that they
[35:31] Speaker 3: got to go to my funeral because they're missing a
[35:33] Speaker 3: football game. I hope that's still happening. But then, you know,
[35:36] Speaker 3: like with all these I'm sure you guys have covered
[35:37] Speaker 3: like all these international games.
[35:39] Speaker 2: Or that they get we go every year, Yeah, one
[35:42] Speaker 2: one game, and you.
[35:44] Speaker 3: Know it's it's I understand why the NFL is doing that,
[35:46] Speaker 3: because the NFL operates from this position where they can
[35:49] Speaker 3: only get bigger. They cannot say they're the biggest thing
[35:52] Speaker 3: there is. But we must get bigger. But what is
[35:57] Speaker 3: kind of particular and specific to football is that it
[36:00] Speaker 3: really is only an American sport. Like, yeah, they played
[36:05] Speaker 3: in Canada and they interested in Mexico, a little bit
[36:07] Speaker 3: in Germany, you know Isle of Samoa. A little bit
[36:10] Speaker 3: out story, but not really right. So you look at
[36:12] Speaker 3: baseball now the best players from Japan. Look at the NBA,
[36:17] Speaker 3: I would say the five best players are non Americans
[36:20] Speaker 3: in the league. Football is different though, because in order
[36:25] Speaker 3: to become you know, a Patrick Mahomes type figure, you
[36:29] Speaker 3: almost need to live your whole life in that channel.
[36:32] Speaker 3: Raised is that? So as we moved to this international
[36:35] Speaker 3: idea where there's these games and you know, Australia and
[36:38] Speaker 3: Rio in all these places, I can't tell if they're thinking,
[36:43] Speaker 3: is we just need to sort of present this spectacle
[36:48] Speaker 3: to other countries and they will like the spectacle of it,
[36:52] Speaker 3: or if the thinking is closer to say like the
[36:56] Speaker 3: nineteen ninety two Dream Team in basketball, where that initial
[37:00] Speaker 3: was a spectacle, but that completely altered the relationship these
[37:04] Speaker 3: other countries add to the sport. And you know when
[37:07] Speaker 3: you look at like in nineteen ninety two, the best
[37:09] Speaker 3: international players of like twenty Koukouch who couldn't start for
[37:12] Speaker 3: the Bulls. Yet the end of the bonus, you know,
[37:17] Speaker 3: you know Oscar Schmidt in Brazil who couldn't have played
[37:19] Speaker 3: in the NBA. You know, then now we have like
[37:22] Speaker 3: a huge chunk of professional basketball as international players. So
[37:26] Speaker 3: do you think the hope is with the NFL's hope
[37:30] Speaker 3: is that by playing a game saying Rio and playing
[37:32] Speaker 3: a game in Australia and Germany, that this is going
[37:35] Speaker 3: to cause a groundswell of youth participation in those countries,
[37:40] Speaker 3: and that in fifty years, you know, we could be
[37:43] Speaker 3: saying like, well, the best quarterback in the league is
[37:45] Speaker 3: from France, which is an impossible thing to imagine.
[37:48] Speaker 1: Right now, absolutely, and how that feels exactly, I think, well,
[37:54] Speaker 1: that's the goal as just a function to keep expanding
[37:58] Speaker 1: and making that money. That was that was the persua
[38:00] Speaker 1: part of your argument was just kind of capitalism eding itself.
[38:04] Speaker 2: That it just ought you always have to be growing.
[38:07] Speaker 1: And when when you hear Roger Goodell and the NFL
[38:10] Speaker 1: talk about, Okay, this is our billion dollar goal for that,
[38:12] Speaker 1: you're like, the way to do that at some point
[38:15] Speaker 1: is only to keep expanding the pie. And look, they
[38:17] Speaker 1: have a US football academy. I don't think people because
[38:19] Speaker 1: I go to London every year, people, I don't think
[38:21] Speaker 1: people really get what a entrenched like somewhere between niche
[38:26] Speaker 1: and actually popular sport like it truly has built a
[38:31] Speaker 1: real fandom in the UK. That is also true in
[38:34] Speaker 1: Germany and is not really true basically anywhere else. But
[38:39] Speaker 1: if you look at the fact that, yeah, like they're
[38:40] Speaker 1: starting the academy's there, they're starting the academies in Africa.
[38:43] Speaker 1: I'm friends with a Henry Hodson who's his job is
[38:48] Speaker 1: to kind of play up these successes that we have
[38:52] Speaker 1: Jordan Mailatta from Australia and these different players that are
[38:56] Speaker 1: coming through the pipeline and get taken in the fifth
[38:58] Speaker 1: round and to like just keep growing that.
[39:00] Speaker 2: And I absolutely do think like in a perfect.
[39:03] Speaker 1: World that is their their dream, that that football continues
[39:07] Speaker 1: to grow elsewhere just so they can ultimately make more money.
[39:11] Speaker 2: Is I think the idea.
[39:12] Speaker 3: Well, let me ask you this, though, like when you're
[39:14] Speaker 3: over in the UK around these people in that academy,
[39:18] Speaker 3: do you feel that the people in the UK or
[39:21] Speaker 3: the people in Germany, do they still view football as
[39:24] Speaker 3: this distinctly American thing like it's almost like they're participating
[39:29] Speaker 3: in an American idea less than like a sport, because
[39:33] Speaker 3: one of the things that like that changed about basketball
[39:35] Speaker 3: in the nineties is that they've always been played in
[39:37] Speaker 3: these other countries. But I think that it kind of
[39:40] Speaker 3: went from this like, well, this is this thing Americans
[39:42] Speaker 3: invented and the Americans are great at, and soon it's like, well,
[39:45] Speaker 3: maybe you know, here in Serbia or whatever, we can
[39:48] Speaker 3: have our own kind of basketball culture. Are they trying
[39:51] Speaker 3: to actually build a culture of football in England a
[39:55] Speaker 3: culture of football in you know, Australia.
[40:00] Speaker 1: I think they're trying, But no, I think it's your
[40:03] Speaker 1: first answer, which is that they view it as a
[40:05] Speaker 1: distinctly American thing and people that are attracted to it.
[40:09] Speaker 1: I mean, that's maybe a little part of the attraction,
[40:11] Speaker 1: but I think a lot of people there who aren't
[40:14] Speaker 1: a big fans of their football and kind of see
[40:17] Speaker 1: American football as almost a transgressive, like cool thing to
[40:21] Speaker 1: root for, and it was on their air in the nineties,
[40:24] Speaker 1: and so a lot of people grew up and they
[40:26] Speaker 1: just saw it and they fall in love with the sport.
[40:28] Speaker 1: But it is kind of like almost a counterculture sport there,
[40:31] Speaker 1: which is strange to experience.
[40:33] Speaker 2: Chuck Closterman, we did it.
[40:36] Speaker 3: Thanks for having me on man.
[40:37] Speaker 1: I appreciate you, And like I said, everyone should check
[40:40] Speaker 1: out his book Football, one of the best selling books.
[40:44] Speaker 1: I was surprised I shouldn't have done this, but I
[40:47] Speaker 1: for some you know, I checked because I didn't know
[40:49] Speaker 1: if your paperback was anywhere soon. But it's only been
[40:51] Speaker 1: out since January, so the paperback's not soon. So I
[40:53] Speaker 1: happened to pop on Amazon and I saw you were
[40:56] Speaker 1: like the second, you know, among football books right now
[40:59] Speaker 1: that weren't like he did rivalry knockoffs.
[41:02] Speaker 3: Well, no, I think was what was number one? I thought, well,
[41:05] Speaker 3: I thought the only books that were beating me were likely.
[41:07] Speaker 1: Had exactly so only one was. But but this is
[41:12] Speaker 1: why I want our listeners to go out and help
[41:14] Speaker 1: you out. Here the Belichick book that he did last year,
[41:17] Speaker 1: Art of Winning, which I spent the whole episode killing
[41:19] Speaker 1: because one of the worst books I've ever read in
[41:21] Speaker 1: my life.
[41:21] Speaker 2: What a wasted opportunity.
[41:23] Speaker 1: Uh, it clearly didn't do well and they're selling it
[41:26] Speaker 1: now for just one ninety eight, so that because it's
[41:28] Speaker 1: one ninety eight, it was just it was edged ahead
[41:32] Speaker 1: of you. Yeah, at full price, So forget that and
[41:34] Speaker 1: let's get back in front of Amazon.
[41:36] Speaker 3: My book is reduced price, which I think they may
[41:37] Speaker 3: have done for Father's Day, but.
[41:40] Speaker 2: Not until one ninety eight years.
[41:42] Speaker 3: Is out a normal dollar that's not a two dollars book.
[41:45] Speaker 3: But yes, you know, but it's so hard to sell
[41:47] Speaker 3: books now, it's just impossible. Like it's just I've done
[41:50] Speaker 3: this for twenty five years. It was hard when I started.
[41:52] Speaker 3: It's just crazy now, Like guys do not buy non
[41:55] Speaker 3: fiction books. They listen to podcasts or they read substacks.
[41:58] Speaker 2: They do not.
[42:00] Speaker 3: It's really you almost going to trick him into it.
[42:02] Speaker 3: It's like I don't want to do that. I don't
[42:04] Speaker 3: want to trick people. They're buy my books. I mean,
[42:06] Speaker 3: you know, but I still want you know, and you
[42:08] Speaker 3: try not to be obsessed with the sales or whatever.
[42:11] Speaker 3: But the salesor would allow you to keep doing it.
[42:13] Speaker 3: Like if people don't buy my books and not to
[42:14] Speaker 3: be able to keep writing them, no one's going to
[42:16] Speaker 3: pay me to write books. Nobody reads.
[42:19] Speaker 1: Well, I'm trying to be be the change I want
[42:23] Speaker 1: to see.
[42:23] Speaker 2: So I buy a lot of books.
[42:26] Speaker 1: You should follow me on good Reads by the way,
[42:27] Speaker 1: people out there if you're ever curious what I am reading.
[42:29] Speaker 1: But yeah, Football by Chuck Closterman was the last book
[42:33] Speaker 1: that I will be marketing in there.
[42:35] Speaker 2: Thank you, Chuck, appreciate.
[42:36] Speaker 1: You, Thanks love all right, that was Chuck Closterman.
[42:39] Speaker 2: That was awesome. I really enjoyed that conversation.
[42:42] Speaker 1: Like I said, we couldn't get to half the things
[42:45] Speaker 1: that are in his book. That the Madden and gambling
[42:48] Speaker 1: chapter to me were really fascinating.
[42:51] Speaker 2: So so check that out.
[42:52] Speaker 1: And you know, a lot of a lot of people
[42:54] Speaker 1: have reached out, well what football books should I read? Look,
[42:57] Speaker 1: I have I have an article on NFL dot com
[42:59] Speaker 1: going through like the my football reading list, which you
[43:02] Speaker 1: could find easily.
[43:03] Speaker 2: Chris Westling has the same.
[43:04] Speaker 1: But I do want to do a football episode football
[43:07] Speaker 1: book episode this summer, So stay tuned because I think
[43:11] Speaker 1: we'll break down the greatest books in terms of learning
[43:14] Speaker 1: the game. Like history wise, it's America's Game by Michael McCambridge,
[43:17] Speaker 1: but that's like a history book for actually learning about football,
[43:20] Speaker 1: even though it's set in the seventies. It's Paul Zimmerman
[43:23] Speaker 1: Thinking Man's Guide, and you might as well get the
[43:25] Speaker 1: updated version, because that's closer to the present.
[43:27] Speaker 2: That's like in the eighties.
[43:29] Speaker 1: That taught me more about football than any book I've
[43:31] Speaker 1: ever read. All Right, that's it for a Memorial Day.
[43:33] Speaker 1: What better way to celebrate Memorial Day than talking football
[43:38] Speaker 1: and football books. We will be back in the studio
[43:41] Speaker 1: on Tuesday. What's happening on Tuesday, I don't know. I
[43:47] Speaker 1: think we're gonna go over all the news because at
[43:50] Speaker 1: this point it's been too long since we updated you.
[43:53] Speaker 1: So some things we learned on Tuesday. Jordan Rodrieg back
[43:55] Speaker 1: in the studio this week as well.
[43:57] Speaker 2: We will see that

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