Football is back! In preparation for the season, I wrote two essays about quarterbacks & America, as documented for Netflix, or at least for middle-class America; so I took the liberty to talk a bit about my love of football. Suddenly, I’m writing about documentaries & reality TV, & of course, the real America. As always, I’m writing about men, especially young men, especially their propensity for agony.
One is about middle-class success for serious men. I reviewed the Quarterback series, the first season, that is, for Law & Liberty:
The violence & the suffering of football reveal the struggle to which flesh is heir. In the activity of NFL players, who are already the chosen few among the many who play college football, we see the national drama, personal & public, based on the awareness that in America much is promised, but almost nothing guaranteed. That difficulty is why we admire the successful. They overcome much & inspire us to keep struggling.
Instead of escape, in our entertainment we in fact confront America as a whole, & commit morally to our part in the great empire of liberty, the continental democracy, the vast, restless people, often disappointed or even heartbroken, but rarely paralyzed by indecision or failure of nerve. I wonder whether we experience America as a fate, unfolding before our eyes, suggesting a power much greater than ourselves.
The other is about the corruption & hints of tragedy we see in excellence, celebrity, & the painful limits of youth. Johnny Football is the young man I have in mind, who recently made himself into a documentary protagonist for the Untold series. I reviewed it for the Washington Free Beacon:
Almost nobody has heard about Manziel in almost a decade, but back then he was national news. What happened? He flamed out of the NFL inside of two seasons; nobody would sign him after he spectacularly failed with the Browns. He dropped into Canadian football after that, only to be banned. It was a very quick self-destruction & seems permanent. Reversals of fortune, almost as much as absence of redemption, are of great importance to us.
Manziel learned football in Kerrville, Texas—a state that is all about football. Tivy High School makes it happen, by regular, unremitting military training. You could think of it as an attempt to tame the savage cowboys. It doesn’t always work. You must remember that high school & even college football have next to no defense, so Johnny was almost a thing of magic, a young man who ran, jumped, escaped tackles, threw, could do anything but fly. He put up great numbers & made the game incredibly exciting. What is freedom but achieving the impossible?
Very good stuff, Titus- I watched these too. Another big story in the sports world has been the podcasting Tight End Travis Kelce's "love story" with Taylor Swift. I can't help but think of the movie "Knight's Tale", with the lady in the press box cheering on her hero.
Also- Disney is trying to get in on the NFL game like Nickelodeon has:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpi6t1TM5z4