I remember hanging out in the Minaret office right after Week One of this years’ NFL season. One of our sports editors asked, “What’s the biggest sports news of the week?”
“Jets win!” I said, instinctively. And it was a spectacular win—a comeback against the Dallas Cowboys on the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The game appealed to me because it was not so much a Jets win as a Cowboys implosion. It conformed to the first reason I watch sports: to watch the train wreck.
Another editor was having nothing of it. He thought the ugly, smashmouth play by both teams did not seem artful enough. “That was an awful, sloppy game,” he said.
“So what?” I replied. “I watch football because it’s war, not because it’s art.”
This is why I always defended recently-deceased Oakland Raiders’ owner Al Davis, who was, in my mind, the only owner that really got what football is really about: war. In the wake of his death, many sports commentators have repeated his memorable mottos for the Raiders: “Commitment to Excellence” and “Just Win, Baby.” However, my favorite Davis-ism has been predictably left out of the Raiders owner’s memorials. Raider Rule #1: “Cheating is encouraged.”
Rule #2?
“See rule #1.”
The Raiders teams of the late-70s and early-80s personified the Raider Rule. These Raiders alternated black and white gloves to match their opponents’ jersey colors, making holding penalties harder for officials to call. Oakland cornerback Lester Hayes and wide receiver Fred Biletnikoff used “Stickum,” an adhesive spray, to improve their grip on the football and draw holding penalties when opposing players’ hands stuck to their sprayed jerseys. Offensive lineman Bob Brown often wore a fake broken thumb, specially padded by trainer George Anderson to maximize hits. The Raiders became one of the most penalized teams in the league and opposing players often accused Oakland players of illegal hits; former Pittsburgh Steelers head coach, Chuck Noll, famously referred to certain Raiders players as the “criminal element” of the NFL after Oakland safety George Atkinson’s cheap shot gave Lynn Swann a concussion in the first game of the 1976 season.
If I had been there, I’d have told Noll, “Yeah, well, that’s football.”
I take Davis’ endorsement of cheating as a reminder to always challenge authority, to always look for ways to bend the rules. This is a lesson children should learn quickly. It doesn’t need to be a shock when they enter the warlike, competitive world of neoliberal capitalism. They should know that the way to get ahead in this world is to fudge the rules. Thanks, Mr. Davis.
Athletes, I know what you’re thinking: That’s not good sportsmanship. But good sportsmanship is about as phony as mafia “protection.” Please. Football is the Roman Gladiator battle minus the death. I want to see bad sportsmanship. I want illegal hits, concussions, busted collar bones, turf toe, etc. And you do too. At least I’m honest about it. I don’t consider this urge any more voyeuristic than, say, watching a boxing match.
It’s like every time I watch a Steelers game, there’s the box score, and then there’s the voice in my head going, “Come on, come on, come on, come on, someone break Big Ben’s jaw!” And I detest Pittsburgh quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, who I consider to be the most successful hack in the NFL, because I secretly admire his playing style, the way he seems to win with little effort, his sloppy success. He reminds me of Lt. Kilgore in Apocalypse Now, the careless colonel who somehow cheats death. Ben Roethlisberger seems to cheat interceptions and sacks.
And don’t get me started on the virtuoso quarterbacks, the Tom Bradys and the Peyton Mannings. They just bore me, except when they lose in spectacular fashion. That’s why Super Bowl XLII, when the New York Giants toppled the until-then undefeated New England Patriots, is still my favorite Super Bowl. I don’t really admire the Giants’ win. I revel in the Patriots’ loss. That’s good sports.
Okay, maybe I’m being facetious. But the violence in football, and the hypocrisy in obscuring this violence behind player fines and youth programs, says something larger about society. I immediately think of the late, great comedian George Carlin’s famous routine “Baseball Versus Football,” which humorously shows how the game of football is modeled after warfare. Football is a game, according to Carlin, where the “quarterback, also known as the field general” must be “on target with his aerial assault” while he “marches his troops into enemy territory” and “punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy’s defensive line.” Carlin points out that the object of football is a far cry from that of baseball, in which “the object is to go home! And be safe!”
Is it a coincidence that football’s rise coincides with the United States’ emergence as a global military power? I think it’s fair to say that football has the most compelling claim as “America’s Game.” Ours is a nation that thrives on conflict—political, ideological, religious, economic—all extremely complex, chaotic and seemingly irreconcilable. Football promises a fight between good and evil: my team versus your team. In our complicated and divisive era of history, the struggles represented by the game of football become a conduit by which we manage our own battles.
My thoughts? Let’s keep it in the game.