Games

Is Football Over? Just a few years ago, the NFL was an unassailable empire. Now, suddenly, it’s the fall of Rome.

- Will Leitch

A FEW WEEKENDS AGO, at a seersucker-in-November southern horse-racing event I attended with some lovely and friendly people who will nevertheless be the first ones taken out when the revolution comes, a family friend, an older white man, asked me what I, the one sportswriter he knew, thought of the kneeling NFL players. I told him that while I stand for the anthem myself, I supported the players’ right to express themselves politically and encouraged him to worry less about the kneeling and more about what the players were trying to say. He snorted and said he was done with the NFL until “they stand their ass up.” We then drank some bourbon and found something else to talk about.

Later on, I spoke with another family friend, one with long hair and a big bushy beard and an anarchic spirit (he whispered “Fuck all these Trump people” to me with a winking smile). I had just returned from the World Series and told him in February I’d be heading to the Super Bowl. “I don’t know how you can watch that,” he said. “Just jingoistic military bullshit.” He asked me if I would let my sons play, or if I worried it would “smash their brains.” We then drank some more bourbon and found something else to talk about.

There was a time, not long ago, when the NFL was the most unifying public institution we had. No matter your political or demographic persuasion, the one thing you could find to talk about with someone was football. Richard Nixon and Hunter S. Thompson bonded over football, for crying out loud. Over the decades, the Super Bowl grew into the ultimate American spectacle, the last event that everyone in the country watched together, whether you cared about the game, the commercials, the point spread, or just Left Shark. You couldn’t avoid the NFL if you wanted to. Most didn’t.