“Sport is war minus the shooting.”
George Orwell, “The Sporting Spirit” (1945)

 

The first organized Western sport competition was the Greek Olympics. Events were military: spearing, wrestling, boxing, running, horsemanship. Though death was rare, later, in the Roman coliseum, it wasn’t. Many gladiators were POWs and survived a few seasons, with no accidental death or dismemberment coverage. MVP fighters became stars, earning free villas and concubines from the tyrants who financed bread and circuses to pacify the unpredictable masses.

Like today, coliseum shows drew up to 80,000. Gladiator teams were owned and operated by the richest Romans – the Crassus’s, Lucullus’s, and Cornelius’s. The convert, Emperor Theodosius, outlawed the games in 376 due to the Christian body count and the near extinction of their consumers -- carnivores. For the next 1500 years public entertainment was reduced to holiday feasts, jousts, bear-baiting and heretic executions.

Roman football, Harpastum, wasn’t played by arena athletes, but by Caesar’s garrisons for R&R. Like its Greek predecessor, Phaininda, two platoons of twelve soldiers each fought for the Paganica – a feather-stuffed leather ball – running and passing it while blocking, tackling, and sacking. The advent of TV in the early 20th century attracted a worldwide audience that has increased exponentially, especially for the NFL. Football is now America’s most popular sport with a 42% fan-base (basketball second with 29%, baseball third with 24%).

Proving its unprecedented popularity, the NFL now earns $20 billion annually and caps team salaries at $279.2 million, nearly ten times more than thirty years ago. After collecting seven-figures per game, retired MVP’s coach, commentate, pitch energy drinks or Medicare Advantage, or run for Congress. Meanwhile, the always-victorious NFL supplements its own income with an extra $32 billion for holy relics: game balls, championship rings, helmets and jerseys. Teams are called “franchises,” each owned by a billionaire. Whereas, in ancient Rome, gladiator team owners made their fortunes from real estate, silver, and slave-trading, today’s owners make theirs from Home Depot, Walmart, Microsoft, etc.

Owners donate eight times more to the GOP than to the Democrats. Since Teddy “Bull Moose” Roosevelt, football has been particularly popular with Republican presidents. When college tackle and 1969 NFF Gold Medal recipient, Richard Nixon, was asked why he so loved the game, he replied: “the character, the drive, the teamwork, the feeling of being in a cause bigger than yourself.” His successor, Gerald Ford -- the former U of Michigan star center who entered politics after turning down the Green Bay Packers offer of $110 per game -- agreed: “Thanks to my football experience, I know the value of team play… going out there to win, not to gold or glory, but simply to win. To me, winning is not a shameful concept.” Ronald Reagan, a Whittier College guard who later starred as the Gipper in the 1940 movie Knute Rockne, All American, called the game “mystic” because it “turned boys into men capable of self-sacrifice and noble deeds.” After playing a single season in military school, the current commander-in-chief, Donald Trump, unsuccessfully bid for Dallas Cowboy ownership in ’88, then for the Buffalo Bills in ’14. Due to new safety rules reducing serious injury, he decided “Football is boring as hell,” but attended the last Superbowl anyway.

If selfless teamwork is the first virtue of football, as the ex-presidents claimed, one wonders why the NFL introduced the MVP Award in 1938 and why, in the last 55 years, thirty quarterbacks have been honored and only three linemen. In gridiron plutocracy, salaries, too, prove that backs are far more equal than the grunts who protect and open holes for them. The game’s first celebrity, Jim Thorpe, billed “the greatest athlete of all time,” earned $250 per game; today, three-time MVP, Patrick Mahomes, makes $3.3 million each outing. The NFL code of team silence is sometimes broken when players confess having little love for their QB or showboat runner, especially the more egomaniacal.

But this doesn’t diminish the popularity of the game as an all-for-one/one-for-all team sport. Indeed, as a great democratizer, football is beloved by ordinary fans from all walks of life – the rich and poor, educated and uneducated, liberal and conservative. The drama of the game -- the speed, spectacle, unpredictability, and twenty-two-man action – make it a sport like no other. As in life, any instant can bring a game-changing interception, fumble, conversion, touchback, penalty, or injury. Despite surprises, football, like other sports, provides a certainty that few other occupations or activities do: at the final buzzer, the score proves objectively what team was the best, and by how much, on a given day.

Just watching a game can remind many of us of a carefree childhood while offering an escape, however brief, from grown-up downers: a shit job, family and/or financial struggles, health problems, politics, etc. Competitive sport -- especially team contact sport -- is primal because it is a survivalist spectacle of falling down, getting up. Losing, winning.  In this sense, it is a metaphor of life – but with beer, popcorn, and hotdogs.

What else makes gridiron play so captivating to the point of obsession for some? As Hall of Famer, Duffy Daugherty once said, “Football isn’t a contact sport; it’s a collision sport.” So, first, insofar as it is war lite, the fan can vicariously participate in the fray without being carried out on a stretcher. Secondly, by identifying with a given star and/or team, a fan can enjoy a liberating esprit de corps, particularly intense in the stadium experience. Finally, as some psychologists have argued, the physicality of the testosterone-driven game seems to have a subliminal sexual dimension. Let’s drill down on each of these undercurrents.

In uniforms and helmets, gridiron warriors win or lose by platoon offense and defense strategies devised by coach generals and their lieutenants. As in battle, too, offense is binary: the ground game – running; the air game -- passing. Despite Shotgun, Pistol and Wildcat formations, on-field fatality is now rare, but injury common and dreaded. Unlike Roman gladiators, defeated NFL players – denied a Superbowl ring, a parade, or the keys to their city -- experience sudden death only emotionally. For players, according to Buccaneer fullback Mike Alstott, real death happens twice: “Once when your career is over, and once when your life is over.” So, the idea that football is “only a game,” does little to dull the pain of defeat for a true competitor or diehard fan.

Researchers have found that the Thrill of Victory is far less keen and lasting as the Agony of Defeat. As Vince Lombardy said, “Winning isn’t everything – it’s the only thing.” Some commentators have characterized losers as those who are somehow, subconsciously, afraid to win; and winners as those who are afraid to lose. In team sports, these attitudes determine team spirit. As football’s winningest coach also pointed out: “Confidence is contagious. So is lack of confidence.” The same applies to troop morale as the decisive factor in battle, as Napoleon pointed out when overrunning Europe.

Sigmund Freud argued that sport plays off the death instinct. So, NFL teams are named Lions, Panthers, Bengals, Bears, etc. Fans generally agree that the most important quality of any athlete is a killer instinct, especially on the gridiron. Patrick Mahomes is called The Grim Reaper, Skip Thomas Dr. Death, Aaron Donald The Terminator.  Killer teams include the Buc Gravediggers, the Chargers’ Bruise Brothers, the Dolphins Killer Bees, the Viking Purple People Eaters. Stadiums have handles too: the Brown’s Factory of Sadness, the Oilers’ House of Pain. Sports writers choose verbs for a killer loss accordingly: slaughtered, massacred, crushed, annihilated, obliterated. Not surprisingly, 44% of men call themselves “avid” fans, compared to 15% women. According to a SportBooks Review poll, 45% of women feel unsafe in an NFL manosphere alone, while 77% of parents forbid their kids from attending a game without a chaperone.

Since winning can be heaven or hell, NFL teams -- like armies, the NBL, NBA, and NASCAR too -- provide chaplains. The Global Summit of Sports Chaplaincy defines its global mission as “ongoing pastoral and spiritual care… for the holistic well-being of all.” According to Athletes in Action, 35 to 40% of players identify as evangelical Christians (compared to 25% of Americans). Some pray in huddles, on the bench or at halftime, while others take a knee mid-field or point to the QB in the sky after a TD. Fans are faithful, too: according to recent polls, half of Americans approve of players publicly thanking God for a victory, while three-quarters say teams should be allowed to pray – a far greater number than those who support the activity in school. So, though He may drop the ball where war, epidemics, and natural disasters are concerned, the Almighty, devotees seem to believe, shares their overriding interest in football.

Serious fans sport a team jersey, with or without a star name and number. There are various reasons for this personal identification, but the most common is geography. A given franchise supposedly plays for the people of its city, even though most players are from elsewhere and regularly defect to rival franchises for more money. Though this upsets hometown fans, most remain so faithful to their local team that, with any win, they still say, “We won.” With losses, the first-person plural is less common except for underdog fans and masochists. Instead of admitting, “We lost,” some put bags over their heads with frowns or tears, while others throw dogs and beer on the field. The angriest sometimes hurdle the barriers, dodge Security, and try to tear down the goal posts of their oppressors.

Mob deindividuation peaks not in living rooms or in sports bars, but in the stadium swollen with superfans – an estimated 7% of the 150 million NFL demographic.

Sporting war paint, horns, mascot, monster, and superhero outfits, they supercharge the stands. The infectious energy and din of a pro game, especially a play-off, cannot be overestimated. A rock concert can hit 130 decibels, but a bowl game 133. Like a Woodstock or Altamont where the crowd experience became as intoxicating as the music, so too for the 60,000 who paid $5,000 to $36,000 per seat for the last Superbowl. At rest, the human body releases an average of 100 watts. In big bowl events, adrenaline can spike it 300 to 400 watts per person. So, the collective energy is indeed nuclear.

A few decades before the birth of the NFL in 1920, the Nobel laureate physicist, Gustave Le Bron, waded into sociological psychology with The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. Admired and quoted by Freud, Le Bron argued that the Id-driven collective unconscious is composed of three elements which create in the individual a sense of group power as well as relief from personal responsibility: Anonymity, Contagion, and Suggestibility. Together, they can trigger impulsiveness, irrationality, and extreme emotion. Le Bron maintained that the mob can even turn a thoughtful pacifist into a “barbarian.” He concluded, “In crowds it is stupidity, not mother-wit, that is accumulated.” Former Bear safety and AFL coach of the year, Doug Plank, claimed that players are similarly affected. “Most football teams are temperamental: that’s 90% temper and 10% mental.”

Recent studies have confirmed that in mob situations, especially in arena competitions, the amygdala – or lizard brain – overrides the frontal lobe. According to today’s psychologists, tribal group-think can produce a Shared Delusional Disorder (SDD). Consider how in the event of a contested call or penalty, an entire team and its fans will see it one way and their opponents the other way. Then a brawl may break out, sometimes followed by death threats to the ref.

But mob psychology alone doesn’t account for fan friskiness. Biochemistry too plays a big part in Contagion and Suggestibility: the bowl is a crucible of player and fan pheromones, adrenaline, dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins. All of which, chased with sports’ #1 energy drink – beer – makes for an audience boilermaker. 325 million gallons of brew were consumed at the last Superbowl at a cost of over a billion dollars, while sports bars earned twice that. A juiced crowd can experience roid rage from bad calls, if not from shelling out $17.50 for a 25 oz. Bud. Thankfully, the half-time bacchanalia – like those in the Roman coliseum -- chill everybody out with smoke bombs, lasers, and booty-shaking dances, highlighted by star wardrobe malfunctions on Jumbotrons.

Which brings us to the last subliminal in America’s favorite sport: sex. Statistically, other ball-in-the-hole-or-goal team sports – basketball, hockey, soccer – are runners-up. Freud argued that sport in general is an outlet for repressed sexuality, harking back to the earliest and most consequential human competition – males fighting for females, and females submitting to the fittest for the strongest progeny. Today, high school and college football stars usually get the hottest girls and, by the time they reach the pros, have their pick of Sports Illustrated models or pop divas. Regrettably, NFL players top all other pro-athletes in domestic violence and sexual assault. Even so, nothing pisses fans off more the vulgarization of their love of sport with sexual innuendo. When the phallic father of psychoanalysis was confronted about his fatal addiction to cigars, he indignantly replied, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar!” Similarly, sports buffs insist “Sometimes a ball is just a ball!”

To test the theory, let’s follow the ball in a gridiron instant-replay: the QB places his hands between the legs of a 300 lb. center in tights; after the snap, the QB hands the ball off to a FB for penetration of a line hole opened by his guards and tackles for a drive up the middle or a Tush Push; or, dropping into the pocket, the QB fires a screen to a button-hooking tight end; or he heaves a Hail Mary deep to a wide receiver for the touchdown climax. While the cheerleaders toss pompoms and do Spread Eagle splits on the sidelines, the receiver spikes the ball in the opponent’s end zone, then performs a Waddle, Dirty Bird, Griddy Jig, or crotch grab, then shakes an erect victory fist. As he chest-bumps his teammates, a multi-million-man chorus -- from stands, sports bars, and living rooms -- roars Fuck Yeah or Fuck No.  

What PhD sideline quarterback pussy might think there is any sexual undertow here?

Among the first, post-Freud, was the eminent British psychiatrist, Adrian Stokes. In his 1956 essay “Psychoanalytic Reflections on the Development of Ball Games,” he argued that football ritual and terminology are erogenous. Twenty years later, the celebrated anthropologist, Alan Dundes, expanded on Stokes. In "Into the Endzone for a Touchdown," the Berkeley academic wrote, “A goal is not a goal, but rather a substitute for the female genitals.” When he went on to claim a nexus between the pigskin and male genitals, concluding that football had a homoerotic undercurrent, he got death threats.

Homophobia in pro-football is old and deep. When trying to lighten things up, the NFL recently announced on Twitter, “Football is gay!” and suffered backlash. Even so, homophobia has, thankfully, become less intense. Early on, franchises were, as in the military, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell; today, sixteen NFL players -- .009% of the 1,700 others -- have come out. Meanwhile, social media provides player soft porn, presumably for both sexes. Cosmo, YouTube, and Pinterest post the “sexiest” spandexed butts. Other popular sites showcase the Best Abs, Lats, Pecs, and Bulges.

Today, religion is losing fans while the newer faith, sport, is gaining them, proving again its catholic appeal. As we have seen, in the church of sport, the coliseum, many enjoy the invigorating high of rooting with countless other fans. But American football in particular offers the best release valve for the public much as arena action did for Romans. In this sense, despite the occasional riot, who can say that every contact team sport is a not a welcome replacement for the unnecessary roughness and lovelessness of real war?

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David Comfort is the author The Insider’s Guide to Publishing (Writers Digest). His other nonfiction titles are from Simon & Schuster and Kensington. His literary essays appear in Pleiades, The Montreal Review, Stanford Arts Review, and Johns Hopkins' Dr. T.J. Eckleburg Review, and The Philosopher (UK). His short fiction appears in The Evergreen Review, Cortland Review, The Morning News, 3:AM among other journals. He is a Pushcart Fiction Prize nominee, and finalist for Chicago Tribune Nelson Algren, Narrative, and Glimmer Train Awards.

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