RDH - American Football, with Its Belligerent Extremism and Sheer Size, Is the Perfect Sport for Us

American Football, with Its Belligerent Extremism and Sheer Size, Is the Perfect Sport for Us

June 25, 2007

The United States, predominant up until so very recently, has lost something, probably forever. The clearest indication for this is not the near-disappearance of American players from the finals of major tennis tournaments, as it would be natural to think. No, the certainty of our demise as a dominant nation came, rather, with the definitive proof—at Athens in 2004—that the United States no longer produces the world's best basketball players.

Further proof has come with the evidence—at the first World Baseball Classic, in 2006, where Major League players, who are always busy with their own teams during the Summer Olympics, participated against teams from other nations for the first time (and finished well behind better teams from Japan, Cuba, and Mexico)—that the United States is no longer the best baseball country. This news has been easier to take, however, because we know full well that our best athletes don't generally choose baseball anymore; it's not flashy enough.

Fortunately, we still have football, and we have it practically all to ourselves.

American Football: Our Ace in the Hole

"I don't get it, do you like football or hate it?" I like it, especially when I can catch a game that was taped in the 1970s or earlier. Football, born at elite American universities at the end of the nineteenth century, is a twentieth-century phenomenon, and that century is over.

First, there's the name: football. It's perfect for our national sport. When we say America, we mean the United States—even though we're just a small part of the two American continents. And when we say football, we don't mean soccer. The word itself asserts the American will to power—a manifest destiny that would refashion the whole world in its image.

Then there's the equipment. Unlike soccer, which requires only feet and a ball—an image that conjures the myth of a barefoot Pelé, kicking around a makeshift ball in the dirt and sticking to his father's advice not to smoke—football obliges its participants to invest in hundreds of dollars of gear, which is perfect for a nation that now helmets its youngsters and provides them with, at a minimum, individually bottled water for any outdoor excursion lest they become brain-damaged or dehydrated. In any case, in American football, the padding is essential. If the primary objective is to score points, the secondary objective is to hit other players as hard as humanly possible—to clear a path for a touchdown, in the case of the offense, or, in the case of the defense, to encourage the player with the ball to cough it up or to cause a player to stop dead in his tracks or, better yet, be obliged to come out of the game and be substituted for by an inferior player, indefinitely if possible.

All this hitting just so happens to have opened the door—especially in the last quarter century, as any remaining cultural and economic barriers to unlimited caloric consumption by U.S. citizens have fallen by the wayside—to what has become the uniquely American aspect of football. Football is played by fast perimeter players who are protected by large, strong players on the line of scrimmage. It makes good sense that these latter players—the unsung heart of any roster—be as large as humanly possible.

Big and Bigger

Let's take a look at a typical team, circa 2006 (i.e., before the beginning of the 2007 season). I'll choose the Minnesota Vikings—my childhood favorite, from back in the days of Fran Tarkenton and all those heartbreaking but exciting seasons.

Minnesota Vikings, 2006
Roster: 88 players
Total weight: 21,450 pounds
Average weight: 244 pounds
Average height: 6 feet 2 inches
Players over 300 pounds: 16 (nearly one in five)
Average BMI: 31.3 (obese)

Not only are these numbers extraordinary, they are also historically unprecedented. To help you see what I mean, I've taken the trouble to acquire, for the sake of comparison, with data available through DatabaseSports, some statistics about the 1976 Minnesota Vikings (the team that went on to lose to the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl XI).

Minnesota Vikings, 1976
Roster: 47 players
Total weight: 10,407 pounds
Average weight: 221 pounds
Average height: 6 feet 2 inches
Players over 300 pounds: none
Average BMI: 28.4 (overweight)

The Vikings, thirty years ago, were incredibly large. And they were actually a tenth of an inch or so, on average, taller than today's team. But they just didn't have those 300 pounders. Moreover, the ten players on the 1976 team who weighed more than 250 pounds (the heaviest was 275) were, on average, a little over 6 feet 4 inches tall—or the same average height, to within a tenth of an inch, of the 300-plus-pound players on the 2006 team. This weight gain over the course of thirty years, then, was entirely a product of extra flesh with no advantage from height.

What else? There are a lot of things about football besides its outrageously outsized nature that make it the perfect American sport. For example, the way NFL coaches tend to resemble American CEOs or generals or presidents. And the way quarterbacks are also a little like CEOs, significantly whiter and thinner and richer, on average, than their teammates, whom they lead up the field with piecemeal incentives and the distant promise of a bigger payday. And the way the fields are marked off in yards rather than meters.

Then there are the more subtle things. Like the way the forward pass developed pretty much in line with the evolution of warfare from the ground to the air. Or how the game retains its mythic status in what's left of small-town America. Or how the cheerleaders are, hands down, the best part of the game. Or, finally, how the sport, having failed in most of Europe, is catching on a little bit in Germany, another country that's famous for its love of overwhelming force and some of the other hallmarks of the game, including but not limited to hot dogs and beer.

I wouldn't expect the Germans to beat our players anytime soon. But let's take a look at the highly successful Braunschweig Lions just to be on the safe side.

Braunschweig Lions, 2007
Roster: 49 players
Total weight: 11,026 pounds
Average weight: 225 pounds
Average height: 6 feet 1.6 inches
Players over 300 pounds: 3 (plus 2 listed at 297 pounds)
Average BMI: 29.2 (overweight)

Well, the Lions of 2007 look more like the Vikings of 1976. But those five players at about 300 pounds or more are something to think about. Their average height, by the way, is a little more than 6 feet 4 inches, which is on a par with the average height for the heaviest American players. One might almost say that Germany is gaining on us. But their football program is almost certainly just a small outlet for American-style excess rather than a furtive buildup along the lines of their naval shenanigans in the years before the First World War, when, seeing England's huge advantage, they decided to take matters into their own hands.