It was for the players and the fans in the stands. Then it became an industry. It got television. The officials became a league of their own with their own bios and stats; a game within a game. Commercials. Announcers. The announcers called what happened during the game. Then they became analysts. Now they’re part of the game; we need them for context. Then another industry sprung up to talk about football even when it wasn’t being played; football shows talking about football every day of the week; entire careers devoted to explaining what we’ll see when we see it; specialists within the specialists to be the first to tell us who is injured, who is going to play, who will be signed for another season and who will be out of a job. Fantasy football that isn’t even football but it has allotted slots on the weekly football news shows.
I have some time on my hands right now; watching all the people on television talking about watching football, and I think wouldn’t it be ironic if football was actually just random; if all the results; all the winning streaks, losing streaks, records set, magnificent coaching, incompetence, hirings, firings, superstars, and duds were just statistical aberrations manifesting as apparent patterns; all these talking heads, owners, scouts, coaches, and players fully engaged in explaining what can never be explained; chasing random fluctuations?
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