W.J. Astore
Bigger and Badder than Ever
The NFL draft started last night, in prime time. I’m fascinated, flabbergasted, and horrified by all the ink spilled and money spent on the draft–what a spectacle it’s become! Even before the draft, there are literally thousands of “mock” drafts, including those that attempt to predict all seven rounds of the draft, like this example. It’s insane! Why go through these exercises when you can simply wait for the draft results? I guess articles like this get clicks, but still …
After the obligatory national anthem and a military flyover featuring four helicopters (A flyover? For the draft?), the commissioner got down to business, Somewhere in the neighborhood of 200,000 people were in attendance outside of Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin. There’s one tradition I do like: lusty boos for the commish (the commissioner). It’s all in good fun.
Anyhow, many people have noted the spectacle of mostly Black players being “selected” by mostly white owners. Echoes of the slave auctions of the past? I don’t go there, since the players selected in the 1st round become instant millionaires — they’re not slaves, obviously — but there’s something to the comparison.
When a player is selected, networks like ABC, ESPN, and the NFL Network show instant video highlights, over which “experts” intone whether the pick was wise or unwise, an overpay or a steal, and so on. Each player has a “tale of the tape” with all the player’s stats, including height, weight, arm length, speed in the 40-yard dash, even wrist size! The coverage is exhaustive—and exhausting, especially if you’re not a fan.
If only America took its wars as seriously as it took NFL football. If only events in Gaza were covered with the same objectivity and attention to detail as the draft. Given the media resources expended on it, you’d think the NFL draft was the lifeblood of America, the linchpin of our democracy. Perhaps it is?
With legalized betting, you can now bet on when a player will be drafted. Again, those odds are carefully calculated and supported with reams of data. NFL owners love all this legal betting—it puts a ton of money in their pockets. Just don’t read all the fine print about how America has more gambling addicts than ever.
Football remains #1 in America (along with the Pentagon, I suppose). At so many colleges and universities, the most richly compensated and often most powerful person is the football coach. A fortunate professor with tenure might make $100,000 a year as the football coach takes home several million dollars. Who says America’s students aren’t learning the right lessons at college?
Everything about major American sports like the NFL has been corporatized and monetized. Despite that, I still enjoy following “my” team, don’t ask me why, even as I marvel at the excess of America’s new national pastime of football. Call it a guilty pleasure, something that gets my mind off atrocities and all the other violent excesses of America. I’m just another member of the hoi polloi in the Colosseum, waiting for my bread and circuses. Next up: the Lions take on the Bears as the Eagles fight the Seahawks. Let the games begin!
Bracing Views 
“Given the media resources expended on it, you’d think the NFL draft was the lifeblood of America, the linchpin of our democracy. Perhaps it is?”
Either that, or we’re all on psychotropic meds of one form or another, literal or figurative…
Among the several outrages and absurdities included here, this ranks pretty high on the list for me, “A fortunate professor with tenure might make $100,000 a year as the football coach takes home several million dollars. Who says America’s students aren’t learning the right lessons at college?”
If Trump’s Holy(-er -Than-Thou) Crusade against higher education in this country were solely focused on this grotesquerie, he’d have one, perhaps only, positive achievement in his life listed in his NYT obituary when the time comes. Instead, seeing as he’s no doubt somehow in on the scam, it’s more like “Win one for the Grifter.”
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If ever there was anything that exemplified “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” it is professional sports. What makes me laugh is the gravity it is given, particularly in interviews with players where every comment is considered so important. The whole thing is straight out of the days of the Roman colosseum spectacles. Nobody is deliberately killed, but pro football comes close with life altering injuries.
A pathetic aspect of pro sports is that it so dominates male conversation that many men would find it very hard to strike up a conversation if it were not for how player X will do next year or who will win this or that game. I know this because I have successfully lured men away from constant sports talk and found that they actually can talk about other things if I put them at ease doing so, but the fear to stray off sports is evident.
I think American male ignorance about important things goes hand in hand with detailed extensive knowledge of even the most trivial (it’s all trivial) details about pro-sports.
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