Chuck Klosterman

For many people, something they don't have a personal relationship with it.

It's just kind of a distraction and entertainment thing.

They didn't play.

Their dad didn't play.

They didn't have friends who played, which I think for a lot of people, they're much more comfortable with.

Like this kind of bifurcation that like, well, football is something played by people I'll never meet and I can kind of follow it.

astride everything and it's not close in 2023 93 of the top 100 watch broadcast the united states were nfl games and like three or four more were college games yeah right it's still something that i don't think people have really internalized the fact that college football is the number two most popular sport in america for sure and it's not close oh yeah it's it's pro football college football a huge drop off probably basketball and then an argument

Yeah, really.

Well, OK, first of all, this is a tough thing to this is part of the difference between being on a podcast and writing a book.

Like it is if I could really easily explain what I wrote over those pages in a conversation, the book would need to exist.

So, you know, football begins the 19th century and involves as it does and collides with television's rise in the 50s.

And the way it is like television is a.

It's the perfect vessel for this.

And I don't think anyone would have thought that.

Certainly nobody who invented football had a conception of a medium that didn't exist.

But there was that famous Wall Street Journal article about how in an NFL football game, you know, there's three hours of broadcast and only 11 minutes of action.

And that seems like such a death blow to a descriptor of football, right?

Like if you were trying to present it as a new sport,

The idea that it's a three-hour event that's usually 11 minutes of action.

But the fact of the matter is 11 minutes seems to be the perfect amount.