Chuck Klosterman

You know, that seems like an obvious thing to say, but it's true.

Like, I don't think the way people feel about football is going to continue.

I think that in many ways, people our age are kind of at the tail end of this.

There's still some people younger than us who it's, you know, but for the idea that it's like a normal thing, like a normal thing to, you know, like, I don't think you played high school football, but you probably went to high school football games.

And you just, it was like, it was in your world, sort of, you know?

I mean, I think this is why it's kind of a complicated but interesting thing.

It's sort of like, there are some components of football that have to be there for football to be what it is.

You know, nobody watches, or very few people, I would say, watch football as a blood sport.

Very few people watch football hoping to see guys just get rocked and get carried off in stretchers.

That's not how it is.

Yeah, but as recently as 30 years ago, I think that was a component.

Well, there was some of it there.

But even then, there was always this idea that what they liked about football was the game itself, but for it to be meaningful, there has to be the risk of real injury.

That if you take that, that if there's no, that what is interesting about football is not necessarily or just entirely what you're seeing on the field.

The guy's running a post, the quarterback's rolling, right?

They're pulling these guys like that's interesting, right?

But they're doing it in this incredibly dangerous scenario.

And as you remove that danger, the meaning of the thing that you like changes, right?

Like, a guy, say a guy's going to climb Mount Everest, right?

He doesn't want to die, but it's meaningful because he could, right?