A Life or Death Decision

  

The NFL playoffs are upon us. 32 teams have been whittled down to 12, and for four more glorious weeks we will be able to enjoy the pinnacle of America’s national pastime. I, like many of you, do not have a horse in the playoff race. Despite this, those of us who have followed our teams throughout the season will still be watching in spite of their absence. Why is this? What is it about football that captivates us to the point that we create a rooting interest where none previously existed? The answer is clearly not tradition; the Super Bowl may be a national holiday, but so was the World Series once upon a time.

The explanation lies within the nature of the game itself. If you had never seen a sport before, and I was to show you tape of each sport at its finest, what would you gravitate towards? Baseball? I doubt it. What is interesting about the game from a laymen’s perspective? We love the game because our fathers love the game, because we played it as children, because we grew up going to the ballpark. We definitely do not love it because it is an impressive spectacle, because it so rarely is.

Conversely, imagine watching basketball or football for the first time. Seven-foot tall athletic specimens flying through the air to dunk a ball on a rim ten feet above the ground. Lightning quick running backs dodging all comers before being tackled, each player moving twenty miles an hour in opposite directions. You would see spectacles of unrivaled athleticism, superhuman feats the likes of which you had never seen. If you had any inclination to like sports, you would no doubt be impressed at the very least, and quite possibly hooked.

This alone, however, cannot answer our question, or we would devour basketball with the same fervor as we do the NFL. With the exception of March Madness, this is not the case. This leads me to the philosophical reason: we see in football games what we want to see in ourselves.

Think about the reasons you love or hate a football player and their team. Brett Favre has been one of the most popular players in the history of the NFL. He has been nearly above reproach for the vast majority of his career despite being as flawed as anyone. This is because his most notable qualities are those we wish to see in ourselves: toughness, candor, and fearlessness. Players like Jay Cutler are reviled because they are perceived as self interested and whiny. Randy Moss is talented but doesn’t work hard enough, which makes it acceptable to hate him. Peyton Manning was a choker. Tom Brady was clutch. Is it any accident that we gravitate towards the teams we perceive as possessing the qualities we want to see in ourselves?

Football is best for this because we know so few players by face and the game is so team oriented by nature. Basketball has 5 players on the court and we always see their faces. When a player resonates, they resonate wherever they go. Simply put, players like Bird, Magic, and Jordan were bigger than their teams. They would have been the faces of the league wherever they were.

In football, we can’t make this leap. Sure, we like Favre because of his style, but that doesn’t necessarily translate wherever he goes. We need to see players within the context of their teams to truly appreciate them. Favre wasn’t just tough, he made the Packers tough. Brady isn’t just a winner, he helped the Patriots win three Super Bowls. We need context because even the best-known NFL players can’t stand alone. Football is too much of a team game for that. This isn’t to say that individuals don’t resonate, but that their presence alone rarely makes us fans. Rather, we become fans of those players team's because of what they represent collectively, with the individual exemplifying the greater theme.

The game is so quantifiable, the imposition of wills so tangible, that we come to see in the athletes what we want to see in ourselves. We want to believe that we would be the toughest player on the team, as fearless as the receiver going over the middle, the gunslinger throwing the ball into the smallest holes. We would crash into the line with reckless abandon for 4 yards at a time if we only had the chance. We know we can’t dunk, and hitting a ball with a stick just isn’t all that manly. But we can still believe that we could take every hit and still get up, and give maximum effort to the very end. We can picture ourselves in the battle, fighting for everything we hold dear, imposing our will on our opponents. The game is a very literal manifestation of our most dramatic notions of masculinity and competition, and we hold those notions too dear not to take seriously. Rooting for a team that doesn’t agree with your notions of competition is as bad as having those notions yourself.

None of this is meant to somehow suggest that people don't appreciate the game for its more tangible qualities. I simply believe that we are prone to making connections with a football team more easily than in other sports because football represents what we want to see in ourselves. Since we don't want to root for a team that isn't like us, we're going to have to figure out what team's personality matches ours the best.

-Jets

The team you root for if you love the underdog. They have one of the most unheralded running backs in the league in Thomas Jones, one of the best defenses in the NFL, and a coach who is bound to become a press conference legend. They also employ a pretty boy rookie quarterback who makes a lot of mistakes. Who sees himself as that guy?

-Bengals

Do you love overrated teams with past their prime wide receivers and morbidly depressed head coaches? Marvin Lewis hasn’t looked happy in years, Cedric Benson is hurt, they lost their best linebacker, and Chad OchoCinco tweaked his knee. They have, however, had a teammate die recently. I suppose if you're a sucker for Rudy (and who isn't?), you could do a lot worse. Otherwise, I don’t see much here to identify with.

-Eagles

If you like stories of redemption, this might be the team for you. Reid and McNabb have had their share of trials and tribulations, and in spite of being one of the most successful teams for the past 10 years, they have no trophies to show for it. They’re also a fun team to watch because of Jackson, so if you like big plays and long-time-coming stories of success, hop on this bandwagon. There’s plenty of room since Philadelphians are pessimists by nature, so you wont even have to feel guilty about it.

-Cowboys

If you like bad head coaches, quarterbacks who are great people and possibly choke artists, and underachievers in general, the Cowboys are where it’s at. Their December woes may have ended, but they still haven’t won a playoff game in 13 years. They combine some of the most likeable guys (Marion Barber, Romo) and some of the most loathable (Roy Williams). Unsurprisingly, this makes them a pretty ambiguous team, and it’s hard to say how anyone feels about them. It doesn’t seem like a very rewarding team to root for, but maybe you’re more honest about your ups and downs than the rest of us.

-Ravens

The old stalwarts of defense, led by the personification of faded glory in Ray Lewis. One last run to the top is probably all he has left in the tank, and the team will kill itself to get him there. They can run the ball as well as anyone, and Flacco has made strides at quarterback, but winning three road games is damn near impossible, especially for a team that shoots itself in the foot as much as they do. If they play up to their considerable potential anything is possible, but bad habits have a way of coming back to haunt you. Another team for people more honest about their flaws than I am.

-Patriots

This is another team that might be in one-last-run territory. Brady has been injured for the second half of the year, Welker is out, and they’re more predictable than ever. If you love rooting for greatness to last as long as it possibly can, you can’t do any better than these guys. They’ll battle it out until the end, and everyone is afraid of them. Fading champions are called that for a reason, though, and usually it’s because they’re on the bad side of their primes. Maybe they’re George Foreman, but they’re probably more like old Tyson at this point.

-Packers

If you hate Brett Favre, look no further. I can’t imagine how gratifying it would be for Packers fans if they could win a Super Bowl without him by beating him. The Packers have been quietly excellent all year, and they are extremely well rounded. The best teams in the NFC have not fared well as of late, and these guys could easily be their equals. Defiantly sticking to your guns (in this case, Aaron Rodgers) is always gratifying when it goes your way, and it’s hard for me not to root for these guys in that regard. If they play the Vikings in the playoffs the battle lines will be drawn, and which side you come down on will say a lot about you. I know who I'm rooting for.

-Cardinals

They were the team nobody believed in last year, so I don’t think they can have that going for them again. They make big plays in the passing game and Kurt Warner has defied all logic by still being productive. I’ve always found something a bit smug about him, so I’m not really a fan, but few things in the sport delight me as much as watching Fitzgerald dominate defensive backs. Not a terribly polarizing team in any way, I guess you would root for them if you really liked seeing old people succeed. Good luck with that.

-Chargers

The team you root for if you love quiet excellence. Rivers gets a fraction of the press that his contemporaries do while being every bit as excellent. He’s so good that he has covered up for the fact that the team is terrible at running the ball and is still 13-3. Their defense isn’t terribly impressive either, but they won’t be playing a very good team in round two, and they have always had the Colts number. I love seeing ignored excellence defiantly force its way into our collective consciousness, and Rivers may very well do just that. When they quietly stop giving LT the ball in the playoffs, the weight of the entire team will be on their quarterback. I’m hoping he can shoulder it.

-Colts

Professionalism may get you far in life, but it can be awfully boring. This team just doesn’t have much of a personality. They have won a lot of close games, and nothing would make me more scared as an opposing fan than seeing Manning with the ball in the final two minutes of a game. This is, however, the team that gave up on perfection for no apparent reason, and did so in a completely baffling way. That, I cannot abide, and neither should you.

-Vikings

If you absolutely, positively, can’t get enough of Brett Favre, then you don’t even need to read this. You have already had plenty of his Kool-Aid, and loved every drop. For the rest of us, this was actually a difficult decision. The team has Adrian Peterson, after all, the closest thing the league has to an actual freak of nature, and they played such an entertaining style. The squabble between Favre and Childress brought me back to reality, though, reminding me that at heart, Brett is still the same petulant athlete he was the last several years. I can’t root for a player who thinks the world revolves around him, and while accusations of such behavior are often leveled without justification, openly questioning your coach on an 11-3 is fairly unforgivable. I'm taking the Packers side in this divorce.

-Saints

A quarterback left for dead by the Chargers. An array of cast-off offensive weapons from every round of the draft or who were simply given up on. A defense built for speed and creating turnovers. A city devastated by a natural disaster that still hasn’t recovered. A coach willing to give up part of his salary to hire the defensive coordinator he wanted. The fans that provide the best home-field advantage in the league. The team personifies heart, tenacity, desire, and all of the other traits we associate with overcoming adversity. They represent the city that needed them so badly to distract them from the pain of rebuilding. If they won the Super Bowl it would mean more to that city than it could possibly mean to any other. The Saints play for their fans more so than any other team in the league. How could they not when they see what those fans have been through every day?

That’s the kind of team I want representing me. Those are the guys I want to be like. That’s the team that I can picture myself being a part of, bringing joy to people who need it to temporarily take them from their misery. I’d kill myself play after play for the Saints, if only I could.

But I’ll probably just root for them because I think they’re fun to watch. It’s a lot less pretentious that way.

Image Via Take no Prisoners

You can email Chris with questions or comments at TheSportsKiosK@gmail.com