Tweet“Football is a celebration of a not innocent and not rational and not liberal human condition. That is its attraction.” — Michael Novak, “The Joy of Sports”
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There is a young man who grew up in an upscale suburb of Atlanta, located not far from me, and where his [...]
TweetWere this weekend’s NFL divisional playoff games entertaining, in the most generic sense of the word?
Absolutely, whether or not you had a particular rooting interest. The Wall Street Journal’s Jason Gay writes that it’s hard to beat the NFL’s entertainment value, despite that many problems plaguing the league and the sport and that will continue [...]
TweetAll of this national media attention being foisted on my hometown team, after a regular season of obsessing over the Giants, Jets, Redskins, Cowboys, 49ers, Eagles and Packers — and more or less in that order — is making me very, very nervous.
The Atlanta Falcons have home field advantage in the NFC playoffs, which is [...]
TweetOn The Daily Beast today, Buzz writes that the league is trying too hard to compensate for the sport’s innately violent nature, and it’s leading to a crummy brand of football:
Football is violent because it was designed to be violent. Football hurts because it is meant to hurt. Hitting is not for the [...]
TweetNFL head coaches out today before lunchtime, all times local: Andy Reid. Romeo Crennel. Lovie Smith. Pat Shurmer. Norv Turner. Ken Whisenhunt.
Not sure if he got to eat first: Chan Gailey.
Mike Munchak has been told he’ll be back. So has Rex Ryan.
Almost as many GMs are getting the boot: Mike Tannenbaum. Tom Heckert. Gene Smith. [...]
TweetI watched the “The Immaculate Reception: A Football Life” doc on the NFL Network last night, and it revealed some interesting nuggets to me that I hadn’t known before.
Such as how the now-famous moniker, coined by a Steelers fan standing on a table in a bar after the game, took a couple years to truly [...]
TweetGiven the paucity of old NFL Films availability on television — this helps to explain why — I consider it a feat when I come across an episode I didn’t know existed.
It’s been nearly 42 years since the NFL split off into the NFC and AFC, with the winners meeting in the Super Bowl. For [...]
TweetThe University of Nebraska Press is a treasure trove of terrific books about sports and sports history, and a new issue about the early days of pro football by Washington Times sports columnist Dan Daly looks to be a real treat.
In the “National Forgotten League: Entertaining Stories and Observations from Pro Football’s First Fifty Years,” [...]
TweetThe National Football League we know today took dramatic steps in its current direction in the 1970s, when lucrative television contracts finally elbowed aside the dominance of Major League Baseball and as American corporate life moved into an age of high finance, filling its ranks with a Baby Boom generation of mobile and ambitious strivers.
But [...]
TweetThe death of Alex Karras on Wednesday, just weeks after that of NFL Films impresario Steve Sabol, has those nostalgiac for the days of pro football’s past reflecting even more deeply on the state of the game as it is now.
ESPN.com’s Jeff MacGregor continues his exploration of the nature of football while remembering the legacy [...]
