Ben Flash the Football Slayer

I've recently started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This was spurred by my fiancé’s (or handler as Zach would say) deeply abiding love of the program, and my somewhat morbid curiosity to be informed of as many pop-culture phenomena as possible. I have to say I am taken by its kitchyness, and the relatively clever writing. I don't think a University course on the show would be terribly interesting because I don't think the metaphor is particularly original or in need of parsing (i.e. monsters and vampires representing the demons of adolescence etc., etc.), but it is enjoyable to watch and I think wasting a day doing nothing but watching a show back-to-back-to-back on DVD is one of the unique pleasures of our era.

This is not the point of this post however. The point of this post is that I chose to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer rather then watch the second round NFL playoff games. This is a choice I would not have seen myself making in the very recent past. I am without a doubt, a very serious sports fan. I have a deep, abiding and timeless love of baseball, I am a relatively recent convert to the joys of hockey, I think the NCAA Men's Basketball tournament is the single greatest sporting event (or series of sporting events depending on how such an event is defined) and I've always been a football fan. Until very recently I would have called it my second favorite sport. However something has been eroding my support enough that rather then watch playoff football I was content to follow along on the computer and watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

It is commonly held in North American sports culture that football is our most popular sport and it is the best run league of all North American professional leagues. This may take a hit when the collective bargaining agreement expires because I suspect that football players are not going to be so willing to have non-guaranteed contracts and play for the right to be mortally debilitated for the rest of their lives. But in trying to understand this discrepancy between what is widely understood to be true and my personal feelings, I identified a couple of factors.

First, and most importantly, I am a diehard fan of the Buffalo Bills, there is no need to recount the trespasses committed against Bills fans in my lifetime alone, but let me just state that my first conscious memory is Scott Norwood's famous "wide-right" Super Bowl kick. Literally the first thing I remember in my entire life. In addition, my elementary school principle would show up with his tie shredded if they lost and promise the entire school would have no homework for a week if they won the Super Bowl. This is a great way to cultivate Bills fans, and also, by chance, a great way to cultivate adults who are chemically dependant.

So I am still a Bills fan, but am no longer particularly a fan of NFL.

Second, I’ve begun to find the long-term health of the players really distasteful. There are long term health effects and risk for injury in every sport, but Football in particular gets very ugly. This is especially the case with head-trauma. Former Patriots linebacker Ted Johnson is now divorced and alienated from his kids and his family due to the multiple head traumas he incurred and the fact that he was encouraged to ignore them for the good of team. This is just one of a multiplicity of examples, and is something that really has been coming to surface recently.

However I’m being a little high on the horse here. I watch the occasional boxing match and UFC is growing on me. I suspect that the long-term implications wouldn't bother me so much if the average football career wasn't so short. The average NFL career is 3.5 seasons. Compared to basketball, hockey (5) and baseball (5.6) it is significantly shorter. With the exception of wide-receiver and quarterback, most NFL players just don’t stick around a team or the sport long enough for me to develop a long-term connection with them. The lack of guaranteed contracts and hard salary cap mean that there is little or no continuity on most NFL teams.

Football is purported to be central to the American consciousness and yet I feel its impact so much less. Beyond the shadow of a doubt Tom Brady and Peyton Manning are central cultural figures, and maybe I would put T.O. in that category, but beyond that the individuals of football are less central to our national awareness then they used to be. Are the teams more important then players? That is certainly a point of discussion, because the Steelers, Cowboys and Packers do represent something, but I don't know that the matter any more then the Red Sox, Yankees, Celtics, Lakers and even Canadians.

Perhaps I'm displaying something of a Northeastern liberal bias here because its conceivable that if I grew up somewhere where high school football was the be all and end all I might feel differently. My high school did not even have a football team. But nonetheless my sudden and precipitous drop off in interest in the NFL on the whole strikes me as something worth investigating. However, this is a blog post and I’m very nearly over my time already so here is what I'm trying to identify having postulated my personal reasons for caring less.

Is this unique to me, or are we at the beginning of an era that will decrease the primacy of the NFL in the American consciousness? The NFL is clearly the LEAST important major sport from an international perspective, so as comes globalization so goes the decline of the NFL?

If this is unique to me can we expect the NFL to grow internationally? I can certainly imagine European basketball and hockey teams being integrated into the North American leagues in the future, and the same applies to baseball and Asia but where is the market for the NFL abroad? It seems that if we are not going to see the NFL decline then it must at some point in future decades become popular beyond North America. I have a hard time imagining this due mostly to its' inherent "Americanness" (though this may display a potential flaw in my line of thinking.)

Now I should point out that I’m really only discussing this in regards to the NFL, because I don't think local sports are in any danger of mattering less in the near term, I’m mostly referring to a national common interest.

Finally, is all of this just a reaction to my deep-seeded fear that the Bills are going to move to L.A.? Becuase if they do I’m out for good, except for American Saint-Patrick’s day (Super Bowl).