"An Englishman Abandons the Beautiful Game for the NFL; Like a Chess Match—With Violence"

Gerald Baker has a really fun read over at the Wall Street Journal today about his conversion from an English football fan to a hardcore American football fan. He describes it in a way only an Englishman can - by referencing Hobbes and Locke, of course.

Baseball fans will have to forgive me here, but the answer, I think, is that football is the quintessential American sport. It's no accident it hasn't really caught on elsewhere (the annual NFL game in London notwithstanding) whereas baseball and basketball have at least a claim to a global following and participation.

In its energy and complexity, football captures the spirit of America better than any other cultural creation on this continent, and I don't mean because it features long breaks in which advertisers get to sell beer and treatments for erectile dysfunction. It sits at the intersection of pioneering aggression and impossibly complex strategic planning. It is a collision of Hobbes and Locke; violent, primal force tempered by the most complex set of rules, regulations, procedures and systems ever conceived in an athletic framework.

Soccer is called the beautiful game. But football is chess, played with real pieces that try to knock each other's brains out. It doesn't get any more beautiful than that.

Read the full article here.

posted by JohnE. at 07:47 PM

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