Welcome to Lecture 4.3 on American Football. Material for this lecture comes primarily from Mandelbaum's The Meaning of Sport, Chapter 3. I hope you will keep Lectures 4.1 and 4.2 in mind as we proceed today. In particular, remember Mandelbaum's three guiding questions and our discussion of baseball. After today's lecture, you should be able to start drawing connections to Mandelbaum's larger arguments and begin establishing comparisons between baseball and football.
Our objectives reflect these goals. First, I would like you to understand football as a game of industry and war; second, I would like you to be able to compare football to baseball; and finally, I would like you to think critically about football and the media.
Mandelbaum makes two very strong claims in Chapter 3: that football is like industry and that football is like war. Which simile better captures the game for you? Or, are you convinced that football is very much like both of these institutions? Let's take a closer look to help you make up your mind. . .
Unlike baseball, which is an agrarian game that follows the rhythms of the seasons and the weather, football is said to be an industrial game. It's spatial configuration is urban - developed in the Northeastern schools. Games might take place on grass, but they are equally likely to be played on artificial turf; in either case, football is not subject to the elements. Play does not stop for rain, or sleet, or snow - it just gets messier. In terms of its temporal structure, football is subject to the clock - just like workers in a factory, players on the field must spend time wisely, always aware of the clock. In terms of players and team dynamics: whereas baseball is largely about the individual, football is about the synchronous collective. Teams are likened to machines or gears that must all function at the same time, in the same way, over and over again. Football is a great example of Mandelbaum's theories about "specialization and interdependence": players must work together in order for plays to happen smoothly. Finally, football embraces change and progress. If baseball is timeless, football is progressive. The game evolves. From rules, to gear, football is about embracing what's new and better.
Take a look, for example, at this poster for the NFL, which illustrates the ways that football has changed over the past century. We watched a brief clip from a baseball film made by Thomas Edison in Lecture 4.2; there, we noted that baseball has not changed all that much over time. Football, on the other hand, would be less recognizable the farther back you looked.
Mandelbaum's other claim is that football is like war: that it is a war game. On this slide you have many, many reasons for this argument. Let's take a look at just a few in more depth.
Football can be understood as a series of battles for territory. Much like war, the goal is to gain territory from your opponent and therefore win the battle. We will see a TV clip in a few slides that plays with this exact idea . . . The second point I would highlight is the way that football - like war - demands that individuals overcome natural hesitations through training. Mandelbaum does a great job of walking us through some of the techniques that generals and coaches might use on pages 136-139. He highlights things like symbolic rewards; the repetition of drills to make physical and mental skills seem like second nature; the importance of group mentality and the protection of group honor; and the power of animal imagery to capture violence, power, and stamina. Finally, Mandelbaum explains the ways that the language of war and football share much in common: think of these terms:"the long bomb" being "in the trenches" or a "blitz" pass. All of these terms make sense in war and in football. As we will see in the TV clip, football borrows these terms and ideas as a way to give the game meaning and an ideological foundation.
To summarize, then, let's put some of our key terms in a chart (much like we did with the historical information from Lesson 2). We will fill in the basketball column in Lecture 4.4. Here, you can see some of the basic differences Mandelbaum wants to illuminate. I would add, as a side-note, that Mandelbaum's divisions should not be taken as perfect. The Meaning of Sports is an argument that one can, well, argue with or against. So, be sure to think of Mandelbaum as a guide rather than a dictator. If you disagree with his arguments, great! Think about how you could make a case against his points and support it with evidence of your own.
For the next couple of slides, I would like to focus on Mandelbaum's arguments about football and the media - particularly TV. We know that football has benefited from its relationships with may kinds of technologies, including all the gear that has been developed over the past century. But, and as Mandelbaum mentions, football has particularly benefited from one technology: television. Indeed, he argues that football was made for TV: it is a ready-made drama, play happens in the winter when folks are inside anyway, episodes occur on a regular, weekly basis, characters develop throughout a season, and it's a gladiatorial-like contest that contains the spectacle of violence without the lethal consequences (usually). Hopefully, many of these factors will remind you of the "shining examples" or "diversion and clarity" arguments we encountered in Lecture 4.1
As a way to illustrate the relationship between football and TV; AND the ways that football is a "war" game, let's look at a recent TV commercial for Under Armor clothing that takes advantage of football and war. Watch the video clip and then let's meet back here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ig5gTgOkRw&feature=related
For your Group Writing Assignment this week, you might have noticed that you'll need to watch several similar commercials and comment on the questions you see on the screen here. Today, I want to talk you through the commercial we just watched as a way to model some aspects of that assignment. Don't worry about all of the questions just yet; I won't go over all of them anyway. This analysis is meant to give you a sense of how to read a commercial and how to think critically about its imagery and language.
This commercial is filled with the imagery and language that Mandelbaum explores throughout his chapter. First, this video is dominated by the theme of war and not industry. The exception is the emphasis on team-work that is illustrated throughout - particularly in the locker room scenes. This is certainly a group that must learn to work together, but it is also like an army battalion given the larger contexts of image and language. So I'll focus my comments on football as war here. First, let's think about imagery: this commercial focuses on two spaces: the locker room and the practice field. It's important to note that the team never actually plays a game in this commercial. Instead, they do drills, over and over and over again. As Mandelbaum suggests in his comparison on pages 136-139, these drills are one of the ways to get a team to do things together and as if they were second nature. These drills overcome much of the fear that is written into this commercial via the language used: the coach focuses on "how big" the other players are and implies that they have been beaten by them before. The difference this time is that the game will be in "our house," an image that is represented repeatedly in the locker room scenes. The coach, who plays the role of general, tells his team to "protect this house." Other imagery you might note is the American flag at the end of the commercial. This unnamed team is not just any team, it's America's team. There is no team-team conflict here, instead, this team is likened to American soldiers who fight under one flag: America (oh, and a company flag: Under Armor)The coach actually says, "its us versus them." If we think more about the language used, we might note words like "pride heart poise toughness" or the statement that "Courage is not about being scared, it's about being terrified and persevering anyway." These words and arguments return us again to Mandelbaum's arguments about teaching players or soldiers how to do something that seems unnatural: championing physical courage, team moral and honor, and perseverance in the face of injury or fear. So, this simple commercial actually plays with many of the ideas and ideologies that are foundational to American football. The game that is about to be played (presumably right after this commercial), is given meaning by being compared to something bigger than itself. It is a war, an American war, that will build the character of each player and will produce a coherent (American) team. When you come to your own commercial analysis, try to think through both images and language; try to think about the underlying arguments being used to sell football.
In our final slides today, I want to highlight a couple of trivia questions that may appear on your quiz for the week. I asked you to skim the "college game" section of Mandelbaum's chapter. Here are a few highlights you should be familiar with.
When was scrimmage introduced? When was the gridiron created? Why did Teddy Roosevelt get involved? How did he change the game? When was the NFL created? Who is considered to be the "father of American football? And with that, we'll end for the day.
