Chuck Klosterman on why we've never actually seen a real football game

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2026-01-22/chuck-klosterman-new-book-football

by proposal • 6 months ago

43 112 6 months ago

nlawalker• 6 months ago

During the college football playoffs, ESPN’s family of networks will sometimes show the same game on multiple channels, with one channel broadcasting the whole affair from the Skycam camera. This is a remote camera hovering above and behind the line of scrimmage, replicating the perspective one sees in a video game. Coaches call this the “All‑22” view, because all 22 players on the field are simultaneously observable.

I remember there being discussion here about coverage of when the NFL first made all-22 available for public viewing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4549832

doctoboggan• 6 months ago

I stumbled across an all-22 broadcast during this recent CFP and really liked it, however they didn't have any commentary at all. I do like to hear the color commentary from people who know how to analyze the game (usually former players).

Rooster61• 6 months ago

I've never heard this called all-22, and I've been around a lot of football. I played from middle to high school, and my dad has filmed all but 1 high school game for the same school for 37 years. I've exclusively heard this referred to as "wide angle" by filmographers and coaches alike.

williamcotton• 6 months ago

Plenty of analysts call it the all-22, eg:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sp2sVfSAlM

trillic• 6 months ago

It's colloquially the all-22.

legitster2• 6 months ago

We watched some games last year on the all-22 (because it was the only way we could watch it on ESPN+).

You definitely lose a lot by not having the close-ups, the slow motion replay, etc. That said, you actually get to see many more of the little things that are kind of cool - what teams do to set up for a play, what coaches are doing between plays, how players and officials interact, etc.

mrandish7• 6 months ago

Unfortunately, the author confuses the broadcast Skycam with the All-22 views. They aren't the same thing and the All-22 cameras aren't even controlled by the television production (although they are available to it).

Per NFL league rules it is the responsibility of the home team to supply the All-22 camera feeds to the league. They are usually operated by the home team's stadium video crew. The All-22 viewpoints are from directly overhead and from each end zone and their purpose is purely documentary not creative - so they are the most complete, yet boring views. These cameras are also the source of the still frames sent wirelessly to the sideline tablets you see players and coaches referring to during games (by rule, there is no motion video or real-time imagery sent to these tablets, just two time-delayed stills for each play, showing the moment the ball is snapped and the moment the whistle is blown ending the play).

The Skycam(s) are sophisticated 'flying' remote cameras operated by the broadcast production and suspended on four wires. They are usually moving around, panning and zooming - which the All-22 cameras never do. Skycams can drop to within 10 feet of the field (although low use during games is strictly limited to behind the line of scrimmage before the ball is snapped). They can also accelerate to over 20mph and in the hands of a skilled two-person pilot team, can track with a fast player running the length of the field. Here's arguably the greatest Skycam shot of all time (https://www.nfl.com/videos/skycam-pilot-alex-milton-narrates...). There are sometimes two Skycams in major playoff games and the Super Bowl (high and low).

In the last year the NFL has added 32 4K and 8K fixed-view cameras to each league stadium to support enhanced replay review by referees. They provide fixed views down each sideline from either end and across the goal-line from each side. Their replay feeds are viewable by the replay referee who sits in a sky box above the field, as well as sent to the league's NYC broadcast center in real-time. They are also made available to the broadcast production team and used for the new virtual measurement system and for skeletal tracking data which you may see in CGI replays during a game (https://www.sportsvideo.org/2025/11/20/nfl-deep-dive-how-32-...).

kayfox• 6 months ago

There can be two Skycams in major playoff games or the Super Bowl (high and low).

There can be more depending on how you block out the cables, I have seen 5. The two Skycam limit is based on two independent systems that do not do cable avoidance in software, you just block out the allowed altitudes on each system.

There also other cable suspended systems in use to move on a line strung between two points and sometimes a track suspended under the stadium roof.

Fun fact: The Skycam was invented by Steadicam inventor Garret Brown and uses some of the same principals for stabilization.

j4cobgarby• 6 months ago

It wasn't until he mentioned 'soccer' that I realised football meant American football.

macleginn• 6 months ago

Most of what he writes (including the part on the skycam) applies to soccer as well.

_--__--__• 6 months ago

Maybe, but soccer doesn't have very many situations where there are ~14 players standing in spitting distance of each other and a 6 inch shift in the position of the ball or a single player has huge implications for the outcome of the game.

chris_va• 6 months ago

Surprisingly, the natively english speaking world is about evenly split on "soccer" vs "football".

llm_nerd• 6 months ago

It's the LA Times, a clearly American newspaper, so of course the reader must assume football = "American" football. This is not contentious.

Further, the contention of the article is simply that there are many perspectives to a game like (American) football, and every perspective is limited in some way, not receiving the full information of everything happening simultaneously, and this also applies to any video source. Not sure how that relates to fascism, but somehow it apparently does. Regardless, the contention is just as applicable to soccer (aka the shortened name the brits made for Association Football)

mabster2• 6 months ago

Unless LA stood for Latin America haha.

mabster2• 6 months ago

I guessed American when it was compared to Hockey, Baseball and Basketball.

In Melbourne, Australia, Football is again another sport (but it not being called Footy gives it a way).

vessenes5• 6 months ago

I think of football as one of the killer apps for tv. Baseball is one for radio: baseball is almost always better over radio; there’s lots of space to do something else at the pace of most baseball games.

mysterydip• 6 months ago

I spent a summer building a car in a garage with baseball on the radio. That was the most I’ve enjoyed the game by far.

FatherOfCurses• 6 months ago

Sounds like heaven.

AceyMan2• 6 months ago

My grandmother (b. 1906)—a very intelligent lady (held her J.D.)—always had MLB game the broadcast tuned in anytime I was visiting her. The tempo and information needs of the game makes it perfect for delivery by radio.

phatskat• 6 months ago

The most fun I’ve had with regards to baseball is either getting tanked watching the local team in clllege on cheap beer and a short walk to the stadium, or a team-management game for Wii where the main focus was building your team and playing the whole 200+ game season. There was still a game of sorts for the actual play, but it was by no means the focus in terms of presentation nor mechanics.

doctorpangloss5• 6 months ago

that may be. but that's like saying, "XYZ is a killer app for vinyl" haha.

football as a televised spectator sport? trending down. it's not dead, but where growth is measured, it is not good. the cultural thing this guy is talking about in the article, it's going away. fewer and fewer people every year value the aesthetic experience he is describing.

TV ownership? trending down. they've never been cheaper for a reason. trend for TV production since peak TV? down.

football as a gambling product? up. okay, do you see what i mean by bad growth? football mediated as betting stats on apps? up. draftkings, polymarket, ESPN fantasy app ARPPU? up. ESPN streaming app ARPU? down. comcast? hated, down, everyone is cheering for it to go down. do you see?

there is no way to talk about specific instances of football (and stadium sports') cultural weaknesses without sounding really cringe. maybe just, "who cares?"

derektank2• 6 months ago

TV ownership? trending down.

Do you have sales or survey data to support this claim? I’m willing to believe individual households might be less likely to purchase TVs, but my understanding is that manufacturers are producing as many or even more screens than ever, though that might be for commercial or business use. Incidentally, it’s efficiency from this scale that allows manufacturers to sell televisions at such low prices, not a lack of demand.

vessenes5• 6 months ago

Hmmm. NFL revenue continues to grow, with something like half of it from media licensing. So, I think you’re wrong. My son watches NFL on his laptop, but there’s little to distinguish how he watches it from the experience he would have on a Samsung tv - he’s not like in some chat group trying to get Ochocinco to write his name on a jersey - he’s passively consuming an edited video feed of a football game with commentary.

mrandish7• 6 months ago

football as a televised spectator sport? trending down.

AFAIC, NFL football is almost always the top 99 out of 100 most viewed television programs in the US every year. The Oscars usually manage to claw onto the list and in election years a couple presidential debates make it, displacing a few regular season games. Since your claim conflicts with my current understanding, I just had AI do a quick search of recent credible sources. Here's the summary:

"The claim that football (American football/NFL) as a televised spectator sport is trending down is not true based on recent data.
Regular season NFL viewership saw a minor dip of about 2.2% in 2024 (averaging 17.5 million per game), but rebounded strongly in 2025 with significant gains—averaging around 18.7 million viewers per game (up 10% from the prior season in some reports, marking the highest in 36 years or second-highest on record when including updated measurement methods like Nielsen's Big Data + out-of-home viewing). Networks like CBS, Fox, NBC, and Amazon all reported year-over-year increases, with streaming platforms showing particularly strong growth.
Super Bowl audiences continue setting records: Super Bowl LIX (2025) averaged 127.7 million viewers (up 3% from the previous year), marking consecutive record highs. Playoff games, including wild-card and divisional rounds, also showed double-digit increases in multiple cases. While some earlier seasons had slight declines (often tied to factors like election years or measurement changes), the overall trend since 2024-2025 has been upward, reinforcing the NFL's position as the dominant U.S. televised sport."

Your impression may arise from shifting measurement platform data due to increasing out-of-home, mobile, streaming, DVR, etc viewership. Just comparing traditional old-school Nielsen in-home diary data alone hasn't been accurate for over a decade. Even if we discount recent cross-platform measurement data, the overwhelming dominance of NFL football is also well supported by the audited financial reports of what broadcasters and streamers pay the NFL and further by what advertisers pay for slots. The sheer money being paid dwarfs all other sports and types of television programming (news, drama, comedy, etc). The recent dramatic growth of legalized sports gambling in the US will likely push NFL viewership across all platforms and formats even higher.

mrandish7• 6 months ago

I get that you don't like football and you don't like television, which is fine.

As someone who's been analyzing video content industry trends for a few decades now, I just want to let you know you've reached some incomplete or misleading conclusions based a variety of category errors and assumptions. Traditional living room televisions are just one way of consuming video content. And "over-the-air broadcast" is just one way of distributing video content. Assuming broadcast television viewership shrinking also means less video is being created and consumed is like assuming music consumption is down because CD sales are down or the printed word is dying because fax machine sales are down.

The reality is quite the opposite. Video content creation, distribution and consumption are all growing at very high rates and have been for a long time. The industry puts a lot of effort into reproducible, audited measurement and has developed deep understanding of how viewership has shifted and multiplied across video consumption platforms, consumption modes, and distribution channels - ranging from streaming long-form to social snacking. While it's true that broadcast television is shrinking and traditional living room TV sales are down, far more video content is being created, distributed and consumed today than ever before, and not by a little - the growth trends are explosive regardless of how we count: viewers, views, hours, titles, revenue or reach. All the metrics measured across the entire video content lifecycle reflect the same incredible growth.

I suggest you focus on the myriad ways video content can be bad, is getting worse or has negative effects on kids, culture or human progress. But arguing video isn't growing is neither accurate nor necessary to support your point.

bobro• 6 months ago

What’s the sport for short form video?

Analemma_• 6 months ago

That's actually an interesting question. Table tennis, maybe? Each volley is the right length for a TikTok video, and some of them (certainly not all) have spectacular long-distance lob+smash plays.

Seems like it plays well with vertical video orientation too.

derektank2• 6 months ago

Lots of Olympic events seem well suited to the format. BMX racing, freestyle skiing, luge/skeleton, and a variety of track and field events all have runs that last for less than a couple of minutes. Not sure if there’s anything comparable in the realm of professional sports besides highlights

WorldMaker2• 6 months ago

Basketball trick shots and single plays?

vessenes5• 6 months ago

I wish it were chess boxing. I love chess boxing.

sandspar2• 6 months ago

Joke answer but it would be fencing, if only we could convince people to turn their phones to landscape.

onlypassingthru• 6 months ago

Swimming and diving.

colechristensen• 6 months ago

post-game Chess analysis, diving, skis/snowboards/bikes/skateboards/etc doing tricks, any sports bloopers or amazing single plays (like the dad holding a beer and a baby who manages to also catch a foul ball, racing crashes, curling throws...

shuntress4• 6 months ago

Baseball is killer in-person but it's also pretty nice to just have on TV. There is nothing else like the tension of a critical at-bat.

Football is actually really really weird for a spectator sport and, I think, is generally presented very poorly. 80% of the game is deciphering opposing formations to determine what they each are predicting the opposing formation is about to try to do.

vessenes5• 6 months ago

Football is just a really complicated sport; one reason I think it’s popular is that it’s fun on a visceral physical individual level (“Wow, look at that run/block/hit/kick”) for ‘beginners’ watching and is also intellectually engaging as you learn more, “wait, how did they shift the secondary just now??”

Baseball - I like it in lots of forms, too. But I think a good radio announcer can get you most of the fun out of a critical at bat narrating.

dylan6043• 6 months ago

I went to a ball game to watch a buddy's kid throw a first pitch. I didn't know that there was more than one first pitch. We sat around talking after their first pitch and it was already the 3rd inning before I realized the game had actually started. I must have missed the "play ball" announcement.

chis• 6 months ago

Football is so unique in that the way it’s presented makes it almost impossible to understand what’s going on. There are a million rules, which even die-hard fans don’t understand. And the broadcast doesn’t even make an attempt to explain or even show the offensive or defensive formations and plays being chosen.

It feels like what we’re shown on tv is a very narrow slice of what’s going on. We see the ball moving down the field but have no idea what the coach or quarterback is doing. Somehow it’s still an incredible watch though.

JackFr• 6 months ago

The first time I saw baseball from box seats after 30 years of upper deck, it was two different games. While you couldn’t hear, seeing the players speak to one another was a blast.

dwd2• 6 months ago

Cricket is another where the radio broadcast was always better, as you could have the TV on in the background but listen to the radio, only looking up when something happens.

The commentators, particularly for the Aus/England Ashes series were always better with the likes of Agnew and the now retired Blofeld providing much better commentary.

BigTTYGothGF• 6 months ago

I think of football as one of the killer apps for tv

And just like killer apps of other technologies there were supplementary instruction books: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/a/chris-schenkel/...

stevage• 6 months ago

The author keeps restating their thesis without offering much to support it. It's infuriating.

IvyMike• 6 months ago

To me, this is the only real football game: https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football.

(No spoilers please!)

goda90• 6 months ago

Better on mobile browser.

jmhammond• 6 months ago

That was a really fun experience. Thank you for sharing!

jaxelr• 6 months ago

Dopest thing I’ve seen this year. Thanks for sharing.

eszed• 6 months ago

How had I never seen this? Fantastic. Thank you!

disqard• 6 months ago

Thank you so much for sharing that!

quuxplusone• 6 months ago

Clicked expecting https://www.sbnation.com/2014/8/18/5998715/the-tim-tebow-cfl... ...and found something different! (Albeit by the same author, Jon Bois.)

SoftTalker• 6 months ago

Crashes Firefox.

soulofmischief• 6 months ago

Exactly where my mind went as well :)

And the followup: https://www.sbnation.com/c/secret-base/21410129/20020

electroglyph• 6 months ago

comes to comments before reading story

reads something from the comments instead

never reads original article submission

leaves satisfied

mohaine• 6 months ago

To bad they used red and green that look exactly the same to me

taneq• 6 months ago

What a ride!

tenahu• 6 months ago

Interesting, and I have also finished live football games thinking it would have been better to just watch it on TV at home.

However, his claim that a spectator would "automatically reframe what she saw into the way it would appear on television" is never supported other than him saying "trust me, it's true, if you don't believe me you are in the minority".

dylan6043• 6 months ago

I've been to JerryWorld or ATT Stadium one time for a non-NFL game. Most people just watch the giant screen as the actual players are tiny from the stadium seats. Watching at home/bar was the same conclusion I got to as well. I have no idea how much tickets are, but I know parking is extremely expensive as well, never mind concessions.

mjevans• 6 months ago

I'm convinced 'attendance' at those games is a form of worship / tribal participation.

legitster2• 6 months ago

It's often pointed out that the ball is only live for about 18 minutes of every game. But what makes football so fascinating is that for every play there are 22 different jobs being executed at the same time. And the jobs change every play.

For something like baseball, you can basically see everything happening in frame the whole time. But for football, the game is so information dense that you can spend hours unpacking the game afterwards to see what was going on. That's why replays and highlights are so much more satisfying. And that's what makes it fun to analyze and or watch videos during the week - you can find all sort of unique or interesting aspects just watching the same play again and analyzing a different personnel group.

It also explains why cameras are everywhere (besides them being just flat out cheaper for high school games, etc). Film study is a crucial part of the game for players - more than in any other sport.

cgannett• 6 months ago

reminds me of a friend of mine who turned his alabama football passion into a cameraman career

cheschire2• 6 months ago

Whenever I think it might be worth it to finally go watch an NFL game live, and I start looking at those ticket prices, I start to question if it's worth it or not. Then I get to the seat view simulator and instantly close the tab because holy hell are the "affordable" NFL seats absolutely terrible to watch a game from. Can you even see the player numbers let alone the names? I guess you need to be a big enough fan to know all the players by number on offense, defense, special teams, and the full depth chart for every position in case there are injuries.

Nah. A one time purchase of a 77" TV with surround sound was absolutely the better option.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 6 months ago

One time purchase? How are you watching?

Rebelgecko• 6 months ago

Probably an OTA antenna and/or streaming

cheschire2• 6 months ago

Since I would maintain an NFL+ subscription regardless of my attendance at a game or the purchase of a large TV, I don't factor it in.

I got the TV specifically with the money I redirected from an NFL tickets budget line.

psadauskas• 6 months ago

I went to go see a Broncos game once about 10 years ago, it was $400 for a single ticket. I was in the top section, 3 rows from the back, I needed a Sherpa to help me get to my seat. I could tell there was a game of football being played down below me, but that was about it. I couldn't see the ball, I couldn't read any of the players' numbers, I couldn't see the refs hand signals. A beer and a hotdog was $30, and there was a 10-minute wait for the trough urinal in the bathroom. I was just watching the game on the jumbotron, which based on the distance was comparatively smaller than the TV in my living room.

The atmosphere was great, cheering with 75,000 other fans is exhilarating, but I haven't felt the need to go again. Soccer, hockey, basketball, baseball, I've all been to multiple times, the Denver stadiums for them are great, and the tickets and concessions aren't too expensive. Football is the only sport I really follow, but I'll never go to another game. The local high school is within walking distance, and a ticket is $5.

seanalltogether• 6 months ago

I used to go to Rockies games over the summer with coworkers after work and buy cheap seats in the rockpile and everyone would drink and eat and just leave when they felt like it. It's probably the best live sports experience I've ever had.

AceyMan2• 6 months ago

The very best gridiron football is NCAA (SEC specifically) but getting tickets is basically unobtanium. I was lucky to have a FIL who was an alum, and donated enough yearly to get "rights for" season tickets for UGA games (Go Dawgs!). As the saying goes, "There's nothing like cheering on your team with 92,000 of your closest friends." An absolutely amazing experience every time that I got to go. [edit:clarity]

alamortsubite2• 6 months ago

College is a good alternative. I go to one of my almae matres' games every year. To me, it's way more fun than NFL for a fraction of the price.

I agree NFL is best at home. Hopefully OTA broadcasts remain a thing for a long time to come.

taylodl• 6 months ago

Live football far exceeds football on TV for watching play development and execution. TV can't resist the closeup, which precludes you from seeing tne entire field of play, the defense being run, the matchups...you're missing a lot on TV. That being said, I don't live in a city having an NFL team so I have to travel. Add in elevated ticket prices and I don't typically make it to more than one game per year.

mrandish7• 6 months ago

In case you didn't know, the NFL releases game video on their website which can be downloaded as part of their basic NFL+ subscription ($7.99/mo). It's not the broadcast feed, it's the "all-22" views where you can see all the players on the field from above and each end zone. This is the same footage you see on many game analysis videos by football YouTubers.

Now that every NFL player wears a tracking beacon between their shoulder pads, there's an unbelievable amount of automated metadata available from a variety of third-party data services. The data can include breakdowns segmented per team, unit, player, drive, down-and-distance, etc and the costs can be quite reasonable depending the depth and sophistication of analysis. There is also some data available free on ad-supported sites or on free-to-join sites, including on fantasy football and sports betting sites who use the free data to attract sign-ups.

direwolf20• 6 months ago

The article repeats itself several times without any new substance, and then drivels nonsense — TV is psychological fascism?

clarkmoody• 6 months ago

He uses the word "fascism" without any relationship to that word's meaning.

the_cat_kittles• 6 months ago

i like thinking of tv as an art form, and football as the artist that perfected it

gretch• 6 months ago

No evidence or supporting material, just continued insistence that the author is correct.

“I can’t crawl inside your skull and prove you wrong. But this is how it works for most people, including most who insist it does not.“

Consider this direct excerpt of 2 back to back sentences and how 1 contradicts the other.

You can’t crawl inside my skull, but you can crawl inside everyone else’s?

schiffern• 6 months ago

The essay is a great example of a mindset that devalues the subjective and strives to rebrand it as objective. Paradoxically it shows insecurity. "My experience doesn't count unless it's The Truth."

You like a thing. That's fine. That's enough. There's no need to prove the worth of your own enjoyment by fantasizing that it conquers everyone else's brain too.

You're the adult now. You're allowed to like it just because you like it.

hackeraccount3• 6 months ago

"Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?"

Nah. I mean I like you and that's fine. Who wants to hear about your qualities. They probably don't or wouldn't like you anyhow.

jimbob45• 6 months ago

Bit silly considering the scoreboard typically has a TV that shows the most important bits that would have been seen at home anyway. His argument may have made sense in 1980 before TVs were introduced in stadiums.

For an actually interesting topic worthy of your time, check out how 1st down markers are calculated and shown on screen at home. It’s much more complicated than you’d think.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_%26_Ten_(graphics_system)

sidrag22• 6 months ago

I kinda went into this article hoping he was gonna touch on a topic i find distasteful about modern televised football.

Years ago, TNT for NBA games had this annoying habit during live action where they would follow a player after they scored or whatever and cut back to broadcast view, but it was so late, you would lose considerable amounts of context into the next possession and the players would already be in their actions(sometimes the player being followed would be involved in this action to make it even more stark that you were missing important context).

the NFL, has this pretty much every single play, for a game where the setup matters a lot. they'll cut to the fans, the sidelines, a player's face... and then with a second before the ball is snapped, they'll show the broadcast view, and you'll have to make a quick read into what the offense/defense is showing.

Kinda kept hoping he'd lead there with the funny "fascism" statements, but it never really led to a criticism of the broadcast, and he just kept harping on the same point that anything besides broadcast view is trash, and how he assumes everyone forces broadcast view in their mind instead.

I'm pretty negative about the modern sports broadcast experience, so i guess i was pretty let down seeing an article with a title like this... and instead of it being a critique, it was a celebration of it.

He even kinda setup the point about important context with his skyview cam stuff, and just still comes back to the same point, that broadcast is best...

I also don't wanna pretend everyone would want the same experience I do, but that brings me to another issue i have with the broadcasts in general. The generalist broadcaster is the beloved announcer in modern broadcasts, but it just feels lazy.. why is there not 4 different broadcasts for major games that deliver products catered to casual viewers, enthusiasts, kids? The casual viewer would probably prefer to see a fan wearing a funny hat, but the enthusiast would prefer to see the formation 5 seconds sooner.

WorldMaker2• 6 months ago

why is there not 4 different broadcasts for major games that deliver products catered to casual viewers, enthusiasts, kids? The casual viewer would probably prefer to see a fan wearing a funny hat, but the enthusiast would prefer to see the formation 5 seconds sooner.

CBS Paramount directly explored that space a bit. They experimented with showing the same games on CBS or CBS Sports and on Nickelodeon. The Nickelodeon version would include things like "slime cams" and silly sound effects, you know for kids. (Or for adults watching a playoff game with less interest in who won and more interest in background viewing and distractions from other party topics like politics.) It was an interesting experiment. Possibly something to replicate, but also certainly with as many channels involved in Sports as serious business not something that will be easily replicated.

iamwil• 6 months ago

I'd be interested in what kind of eSports game is condusive to VR spectating.

I tried doing Dota spectating before, and rigged up a mod for Minecraft vlogging/spectating, and concluded it wasn't quite like being at a stadium, or watching it on Twitch in a way that was interesting.

shuntress4• 6 months ago

I am convinced that there is an absurd amount of unrealized potential for spectating in eSports. But everyone seems to just deliver an experience that is more-or-less "like playing the game yourself, but worse, and with forced-hype commentary" rather than an actually engaging spectator product.

sandspar2• 6 months ago

Do you mean VR "in the cockpit" or in the stadium? Flight simming has a robust VR community. I assume ultra technical car racing sims like iRacing are fun to spectate in VR. Geoguessr seems like a natural fit for VR as well, as long as you can avoid neck injuries from craning your head around.

ggfdh• 6 months ago

I’ve only ever seen Klosterman do friendly interviews. I think his work would improve if it was challenged more.

SoleilAbsolu• 6 months ago

He's kind of on the 3rd or 4th act of his career...I think he started on sports, really made his name in music/pop culture, moved on to be New York Times Ethicist for a while (!) and is back to sports. IMO he asked good occasionally hard questions of pop stars. One thing I love about him is at heart he is a true superfan of the disciplines he covers so is not a "critic" per se, but that may steer things more toward the positive because of that. He helped me realize many things about music I loved growing up in the '80s that I couldn't quite articulate at the time.

hackeraccount3• 6 months ago

I've heard about him but weirdly this Football book is the first thing I've "read" (technically listening to the audiobook).

I can totally see the appeal.

andrepd• 6 months ago

Soccer is exclusively about atmosphere and identity, so the experience of being in the crowd and the experience of the game itself are only nominally associated, in the same way going to see the Grateful Dead in the late 1980s was only nominally about music.

This man has absolutely no idea what he's talking about x)

shuntress4• 6 months ago

Ah yes, of course, The Beautiful Game is clearly not at all about the actual game...

shuntress4• 6 months ago

This guy is not totally wrong but he is also way off about pretty much everything even just simple basic facts. He writes "Michigan Stadium, the third‑largest sports venue on earth." which is not even remotely true. Michican Stadium isn't even in the top 5 of venues in the US never mind globally[0]. And thats if you just take capacity counts at face value and don't try to include places that have huge standing room capacity like horse racing tracks.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sports_venues_by_capac...

quickthrowman• 6 months ago

You’re technically correct, but

I ran through the list, Michigan Dome is the third largest sports venue on earth, for team sports, or better yet, the third largest sports venue that everyone in attendance can witness all of the events taking place.

Like the author of the piece we are discussing, I don’t consider auto or horse race tracks to be a singular, contiguous sports venue’, obviously you can fit a ton of people alongside a track that is multiple miles long, the seating areas aren’t always continuous, etc.

The stadiums in India and North Korea are similar to Michigan Dome, all spectators can see the same event occur the entire time it is occuring, auto racing doesn’t really allow this, not sure about horse racing.

hackeraccount3• 6 months ago

Yeah. The NYC Marathon would seem to be the largest venue in America. No wait, that's nonsense.

ethanrutherford• 6 months ago

The article presents its thesis ad nauseum, the idea that "everyone is always mentally reframing the game into the TV view, even if they think they aren't", but never makes any effort to prove the thesis or provide supporting evidence. I'm not convinced he even defines what "reframing it in my mind" even means. Throughout the entire article, the question in my mind is "in what way? What does 'reframing' it look like? What exactly are you claiming I'm doing?", and at no point is that question answered.

A hypothetical is set up where a woman gets to see one great play close up, but the rest of the game happens nowhere near her seat. If your thesis was that "football is better on TV because you get all these unique angles and instant replays that you can't get from the one seat's position", this would be a solid argument. But the thesis is that "we all imagine the TVs camera angle in our heads", and at the end of this hypothetical, you simply assert that this is what she's doing the rest of the game. "It must be true because it must be true", this is just a circular argument.

There is a bit about how every game in modern day is being recorded on cell phones, which is truly irrelevant. That games are being recorded by audience members is a. true of all sports and b. unrelated to what each person is thinking about in their heads in the moment, whether they are or are not the ones doing the recording. That recording, after all, is only from the perspective of the one seat, their present view of the game is unaltered by the presence of cameras in the audience.

There's another point, perhaps meant to follow from the previous irrelevant point, about memories of a party vs a video recording of a party. The idea is that if you watch the recording for a month, that recording will be the only thing you remember, but it's extremely unclear in what way this is meant to relate to the thesis. What you supposedly imagine in your head in the perceptual present has nothing to do with what you remember a month later, and it's not remotely surprising that reinforcing the memory of a recording over the course of a month will cause it to be more easily recalled than memories from the event itself. It's common knowledge that the human brain does not commit every detail and every moment to memory, and it's trivial to demonstrate that this is true: simply attempt to remember what color shirt you wore last Wednesday. There is interesting psychology here, but its simply not related to the premise in any way.

Then there's the throwaway comment about it being "fascism", where you seem to reduce the definition to just "mild behavioral conditioning". This is both based on your premise, which you have not provided proof for, and goes nowhere. It doesn't lead to any further point or conclusion, it's just an aside, "by the way I think that means it's fascism because I think that word means mind control". Even if we assume your premise is true, its more than a little bit of a stretch to say that counts as "mind control". All you've done is dilute the meaning of the word to the point of banality.

mannyv• 6 months ago

If football on TV is fascism then every photograph, movie, window, thing created by someone else is also fascism.

IMO his "you always see through the perspective of the TV producer" is also bullshit. Maybe he hangs out with too many stoners?

dwd2• 6 months ago

There are a lot of sports that are much better in person. Football is made for TV as the action is confined. Types of play that would require viewing player movements outside the "set" are discouraged like lateral passes.

Basketball is similar as the action is very much confined to the video frame.

Non-US sports like Australian Rules or Gaelic football are an in person spectacle. They're free flowing (like ice hockey), constant action, and the ball can move 50+ metres up/down or across the field in a few seconds so you need to see the player movements off the ball. There's also something about a very large arena with 100,000+ spectators and a constant murmur of sound that can erupt in a moment.

ericbarrett• 6 months ago

I disagree about baseball.

I played it in school and have always enjoyed it casually, but I attended a game with a friend who was very into MLB. He pointed out many interesting defensive and offensive moves through the innings. Some were straightforward, like the runner on second base edging forward to steal. Others were less obvious, like outfielders tightening inward since the batter was likely to bunt. There was always action and information from multiple places on the field, once you knew what to look for. It was fascinating, and I’ve always much preferred in-person attendance since.

It’s impossible for a single screen to capture all these things, so a TV broadcast director makes calls to show one camera or another, and has to sacrifice the subtler stuff so they don’t miss a pitch or a throw to first etc.

Football, on the other hand, absolutely much better on TV if you want to follow the action. It happens in a small area of the field so it’s easier to show on a screen, you are seated much farther away, and the mud-brown ball is difficult to follow when it is hundreds of feet distant. The main fun of being there is social IMO.

jfengel2• 6 months ago

George Will's Men At Work is a good introduction to the numerous minute subtitles of baseball. It came as quite a surprise to hear why, say, shortstop and second base are such wildly different skill sets.

I'm still not a fan of the game, but I can see why those who are, are. I enjoy it a lot more when I go with someone who is seeing a lot more to each play.

jfengel2• 6 months ago

I actually like the stop-and-go of American football. Each play is a few seconds of intense, simultaneous activity. You then have a minute to dissect all of that action, which can tell a different story for each of the 22 players. Even two players holding each other to a standstill can be serious drama.

To each their own, of course. But you might be surprised at how intellectual a game American football can be. It's not mere brutality, as it can appear.

mrandish7• 6 months ago

Related but tangential to the article's thesis, I just want to add a technical perspective about NFL football broadcasts from someone with a background in professional live broadcast television production. Due to the massive popularity of televised NFL football (they're >95 of the top 100 most watched programs on television every year), the production budgets for broadcasting games are equally massive.

The result is that NFL game broadcasts are generally the most technically sophisticated live, multi-camera broadcasts in existence. What they manage to do in real-time in front of a live global audience is remarkable, requiring orchestrating a complex ballet of split-second hand-offs between over a hundred production professionals each coordinating their contribution to the broadcast in perfect sync.

From a pure IT perspective, a Super Bowl broadcast relies on a terabit scale, high-reliability IP and power distribution infrastructure that would impress even the most jaded big data center architect - and it's all installed, tested and working on-site in about a week - including fail-over backup generators and multiple data feeds to off-site backup production locations. In the past two years they've even reached the level of switching the entire broadcast from an off-site backup location in the event of a catastrophic failure of the main production truck. That means every raw HD camera feed from wireless sideline handhelds, to pylon cams to multiple Skycams all arriving in sync at 60 fps hundreds of miles away (last year's game used >160 on-site cameras),

Even if you think of the Super Bowl as just some kind of weird 'sport ball thing', it can be interesting to meta-watch how the production is being composed. Every year the Super Bowl is where the best new innovations in live broadcast technology show up first. Every vendor is vying to have their latest toys strutting their new visual magic on the planet's biggest live stage. Last year an obvious standout was 3 new $150,000 Canon 122X zoom lenses (that's insane zoom) with a special new optical block allowing instant switching between normal zoom and film-like shallow depth-of-field.

Those 3 units were the only samples then in existence, hand carried by their engineers from Japan just for the Super Bowl. And I knew the instant one of them popped on the screen because it created a super telephoto zoom showing a quarterback's forehead-to-chin face so close you could see every crease and bead of sweat - from ~100 yds away(!) - all with the beautiful shallow depth of field that is, in any other live broadcast zoom lens, simply impossible. You either get the insane zoom or you get the depth-of-field but not both at once, at the same f-stop. Magic indeed. I have no idea what new, never-seen-before tricks await us in ~10 days, maybe some new Skycam motion control wizardry, or an impossibly small wireless camera giving us a new viewpoint or some new GPU-rendered live CGI incorporating real-time position data from the wireless trackers now in the shoulder pads of all 22 players - but I'm excited to find out!

bahmboo• 6 months ago

For me the interesting part of his argument is that we reframe things we see in real life based on the recorded version of the similar thing we have seen before. It often makes it more compelling and easier to relate to. Then it becomes the way we interpret our world and since so many people consume it similarly it becomes a mass mental constraint on our perception, understanding and interpretation of the real world.

This excerpt isn't really about football per se, so if you take it only that way you might be missing his point.

I like Klosterman. I can't write as well.

egl2020• 6 months ago

Is Marshall McLuhan in the house? Calling Marshall McLuhan.

gorfian_robot• 6 months ago

his books "I Wear the Black Hat" and "But What If We're Wrong?" are really good.

but I don't give a shit about team sports

Chuck Klosterman on why we've never actually seen a real football game

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