Name: Why Americans can't quit football | The Gray Area
Uploaded: 2026-01-26T17:15:02.000Z
Duration: 51 min 29 s
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I'm talking to the cultural critic and writer Chuck Klosterman.

He's got a new book out about football, which is called Football.

If you're into football, definitely watch this.

But even if you're not, I promise you there's a whole lot more here.

This is a really deep dive into why football's become such a culturally dominant football force in this country, why it is the greatest TV show we have ever seen and probably ever will see, and

why he thinks in the end the sport is probably doomed for reasons that might surprise you.

A lot of people who listen to the show don't realize how much of a sports nut I am.

To weave in that part of my life into this show, which is decidedly not really a sports show.

This book of yours, it's about football, obviously, but it's not a love letter, as you say.

What are you trying to do with this thing?

Well, the reason I say it's not a love letter is because I feel like sometimes when people write about an idea that, you know, they're passionate about, or it's been a lifelong relationship with or whatever, what they're really trying to do is sort of validate their own love for something and sort of persuade people to view the world in the same kind of romantic way that they view this thing.

It doesn't really matter if I'm writing about sports or music or film, whatever the case may be, I kind of do it in the same way, which is all just sort of a form of criticism.

And, you know, I've been thinking about football sort of unconsciously for 40 years, like kind of hyper consciously for 20.

And well, there's going to be this future when football is not going to be as meaningful as it is now.

All things, especially things of this size, eventually sort of recede from the culture.

And then there's going to be this period where people are going to try to explain retroactively what.

Why football was so central to American culture for so long in such a kind of all encompassing way.

And I feel like those attempts are usually wrong.

I think it's very difficult to look back On a period you didn't experience and then try to tell people, well, this is why it mattered.

Like an obituary for someone who is still alive.

This is like talking about the meaning of football at its absolute apex with the understanding that at some point it will no longer play this kind of significant sor.

Of central role in how America operates and thinks.

For people who aren't born yet, so that the people, the future can make sense of this crazy thing?

Yes, I mean, I, you know, it's funny, I put that in the book and sort of like this is a book for people who aren't even born yet, which is a little bit disingenuous because obviously I'd go broke if that's who I wrote for, if I only wrote books for people of the future.

But yeah, I mean, that's also what's kind of interesting about book writing in general.

That it's kind of one of the last idioms of art where that really is the idea.

The idea that you're doing something that is intended to exist, you know, beyond yourself.

I mean, what is your sort of experience with the game beyond just watching it like the rest of us now?

Well, I did play when I was in high school.

I went to a real small school where we played nine man football in North Dakota.

It was kind of imbued in the small town culture or everyone look at it then.

You know, I was a sports journalist early on when I was started in newspapers.

I became more of a culture journalist and I was just sort of consuming it as a fan.

And then as I aged it, it started becoming more important in my life again.

It wasn't that I was even watching that much more.

I was watching the same amount, but I was thinking about it more.

And then I would kind of look at American culture just kind of through the course of what I did is for a living.

It would seem as though we've kind of created a society now where the.

Really the monoculture is just football and Taylor Swift.

Those are really the only things that are like that now.

Is as popular as virtually every other sport combined.

Why is it so clearly the biggest sport slash TV show in the country by several country miles?

Well, you know, that's a Lot of what the book is about, I mean.

But, like, I think in some ways, like, if I had to really boil it down to a paragraph, it was kind of a.

Just sort of a really interesting kind of happenstance.

So football is created in the 19th century century, and it happens right after the Civil War.

And though it's impossible to verify this, there is.

There's always been this sort of understanding that after the Civil War, there was some fear among guys that it was like, well, these young men who are coming up, they'll never fight in a war.

How will they understand the reality of adversity?

We need to create this kind of simulation.

So football, in some ways, is this simulation of war.

Kind of deep metaphorical meaning to begin with.

Then it evolves for, you know, 70 or 80 years, and

then it intersects with the rise of television.

And by chance, football is the ideal vessel for television.

And television is able to sort of make football into something different, something unintended.

And I would argue that particularly over the last half of the 20th century, probably the best way to understand American culture in American society, or at least a good way, is sort of the way it is kind of reflected and projected and reinterpreted through football now moving forward.

I feel if you're trying to think about life, you know, from 1950 to, you know, 2000 or whatever, this is a really good way to understand it.

And that, to me, is part of the reason why it's important.

I mean, like, not important necessarily for what it is, but sort of like, how it functions.

I mean, I. I grew up in the south, in Mississippi, and I went to lsu.

I went to college at lsu, which is what year as, you know, it was.

Well, hell, I got a. I got my doctorate there, too.

So I was there for the better part of a decade.

And for people who have not lived in that, I mean, it is.

It's cliche to say, but it is absolutely, like, functionally a religion down there.

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Why Americans can't quit football | The Gray Area

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