The Disillusionment and Nostalgia of a Former Cornhusker Superfan

 

For the first forty years of my life, a September Saturday meant college football. I will never care about a sports team again the way I cared about the Nebraska Cornhuskers. My newest Substack is about how I have lost my enthusiasm for college sports, but also how it has been impossible for me to shake the Huskers completely. 

Crap Super Bowl Moments

This Sunday brings the Super Bowl, the massive consumerist orgy that is the high holy holiday of late capitalist America. The event has taken on a life of its own, where people who normally don't give a shit about football watch the game for the commercials. It comes on Sunday evening, cruelly forcing revelers to have to go to work on short rest, taunting the proles and cubicle drones to remind them of who their true master is.

When I was growing up, the Super Bowl seemed to be a lame blowout every year, two weeks of ridiculous hype leading to a massive letdown. In that spirit, I would like to share my favorite crap Super Bowl moments.

Super Bowl X Halftime Show (1976)

The halftime entertainment at several Super Bowls in the old days was provided by Up With People, who seemed to be a Nixon-era CIA psy-op to convert the countercultural youth into loyal members of the Silent Majority via the power of song. Their performances are awful, but none possibly worse than this Bicentennial extravaganza featuring songs like "200 Years And Just A Baby."

Larry Brown Winning the Super Bowl XXX MVP (1996)

The Super Bowl MVP award is such a strange thing. It's usually awarded to the winning team's quarterback, even if they do not play an exceptional game. Of course, sometimes it's given to someone else and they still manage to screw it up. Cowboys cornerback Larry Brown got the MVP in Super Bowl XXX for intercepting two passes. Both were important to the game, but they had less to do with Brown and more to do with Steeler's quarterback Neil O'Donnell being less accurate than a Rasmussen poll. A prime example of stats being over-valued.

Joe Buck's Lame Call of David Tyree's Catch in Super Bowl XLII (2008)

The most dramatic, most clutch catch in Super Bowl history, and Joe Buck calls it like a routine play. If this man was not John Buck's son I doubt he would ever have been let anywhere near a national broadcast booth. Even when the Super Bowl is a good one, its drama is destroyed by the NFL's lameness.

Super Bowl XXVIV (1995)

A boring lame blowout that's probably the worst of the worst. The 1990s 49ers juggernaut led by Steve Young facing a mediocre Chargers team piloted by...Stan Humphries. The game was over before it started. Bonus: the anthem was sung by Kathie Lee Gifford.

Michael Jackson's Halftime Performance at Super Bowl XVII (1993)

Michael Jackson's tragic death has had the unfortunate effect of covering his life and career in a rose-colored hue. Beyond the personal scandal, he spent the 90s putting out a lot of crap music. He also kicked off the modern era of pop star halftime shows with this creepy display of what appears to be fascist aesthetics.

Bud Bowl I (1989)

America's most crap beer gave rise to one of the most crap Super Bowl traditions: the Bud Bowl. Witness early computer graphics and terrible humor. See anthropomorphic beer bottles somehow carry footballs and talk trash. I will admit, this is one of those so godawful it's good crap moments. Corporations play it too safe to be this gloriously stupid nowadays.

Memoirs of a Lapsed Husker Fan, Part Three

1995 was the year of Lawrence Phillips, in more ways than one

This is the third installment of a four part series. You can read part one here and part two here.

The 1994 national championship win will never be rivaled as my most meaningful sports fan moment. I don't think I can care about sports the same way now that I am older and wiser, and none of the teams I root for has the dramatic tension of the Osborne-era Cornhuskers. The aftermath of the win, however, was bittersweet. Penn State had managed to win the Rose Bowl and go undefeated, leading to whispers that the poll voters went for Nebraska only out of sympathy to old man Osborne. That rankled. Would Nebraska ever truly get the respect it deserved?

There was also something more serious afoot, namely accusations of sexual assault against defensive lineman Christian Peter. These had first emerged during the 1994 season, but in 1995 the University of Nebraska would award his victim, Kathy Redmond, a settlement. She has gone on to be a prominent activist in the fight to hold athletes accountable for acts of domestic and sexual violence. Peter's acts would be overshadowed during the season by Lawrence Phillips, as the 1995 season exposed a deep, dark underbelly of misogynistic violence on the Nebraska football team. While this team would go on to be the most successful in Nebraska and maybe college football history, looking back 1995 was the year that my Husker fandom stopped being naive and absolute and began to start cracking oh so slightly.

This was a team that absolutely dominated the opposition in ways that have perhaps never been seen before or since. The closest any team got to the Huskers was Washington State, who lost 35-21. Tommie Frazier was back from his blood clots, and at the top of his game. The Blackshirts were putting the fear into opposing offenses, and Nebraska's option attack put up obscene statistics. Four different running backs put up 100 yard games. I got to see them play Pacific in Lincoln, when the Huskers put up over 700 yards and their third string running back, Damon Benning, ran for 173 yards. I was able to attend the game because a friend of mine at Creighton was high school friends with one of the players. We even hung out a little afterward, and there just seemed to be this aura of absolute confidence around him and the couple of other players I met hanging out in the dorm afterward. These guys were not going to lose.

But beneath all of this was a scandal that began to permanently alter my feelings about Tom Osborne and the Nebraska Cornhuskers and college football writ large. Lawrence Phillips went to the apartment of backup quarterback Scott Frost (more on him later) to attack his girlfriend Kate McEwen, who was Phillips' former girlfriend. He dragged her down three flights of stairs by her hair in the midst of the beating. The news was absolutely shocking, especially Osborne suspended Phillips, rather than kicking him off of the team. His reasoning was that Phillips, who had lived a hard youth in foster care, was in danger of going completely off of the rails had he been kicked off the team.

I didn't buy it.

At the time, this was a kind of apostasy. I was sure that Osborne believed at least a part of what he was saying, but this, along with Christian Peter's continued presence on the team, disturbed me. Looking at my fellow Husker fans, I began to believe that they had struck a deal with the devil. In that long period of frustration between 1983 and 1994, Nebraska fans began to turn on their old image of themselves. They used to talk with pride about the team's record number of Academic All-Americans, the number of walk-ons, and the team steering clear of recruits who might be talented but lacked moral values. (Yes, there was some mythology here, but the narrative was important.) Husker fans had started to wonder if these straight and narrow traditions meant that the Huskers would never be able to go to the top. In 1995 it looked like the pinnacle had been reached after the older values were betrayed. Even worse, it seemed that most of the team's fans were willing to accept that. Of course, at the time I would put those thoughts aside on game day, which I guess was an act of true hypocrisy.

After crushing the opposition, Nebraska played in the Fiesta Bowl for the national championship against the Florida Gators. Again, the Husker chip on the shoulder got inflamed, as Sports Illustrated predicted a Gators win, despite the Huskers' absolute dominance. I was actually pretty confident that they would win, which is why it didn't bug me that much that I was in Ireland at another debate tournament during the game. At about half-time a friend made the transatlantic call home to get the score, and when he told it to us, we thought he must have had a bad connection. At that point Nebraska was up 35-10, en route to a 62-24 domination. Lucky for me, my parents taped the game for me, and after I got home I watched it every day for a week. I laughed at the normally cocky Steve Spurier throwing his stupid visor, powerless to stop the Husker onslaught. I exulted when Tommie Frazier broke 8 tackles on a 75 yard run that might be my favorite Husker play of all time. It was his last game, and he went out in style as one of the winningest quarterbacks in NCAA history.

At the same time, Phillips had been brought back, and he started the game. The Huskers did not need him to win. The fourth string running back on the team was a freshman by the name of Ahman Green, who would go on to have a long NFL career. To those who supported Osborne, it was proof that Dr Tom really cared about his player, and not winning. To those who were critical, it seemed especially excessive to give a violent abuser a second change when it made no difference to the team's prospects. Phillips declared a year early for the draft, and would go on to have a troubled and violent life, until killing himself in prison in 2016. As the years passed and Phillips made more headlines for bad behavior, Osborne's decision became harder to defend.

The Huskers went from the top of the world in 1994 and 1995 to more uncertain territory in 1996. Tragedy struck in the off season, as backup quarterback Brook Berringer, who had won several games when Frazier went down in 1994, died in a plane crash. He was actually getting some attention before the NFL draft, rare for a Husker quarterback. The new starting QB was Scott Frost, a figure of some controversy. He was a local boy, from Wood River, and was by far the most touted in-state high school quarterback in my lifetime. He spurned Nebraska, however, to go to Stanford while Bill Walsh was the coach. Many Nebraskans considered this a betrayal, and when he transferred to Nebraska, he was not welcome with open arms. It did not help that he struggled early on, especially in a shutout loss to Arizona State. I remember screaming and throwing my Huskers cap, especially after he got sacked in the end zone. After that game, though, I wondered if I was taking Nebraska football too seriously. I also began to question the people who were so critical of Frost for having signed with Stanford, and by extension the expectation that being a true Nebraskan meant blind loyalty to the football team.

1996 was also a strange season since it was the first of the Big XII, which was the old beloved Big 8 with four teams from Texas added. The Big 8 had four teams in the top ten the year before, so Nebraskans resented it when the Texas squads acted like they were equal partners in the endeavor. The Big XII, part of the supersizing of conferences to make money that still plagues college sports, also destroyed one of the most important aspects of Nebraska football: the Oklahoma rivalry. Nebraska and Oklahoma were now in different divisions, meaning they would not play each other every year anymore. Something was lost in that year that never came back, and now that Nebraska is in the Big Ten, it never will.

After getting embarrassed in Tempe, the Huskers won the rest of their regular season games, including the season finale against Colorado, now the team's "official" rival and the permanent occupant of the slot on the schedule the day after Thanksgiving. I went to the 1996 game in one of the great adventures I ever had with my father. I was home from college visiting my family for Thanksgiving, and my sister was a student at the university with season tickets. She wanted to make the long drive back to Lincoln to go to the game, and my dad and I thought we would try to get some tickets at the stadium, and failing that, watching the action at a local bar. That day brought freezing rain, something all too typical on the Nebraska prairies in late November. Luckily for my father and I, it meant that the scalpers had to drastically reduce their prices. We got seats behind the north goalposts, and stood pretty much through the whole game and the rain pelted us. My coat, which I had thought was water resistant, really wasn't, and by the end I was soaked to the bone, unable to feel my feet. It didn't matter. Despite a struggling offense, Nebraska beat the hated Buffs through the grace of the Blackshirts, who wreaked havoc on their opponents. Nebraska got the lead in the first quarter on an interception return, and never gave it back. It was a tough win in a tough season without Tommie Frazier and it gave me hope for the end of the season.

Somewhere in here you can see me freezing my nuts off

In the old days of the Big 8, winning that big game the day after Thanksgiving meant Nebraska had won the conference. However, now they would have to play an extra championship game for the conference title, which they lost to Texas, and thankfully I did not see. (Yup, I was at a debate tournament.) That game seemed to imply that the days of Nebraska's conference dominance were over. In another such sign, the second-place prize for the Huskers was the Orange Bowl, once the Holy Grail of the Big 8 season. Just as conferences were changing, the bowls were too. The game was played on New Year's Eve, rather than New Year's Day, and while the setting left something to be desired, the Huskers crushed a very good Virginia Tech team, 41-21. I remember it well because it was part of a New Year's Eve tradition. My parents were close friends with two other couples, and every eve one of the families would host the other two, the adults drinking and playing cards upstairs, us kids running around and playing downstairs. That year I was 21, and I and some of the kids were having beers, too. I didn't know it at the time, but just as my New Year's Eve holiday tradition was soon about to end, my connection to Husker football was going to be frayed.

But that didn't happen quite yet. 1997 would be one last golden season for Nebraska, for Tom Osborne, and for me. It was my last football season living in the state, which I never would have imagined when it started. It was only appropriate that Nebraska boy Scott Frost would lead that team with a season worthy of Tommie Frazier, and perhaps even better. He rushed and passed for over a thousand yards, the first Husker quarterback ever to do so in a single season. He ran the complicated option like a well-oiled machine, and more than once followed a pitch to Ahman Green -another Nebraska kid from Omaha- with a punishing block on defender. Despite a very odd throwing motion, he was more dangerous as a pocket passer than most option quarterbacks I'd seen behind center.

Nebraska won all of their regular season games, but one was truly miraculous. Nebraska was behind late against a tough Missouri squad on the road, down by a touchdown. Frost threw a last ditch pass into the endzone. It looked doomed, but bounced (some say kicked) off of a Nebraska player's foot into the diving hands of Matt Davison. The "Flea Kicker" has got to be one of the most amazing plays in college football history, the NCAA equivalent of Franco Harris' "Immaculate Reception." The game went into overtime, and Nebraska won. Again, I was at a debate tournament, and in those pre-cellphone days had not heard the score. We went back to our hotel room to watch Sportscenter, and the highlights of the game had me jumping and hollering with my teammates in exuberant, joyful disbelief.

As if to dispel the demons of the last season, Nebraska went in the Big XII championship game in San Antonio against a local team, Texas A&M, and blew them off the field by a score of 54-15. Despite that, Nebraska yet again had to deal with doubters in the media. The Huskers were only #2 in the AP poll, despite such dominance. Michigan was also undefeated, but had won its games much less convincingly. Because the Rose Bowl still locked in the Pac 10 and Big 10 winners, the Huskers and Wolverines would not be able to settle it on the field. Instead, Nebraska needed a big win in the Orange Bowl against Tennessee to ensure at least a share of the title by holding on to the top spot on the coaches poll.

The Blackshirts made Peyton Manning make Peyton Manning Face

In case you don't know, the Vols' quarterback was none other than Peyton Manning, by far the most hyped college quarterback I'd ever seen. Of course the hype was not misplaced, as he would go on to greatness in the NFL, but at the time I resented the adulation he received. The Blackshirts must've too, because they held the vaunted Manning to only 131 yards passing. He found himself constantly harried by Nebraska's blitz, unable to get the ball down the field. In fact, he was pulled out later in the game in favor of Tee Martin, who would lead the Vols to the championship the next year, something Manning never managed to do. Nebraska's explosive offense blasted through the Tennessee defense. It wasn't even close, the Huskers won 42-17. Even better, the coaches poll gave the Huskers the number one slot, though the media did not. I still think Nebraska would have crushed Michigan had they played that year. Was Brian Griese honestly going to be able to do what Peyton Manning couldn't? In any case, Osborne went out on top. My ill feelings about his handling of Lawrence Phillips subsided a little bit.

Witness the domination

Little did a I know at the time, 1997 would be my last true season as a Husker fan. In September of 1998, I moved to Chicago to start my master's program. Before leaving, I wentto a Husker game against UAB, who Nebraska beat handily 38-7. It was a day after my birthday, and like my first Husker game in the flesh, it was a birthday present. Fittingly, it is also the last Nebraska game I have attended in person. It was a beautiful day late summer day, so different than my last trip to Memorial Stadium in the freezing rain. 

While that game had all the hallmarks of the past, from the fans releasing their balloons after the first Nebraska touchdown to the sea of red, the 1998 season felt different. The new Nebraska coach was Frank Solich, who had been Osborne's consigliere for years. Like Osborne, Solich was quiet and stoic in ways that reflected the ideals of Nebraskan masculinity. He was a short, slight person who had played fullback for the Huskers in the 1960s, a testament to his toughness. In true Nebraska respect for tradition and stability, Osborne's hand-picked coach followed him, just as he had been tapped by Bob Devaney back in the early 1970s. But that circle would get broken, like some of the Husker streaks. Nebraska's consistency had been one of the team's hallmarks, and it also reflected the state's values system. We were very proud of the fact that while the championships had not come until recently, Nebraska had been 9-3 or better in every season since 1968. That streak was broken in Solich's first year, as the team went 9-4 and lost a bowl game to Arizona in the Holiday Bowl. The team did not even make a New Year's Day bowl, which was embarrassing enough. The Huskers did not even win their division, much less the conference. For other fans a 9-4 season would not be such a disappointment, but for Husker fans it seemed that the immutable laws of the universe had been challenged. Some began talking that Osborne knew that this team was not capable of maintaining the streak, which was why he decided to retire.

There were other streaks, too. Husker fans took perverse delight in beating up on certain teams year after year after year. Kansas State had not managed to beat the Huskers since 1959. The Wildcats had traditionally been one of the worst teams in top division college football, but even after coach Bill Snyder had come in and magically transformed the team into a winner, the streak remained. In 1997, as the Husker offense truly hummed as Scott Frost hit his stride, K-State got shellacked 56-26. In 1998, the Wildcats finally got their revenge, winning 40-30. It would be Kansas State, KANSAS FREAKING STATE playing for the conference title while the Huskers sat at home. This was impossible, it was not supposed to happen. The lion had lain with the lamb, the seal had been broken, and judgement had been loosed upon the once unstoppable, arrogant Cornhuskers. I saw some of that game in my Chicago studio apartment, so far from the windswept prairies of my home state. Things had changed now for good, both for the Huskers and for me.

Memoirs Of A Lapsed Husker Fan, Part Two

Part one is here

Despite having my heart broken by the Huskers losing to the Sooners in November of 1987, my devotion to the team only increased. This is the kind of Stockholm Syndrome that most sports fans are familiar with. I still remember watching a big game as an adult with a group of friends, and as our team started losing and the curses and oaths started flying, a friend who was there to socialize and not as a fan simply asked "Aren't you supposed to like this?" to which another friend replied "Pleasure has nothing to do with it."

Like Job, the next few years would test me. In 1988 Nebraska lost early in the season to UCLA, giving up 41 points in a game where I spent a lot of time throwing a novelty foam brick that my sister had just bought at the screen. (After this game she declared the brick to be bad luck.) With national title hopes out of the way, however, the Huskers managed to go undefeated for the rest of the season. The best moment came at the end, when Nebraska beat Oklahoma on the road in Norman. The rain poured down, turning the astroturf into a slip n slide. Both defenses dominated, but Nebraska pulled out a win in a brutal slugfest, 7-3. It wasn't pretty, but it was the visiting fans in red that got to throw the oranges this time.

But then the Orange Bowl happened. Returning for the first time in five years, Nebraska had to play Miami again. The ghosts of the failed two point conversion haunted Huskerdom, and there was hope that the demons of Miami could be exorcised like those of Oklahoma. It was not to be. Miami won 23-3, but it might as well have been 63-3. They dominated the game, Nebraska never even threatened. This was the second bowl loss in a row, with five more to follow. This game was when the doubts began to be sowed in the minds of many a Husker fan. Was Osborne's running offense a relic of the past? Could Nebraska actually compete in recruiting with schools like Miami? Was the game passing Nebraska by?

The next season brought a new shock, namely the end of the old Big 8 order. For years it had been Nebraska and Oklahoma and six also rans. 1961 was the last time that neither team had won or tied for the championship. In the off season journalists and the NCAA uncovered a massive level of wrongdoing at Oklahoma, leading to the team getting put on probation for three years and Barry Switzer resigning. During the height of the War On Drugs it was especially damaging that Oklahoma players were using and dealing cocaine. For a Nebraska fan, this was vindication. We were good and moral, Oklahoma was degraded and evil, and they were now facing their reckoning.

While Oklahoma looked to be eclipsed for the forseeable future, the Colorado Buffaloes stepped into the breach. Their coach, Bill McCartney, had made defeating Nebraska the raison d'etre of his program. In 1986 the Buffs shocked the Huskers with an upset win, and he crowed that this was "our bowl game." (Remember, back then getting to a bowl game was actually difficult.) Nebraska had won in 1987 and 1988, but 1989 would be different. Colorado beat Nebraska, and looked confident in doing so. That was the hardest part to watch. The fact that they were running an option offense better than us was particularly galling. I still remember sitting on my aunt and uncle's shag carpet, the smell of tobacco and chili in the air, thinking that things were never going to be the same.

They weren't, for the Huskers or for me. I started high school in the fall of 1990, and my fall Saturdays were spent at marching band competitions and debate tournaments. This meant brining my Walkman along and stealing some time to listen on the radio in those pre-cellphone days. The Huskers played Colorado that season on the day of my very first debate tournament. A friend of the judge in one of my rounds sat in the room with us and listened to the game on his headphones, giving us updates on the score between speeches. This time around Colorado beat Nebraska on our own ground, and did it pretty handily. It seemed that McCartney had replaced Switzer as my chief tormentor. Things got worse when the Huskers traveled to play Oklahoma, and Husker quarterback Mickey Joseph broke his leg while being tackled out of bounds on the Oklahoma sideline. Rumors flew that it was a dirty Sooner player who pushed him into the bench.

The Sooners put up 45 points on Nebraska, as did their bowl opponent that year, Georgia Tech. Georgia freaking Tech! The Huskers finished the season ranked #24, barely in the top 25. 1991 had its high points, especially seeing former third stringer Keithen McCant rise to the top and do a capable job at quarterback. But this season also seemed to cement Nebraska's second rate status, and Colorado's ascendancy. The Huskers tied Colorado on the road, but should have won. The Buffs returned a blocked extra point for a safety, and the Huskers missed a game-winning field goal at the end, as snowballs rained down on the field thrown by Buffs fans. The refs did not call a penalty. Buffaloes fans were known for pelting Husker rooters with cups full of piss and snowballs with rocks inside of them. At least Oklahoma and Nebraska fans had a level of mutual respect in their rivalry, this was something else. Nebraska fans had always prided themselves on their decorum. There was a longstanding tradition that when the opposing team left the field at the end of home games, Husker fans would applaud them. The rivalry with Colorado brought out the worst, most soccer hooligan aspects of fandom.

The season ended cruelly, with another Orange Bowl against Miami. The Hurricanes were number one team in the country, the Huskers were merely a scrappy bunch happy to be there, and the 'Canes eviscerated them, winning 22-0. Getting shutout in a bowl game was pretty embarrassing, especially after four previous bowl losses, the last three lopsided. As I mentioned in the last installment, this game put me in a depression for about a week. I was a very lonely kid in high school, Nebraska football was one of my few escapes, and it had let me down. Even in my escapist pleasures I was a loser.

And then lo, in the off season, a star in the southeast led Tom Osborne to Bradenton, Florida, where he found Tommie Frazier, the chosen one destined to finally bring Nebraska to the Promised Land. Frazier was a quarterback with a cannon arm, strong legs, and the smarts to run Osborne's deceptively complicated offense. He managed to be recruited from Florida, home to the two teams -Florida State and Miami- that had been shellacking Nebraska on a yearly basis in bowl games. The new messiah was actually allowed to play starting quarterback as a freshman, something that the by the book Osborne never would have done in former times.

Even though the Huskers went 9-3 that season, which was not as good as their 9-2-1 the previous season, I could feel the winds of change. After an early hard loss on the road against Washington, the Huskers played with verve and fire. And then, on Halloween night, 1992, I experienced a level of schadenfreude that will never be topped in my life. Colorado came to Lincoln for an evening game, and Nebraska completely and utterly embarrassed the Buffaloes, winning 52-7. Frazier ran the offense to perfection, even pulling off a fumblerooski with the great lineman Will Shields. This would mark the beginning of nine straight wins against Colorado.

Of course, the Huskers still found a way to kill my buzz. They inexplicably lost on the road to Iowa State, a traditional doormat for Nebraska. I remember getting the news while at a debate tournament and assumed that I was being punked. Alas, it was true. While the Huskers still got to go to the coveted Orange Bowl, they had to face a powerhouse Florida State team. Nebraska was not blown out this time, but they looked overmatched, and never threatened to win. This was not a team that ever seemed capable of competing against the new powers of college football.

This is why what happened next year came as a complete surprise to me. Nebraska simply refused to lose. After a year under his belt, Frazier was even more competent. The defensive adjustments by coordinator Charlie McBride, criticized by Husker fans for being old-fashioned, starting paying off. He prioritized speed over power, turning defensive backs into linebackers and linebackers into defensive ends. The Blackshirts' blitz struck fear into the hearts of opposing quarterbacks. The season ended with a rematch, facing Florida State in the Orange Bowl, site of so much Husker misery. If Nebraska won this game, it would give them the national championship, their first real shot at the title in ten years.

Florida State had defeated Nebraska in bowl games after the 1987, 1989, and 1992 seasons. It felt like more of the same. It seemed like we didn't have a chance. This game also inflamed the Husker fan sense of self-righteousness like no other. The media said we didn't have a chance, and even seemed to dislike us, not giving the Cornhuskers the kind of scrappy underdog narrative that they would give other teams. Rather, they sneered and acted like Nebraska didn't actually belong there. What happened in the game only made things worse. It was a tense, low scoring affair, but late in the game some crucial officiating calls went against Nebraska, allowing FSU to score to go ahead late. With very little time left Frazier managed to get the team into field goal range for a winning shot, but the futile kicker line-drived his chance short of the goal posts. After the game FSU coach Bobby Bowden was gracious, saying that Nebraska had played the better game.

This was cold comfort. Nebraskans were anguished and enraged. A tee shirt making the rounds with a referee on a red background read "We Refuse To Be Screwed." A story circulated that Trev Alberts, an All-American linebacker who played the game with a cast on his right arm, was asked by referees to "take it easy" on Florida State quarterback Charlie Ward. (Alberts, a killer blitz artists, had sacked Ward three times.) Did this actually happen? Were those calls really botched? Did the national sports media actually dislike Nebraska? I do not have the objective standpoint necessary to answer those questions. All I can say that as a true devotee of the Husker religion my sect felt harried and persecuted.

The next year, 1994, would take all of that anger and resentment and turn it into a kind of righteous will to win. It also happened to be the year I started college, at Creighton University in Omaha. Although I had elected not to go to the University of Nebraska, I was still surrounded by Husker fandom. I also stayed with competitive debate, meaning that I was still having to find ways to keep up with the games in between arguing with other people while wearing a suit. One of the highlights of the season was going to a debate tournament at Colorado College, and breaking away to go to the student center to watch the Huskers manhandle the Buffaloes. Oh the glee I felt watching the Colorado fans squirm!

That game, however, came after a great deal of drama, the kind of drama that felt written by Hollywood. In the fourth game of the season, Frazier went down with a blood in his leg. This was shocking, not just for the season, but for how it threatened Touchdown Tommie's life. Remember, this was not long after Hank Gathers' death on the basketball court. It didn't help that there was a total bro on my debate team from Wyoming, Nebraska's opponent in their first game without Frazier. He would taunt me by holding his leg and saying "ooh, I got a blood clot." He also had sex with and then slut shamed a young woman I was in love with, so my dislike of this guy was off the charts. When backup Brook Berringer came in and led the Huskers to victory, I felt personally vindicated somehow.

Berringer would do a great job at quarterback, but more as a drop-back QB and less as an option quarterback. Unfortunately, he would suffer a collapsed lung during the next game against Oklahoma State, and Nebraska would be forced to call on Matt Turman, who would make his own Husker legend. Turman was an undersized walk-on from Wahoo, Nebraska. He looked so ridiculously small on the field, and had to start against a resurgent Kansas State team on the road. It was an ugly, rainy game that Nebraska won by riding its defense and its starting tailback, Lawrence Phillips, who would rush for over 1800 yards that season. (More on him later, obviously.)

Berringer came back, and the team never looked back. It was he who crushed number two ranked Colorado, humiliating them with one of my favorite all time Husker plays: a fake option then long bomb thrown for a touchdown. People had derided Nebraska' offense as slow and plodding and simple, but in that one play Berringer showed Tom Osborne's creativity and love of trickeration. I may have strayed from the Husker religion, but seeing that play has the same effect as playing "A Might Fortress Is Our God" for a Lutheran.

At one hour eleven minutes you can see the play that sums up Brook Berringer's brilliance in 1994

All of this lead to the bowl game. Once again, Nebraska was in the Orange Bowl. Once again, Nebraska was going to have to play Miami on their home turf. Like after the 1983 season, Nebraska was ranked number one and Miami number three. There is no way that a script writer could have conceived of such a situation. It was like something out of the movies. To make it even more theatrical, Tommie Frazier had recovered from his blood clot. Would he come in to play? This was a hard decision, considering how well Berringer had performed, and how high the stakes were for Frazier's health.

It was a fraught game for me personally, since I was not able to see it in Nebraska. I was at an international debate tournament being held at Princeton University. We arrived on January 1, game day. I wore my Husker gear out to dinner, and some waiter walked by me and said "Go Penn State." That year Penn State was also undefeated, and there was some controversy over the national championship, since there was no playoff or even championship bowl game. Nebraska was in the Orange as the Big 8 winner, Penn State in the Rose as the Big Ten winner, and nothing was going to change that. I saw the waiter's imprecation as a sign that I was in hostile territory. It also added to that prodigious Husker fan chip on my shoulder, which was inflamed by the thought that people in the rest of the country didn't like or respect my team.

Being 19, I could not watch the game in the hotel bar, and so watched it with two of my debate teammates in our hotel room. One of them was exhausted from New Year's Eve partying the night before, and when the Huskers fell behind, he decided to go to sleep and save himself the pain. The Huskers were down ten to nothing after the first quarter. Tommie Frazier started the game, but could not seem to do anything against the Miami defense. Osborne then brought in Berringer, who was able to hit some key passes and throw for a touchdown. Miami scored again, though, and Berringer also threw an interception in the endzone. That's the point when my friend went to bed, and the point that I thought that I was going to see yet another Nebraska embarrassment. I kept watching out of obligation, more than anything else.

Then, somehow someway, Nebraska's style of play, which I had lost faith in, was vindicated. McBride's aggressive blitzing paid off, as the Huskers sacked Miami quarterback Frank Costa in the endzone for a safety. Tommie Frazier came back into the game in the fourth quarter after Berringer's interception, and you could feel the game shifting. Nebraska had always prided itself on its offensive lines and their sturdy endurance. At the end of the game, Miami was wore out, and the dam broke loose in a very Husker way. Frazier moved the offense down the field, and they scored two touchdowns by running fullback Cory Schlesinger up the middle on a trap play. The 'Canes seemed powerless to stop the line's push, and caught flat-footed by the trickery. For a Husker fan it was as if the trumpets had sounded and the walls of Jericho had come crashing down. I could not believe my eyes.

My fandom has faded but I can't rewatch this game because the emotions are too strong

But neither touchdown was the most dramatic moment. After the first score, Osborne decided to go for two, to tie the score at 17. The ghosts of the 1984 Orange Bowl were hard to avoid, even if the stakes of this conversion were not as high. When Tommie Frazier connected on a pass to Eric Alford, I went nuts. It was a very similar play to the one in '84, but this time it worked! Turner Gill, who threw that pass back in '84, was on the sideline as Nebraska's quarterbacks coach. It was almost too perfect. I KNEW at the moment that there was no way that Nebraska was going to lose.

Alright, now I'm crying

Right after the game ended I got a knock on my hotel room door. It was one of my team's coaches, who had been watching the game in the bar. We jumped up and down and hooted and hollered. I was over a thousand miles away from home and wanted to be back there so bad. When our tournament was over and we went to the airport, I snagged the most recent Sports Illustrated, and basked in the victory, so long in coming. The national sports media seemed to actually be happy about Osborne finally winning. That chip on my shoulder suddenly shrank.

Little did I know that Nebraska would somehow better the 1994 season the next, or that the 1995 season would also begin my much more complicated relationship with my favorite team. More on that next time.

Memoirs Of A Lapsed Husker Fan, Part One

The game where I learned the truth about life

I do not think I will ever care about anything the way I once cared about the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers football. My absolute, fervent devotion to the Husker religion was such that when I finally got to go to a game at the age of 12 I considered it the highlight of my life up to that point. Four years later when they lost yet another bowl game in embarrassing fashion after a promising 1991 season, I fell into a depression for about a week.

Since then, things have changed. Like the lapsed Catholic who goes to mass only on Christmas and Easter, I have retained only a nominal membership in the Church of Husker. I will put no other football gods before it, but my connection is more a matter of identity and memory than any true devotion. Just as many of those at Christmas mass need assistance in reciting the Nicene Creed, I cannot tell you much about the team's starting lineup. At one time I could recite the entire roster down to the third string, now I can't even tell you who the starting quarterback is. Like Holy Week for Catholics, the beginning of the college football season is a heightened time for Husker fans, even the lapsed ones. Games start on Saturday, and every year, without me even trying, the memories of my Husker past will flood my mind.

Those who have never lived in Nebraska will have a hard time understanding the cultural significance that college football has in that state, and how much the Nebraskan identity is wrapped up in the university football squad. On gameday Memorial Stadium is the third largest city in the state, and every game has been sold out since 1962. In the 80s, at the height of shopping mall culture, they would pipe in radio play by play of games on Husker Saturdays over the PA instead of Muzak. I have been to many fall weddings in Nebraska where the attendees rushed out of the church to turn on their car radios and get the score.

Unlike in states like Texas and even Kansas, there is only one Division I team. Unlike Ohio and Michigan, there are no professional football teams. In fact, there are no pro teams in any sport whatsoever. In a sparsely populated and regionally diverse state that stretches almost 500 miles end to end, from the biggish city of Omaha in the east to the western rangelands of the Panhandle in the west, Cornhusker football has long been the state's one fixed commonality.

It was even more so in my youth. I was born and raised in Hastings, a town of 24,000 in south central Nebraska surrounded by farms. It also happens to be the hometown of Tom Osborne, and when I was a student visitors to the high school were treated to two giant Soviet cult of personality icons of Osborne in the front stairwell, one of him playing basketball, the other playing football. (He was throwing a ball in the latter picture, which was always the source of jokes considering Osborne's offensive philosophy.) The road from Hastings to nearby Grand Island was called Tom Osborne Expressway. All of this iconography was put in place well before he had even won a national championship.

Tom Osborne in his youth

I began my Husker fandom at a time when it seemed that a championship would never come. Not because of ineptitude like those sad sacks rooting for K-State, but due to the cruel whims of the football fates. In 1982 Nebraska went 12-1, winning the conference and the Orange Bowl against LSU. The one loss came against Penn State, and was enabled by a highly contentious pass interference penalty that Husker fans of a certain age will still grab your arm and bend your ear about. The whole off season all anyone seemed to talk about was how the refs cheated us out of a championship. (I was too young to follow the team in 1981, when it lost the national championship against Clemson in the Orange Bowl, another torturously just short of the line season.)

The following year in 1983 Nebraska had one of the most explosive offenses in the history of college football, blowing out the opposition en route to an undefeated regular season. Tailback Mike Rozier won the Heisman Trophy. Quarterback Turner Gill ran the option offense like a football magician. Wingback Irving Fryar would go first in the 1984 NFL draft. The season ended, however, with an infamous loss in the Orange Bowl against a rising Miami. After storming back from a halftime deficit, the Huskers scored a late touchdown, and could have tied the game with an extra point. If Nebraska had tied the game, the AP voters would still have elected the Huskers national champions.

At that point Tom Osborne, in a decision that was second-guessed more times than Napoleon's invasion of Russia, decided to go for two and the win. He thought that winning the national championship with a tie just wasn't honorable. The conversion failed, and the moment would replay itself in the minds of Husker fans for over a decade. While we wailed and gnashed our teeth, this decision also made Osborne into a Nebraska hero.

Nebraskans place an outsize emphasis on honesty and honor. In my experience, they tend to put a lot less stock in material "success" than people in other parts of the country. Cornhusker fans felt that winning "the right way" was the most important thing, and Osborne choosing an honorable loss over a cheap win made him the avatar of what many Nebraskans thought of as their best selves. That did not, however, dull the aching pain of a true gut punch loss. Rozier, Gill, and Fryar were all gone, and we all knew that it would be a long time before the planets would ever align like that again, if they ever did.

The next three seasons were full of frustration. Even though Nebraska had failed to win national championships after coming very close in 1981, 1982, and 1983, it had at least won the Big 8 conference and defeated hated rival Oklahoma. Back then the Nebraska-Oklahoma game was something like a high holiday, often scheduled the day after Thanksgiving. My abiding memory of those games is being at my aunt and uncle's house, the smell of my aunt's chili and uncle's pipe tobacco in the air. Both teams dominated the Big 8 conference, and the championship inevitably came down to this game every year. Fans of the winning team would throw oranges on the field, since in those days the winner of the conference automatically went to the Orange Bowl. (Stadium security was a lot less lax back then, too.) The sight of bright oranges flying through the chilly November air was always a surreal one, bringing happiness when tossed by Nebraska fans, and blinding rage when tossed by Sooner fans.

In 1984, 1985, and 1986, Nebraska lost to Oklahoma. This was not merely being defeated in a rivalry. For Nebraskans, this was a matter of good and evil. Tom Osborne was the ur-Nebraskan, quiet, steady, honest, doing things the "right way." Oklahoma was coached by Barry Switzer, the loud, brash, bootlegger's son whose program had been rung up for NCAA rules violations in the 1970s and who seemed like he would have shot his dog if it meant winning a championship. The most famous player on those teams was The Boz, Brian Bosworth, an even more brash athlete whose constant disrespect for authority somehow won him fame and adulation. There was nothing more dishonorable to a true Nebraskan than that.

I have never hated an athlete like I hated The Boz (glad to see in his 30 for 30 that he's gained some humility)

After three seasons of good but not great teams, the 1987 Cornhuskers suddenly seemed like the team of destiny. It was that year that I went to my first Husker game, against a Utah State team led by future Detroit Lions disappointment Scott Mitchell. Even though our seats were in the corner of the top row, probably the worst in the house, I had the time of my life. The Huskers returned two punts for touchdowns, and rushed for over 500 yards. Steve Taylor looked like the second coming of Turner Gill, running the option to perfection. In the next game, against UCLA, Taylor PASSED for five touchdowns. It seemed like there was nothing that could stop the Husker juggernaut from cutting through the Big 8 like a combine through a corn field.

Oklahoma was also undefeated that year, but before the big game was to happen, their quarterback Jamelle Holieway, a master of the wishbone offense who had led the Sooners to a national championship, got injured. He was replaced by a freshman, (something almost unheard of in those days) Charles Thompson. The Huskers had the Sooners at home that year. Broderick Thomas, future NFL linebacker and leader of the Blackshirts (the nickname for the Husker defense), had started a trend by proclaiming Memorial Stadium to be "Our House." (This led to some enterprising person making giant cardboard keys with the slogan printed on them that sold like hotcakes.) There was no way that we were going to lose.

Then, in what I thought was proof of the existence of God's grace, I was able to go to the game. My best friend Danny's father managed a local bank, meaning that he had the right connections to get tickets. We took the 100 mile trek to Lincoln with our dads on a brisk November day, but I spent the week before preparing my soul, as if I were about to go on pilgrimage. The local video stores starting renting tapes of Nebraska's glorious win over Oklahoma in 1971, the so-called "Game of the Century," which put the Huskers on the road to their last national championship. I watched that game multiple times, thrilling at Johnny Rodgers' amazing punt return, and Jeff Kinney just barely managing to stretch over the line for the winning touchdown. I believed with the belief that only a 12 year old sports fan could have that I was about to witness a similar moment of world historical importance.

Our seats were fantastic. My friend brought binoculars, and I was able to get a closeup view of the great Steve Taylor warming up before the game. In my eyes, he was invincible. Before the game my friend and I asked our dads if we could rush the field and help tear down the goal posts after Nebraska won, a statement that I should have understood to be a terrible jinx.

Neither team seemed able to get an edge until late in the first quarter, when Keith "End Zone" Jones busted loose for a 25 yard touchdown run. The Huskers went into the locker room at halftime up 7-0, and as he walked off the field Broderick Thomas led the crowd in the "Our House" chant. I have probably never been more innocently and naively happy in my entire life as I was in that moment. I say innocent because despite a constant stream of schoolyard bullying life had not yet taught me yet that pleasure is fleeting, that I should always expect the worst, and that disappointment is life's default setting. I first learned those truths in the second half of that football game.

Amazing that thirty years later I can watch this game on my computer

Nebraska never scored again. Oklahoma's offense moved down the field slowly but pitilessly. Every time their running backs got hit by a defender they seemed to fall forward for just enough extra yardage to keep the chains moving. It was like a kind of football crucifixion, a slow death. After grinding out a touchdown, Oklahoma scored a 65 yard touchdown on an outside run, making it 14-7. It might as well have been 70-7, since Oklahoma's defense shut Nebraska down and Steve Taylor threw three interceptions. In the fourth quarter I actually joined the other fans calling for Osborne to put in his more pass-happy backup, Clete Blakeman. In my anger and frustration I had, like some kind of football Judas turned on Steve Taylor, the player I was marveling over just a couple of hours before.

The game ended in darkness, literal and spiritual. Walking dejected from the stadium after the game, my friend Danny slammed his game program to the ground and gave it a swift kick down the street. We barely talked on the two hour ride back to Hastings. In a moment that every sports fan has at some point in their lives, I did not understand how something I loved so much could cause me so much pain.

[Editor's Note: Part two will soon follow, when I will discuss the seeming vindication of my love for my favorite sports team]

Confessions Of A Former College Football Fan

There was a time when watching this video was food for my soul

Today the Nebraska Cornhuskers played the first game of their football season.  In my youth this day was a minor holiday, as were all Husker gamedays.  While I maintained various sports allegiances, Cornhusker football was more like a religious obligation requiring adherence to rituals and worship.  Going to Memorial Stadium to see a game (which I have only done half a dozen times) was like a major pilgrimage.  In the days before expanded cable I spent many a Saturday afternoon listening to games on the radio while raking leaves or on the road to my grandparents' house, not wanting to miss a single play.  I still remember being somewhere on interstate 80 and hearing the call when fullback Bryan Carpenter ripped off a 47 yard touchdown run to turn the tide of a tough game against Missouri, and feeling total elation.  When Nebraska won the national championship after the 1995 Orange Bowl, I probably felt happier than I ever had up to that point in my life.  I had also felt horribly down in the preceding year, when the team came within a field goal of beating Florida State to get the glory.  In the early days of video on the internet (pre YouTube) I would watch Johnny Rodgers' famous punt return against Oklahoma over and over and over again, feeling the goosebumps each time.

These days things have changed.  I haven't watched a down of today's game, even though it's on TV.  In fact, I haven't even bothered to check the score.  It just doesn't matter a whole lot to me, and I say this as someone who obsessively checks his phone during Mets games, so it's not like I've given up on sports.  I don't really hate college football or won't watch any games this season, it's just that I don't care about it all that much anymore.

It's happened gradually over time, and I have been asking myself why.  I think some of the first seeds were sewn in 1995, the year that the Huskers went undefeated and demolished their opponents in fearsome fashion on the way to a second straight championship.  That year two star players made headlines through horrible acts committed against women, and both were allowed to play in the Fiesta Bowl and celebrate on the field.  Running back Lawrence Phillips went to the apartment of his ex girlfriend and assaulted her, dragging her down the stairs by her hair.  Defensive lineman Christian Peter raped a student who now is a public advocate calling for abusive athletes to be brought to account.  Coach Tom Osborne, a man I had always respected for his integrity, sheltered both of these players.  Unfortunately, I was too weak and ignorant back then to do more than feel uncomfortable and not ask deeper questions.

Over the years these stories kept multiplying, and they still do.  My real skepticism came when I was a grad student and heard a talk by Murray Sperber, a professor at Indiana University who wrote the indispensable Beer and Circus.  He demolishes many of the myths about college sports bringing in revenue to universities.  There a handful that do make money, but it typically goes right to the athletics department.  At the vast majority of schools, sports cost a lot of money.  As a grad student I also knew TAs who'd been brought into the basketball coach's office to be leaned on to give a better grade to an athlete, and athletes who should've been academically ineligible allowed to play.  (Of course, I also had plenty of athletes who were fine students.  The problem isn't them, it's the system.)

I also noticed, both in grad school and as a professor, that the waves of austerity wreaking havoc on academic departments didn't seem to faze the athletics wing of the university.  At one school the faculty were informed of cuts to research, travel, and library money while in the same speech the president proudly crowed about new beacons to be installed on the newest dorm, which would alert everyone when the piss-poor football team won a game.  (And yes, this was in Texas.)  At another faculty were told to excuse their students from night classes on a Thursday if they were attending the game that night, which was nationally televised.  The school's priorities could not have been clearer.  Add to that the knowledge that football itself can cause catastrophic brain damage.  Also add that on the college level players are completely exploited, not getting paid while their coaches are often the highest paid employees of their respective states.  The players make a lot of money for a lot of people, except themselves.  The vast, vast majority don't go pro, and while they get scholarships, their schedules make it hard to study and at many programs the graduation rates for players in the big money sports are abyssmal.

The only foreseeable solution from my point of view is the abolition of the NCAA and college sports in their present form, but that will never happen.  There are too many people out there who are just like I used to be, fanatically devoted to their teams to the point that that devotion is a key element to their identity as human beings.  For that reason, the juggernaut will live on, I just know that I won't be around anymore to watch it.

Postscript: my good friend Brian Ingrassia wrote an award-winning history of how college football's structures came to be.  Talking with him while he was doing his research gave me a lot of insight.  Please buy/read it.

On Losing Interest In Football

This year was the year that I half-consciously made the decision to not care about football anymore.  This turn of events was not insignificant, considering that I grew up in Nebraska as a die-hard Cornhuskers fan.  At a young age I could recite the starting lineups, and the depth chart down to at least the third string for positions like running back and quarterback.  When the team had a string of embarrassing bowl losses in the late 80s and early 90s, I would depressed each January 1st, wondering if the humiliations would ever end.  When I saw the then #1 ranked Huskers lose at home to Oklahoma in 1987, it was the most devastating event in my life up to that point, besides the death of my grandfather.  When the Huskers won three championships in the 1990s, I was on cloud nine, and even the White Sox winning the World Series in 2005 couldn't match the feeling I had after the 1994 season when Tom Osborne finally had a national championship.

My love of football went beyond the Huskers, though.  I played innumerable backyard touch football games during recess at school and with my friends in their backyards.  (My one disastrous season playing tackle football didn't go so well, though.  I was a meek kid and kind of spacey, so I shied away from hitting and wasn't good at knowing the playbook.)  During study hall in middle and high school I would diagram plays, and I had a real obsession with the technical, Xs and Os behind the game.  I loved computer football games where I was the coach, and couldn't control the players.  The strategic stuff interested me more than the athletic execution.

Once I left college and moved to Chicago, I became much more interested in the NFL, and became a committed Bears fan to boot.  In grad school in downstate Illinois it became a weekly ritual among some of my friends to gather on Sunday afternoon (after having spent the morning working) to pot luck some food, drink some beers, and watch NFL football.  The couple who hosted each week had NFL Sunday Ticket, so we could watch any game we wanted.  It was a nice break from the grueling grad student work schedule, and I still have many fond memories of those Sunday afternoons.

Now that I no longer have that fellowship, or the cultural ties to my home state (where football is religion), my interest in football has waned.  Much of it has to do with my years in higher education, which taught me that big time college sports are a cancer on universities and drive their leaders into decisions that harm the academic mission of their institutions.  The recent revelations in North Carolina are only the most outlandish in a long litany of such abuses.  Big time college sports do active harm, from shielding rapists to robbing athletes of a meaningful education to stealing money from classrooms. It got to the point that I felt like I was violating my moral code by maintaining any interest in college football.

The NFL is a slightly different matter.  There were moral qualms extending from the brain damage of its players, of course, but that wasn't all.  NFL football has become a crummy product.  The games take three and a half hours long, are full of interminable commercials, and are carried on by technocratic coaches and mostly faceless players.  Apart from a few players like Peyton Manning (who I can't stand, by the way), the game has overshadowed individual achievement.  That takes away one of the basic reasons to care about a sport in the first place.  I also agree with my friend Cranky Bear, when he said this:

"Last but not least, football as a sport isn't all that great.  It is a game suited for television and rather underwhelming in person, but on television there are more commercial breaks than interesting plays in a given game.  The NFL in particular has become a dry, technocratic exercise about as inspiring as an annual earnings report.  Give me basketball's free-flowing poetry, baseball's cerebral contemplation, or soccer's athletic beauty any day.  Fuck football and every inch of its turgid violence, you can have it."

So what's life like been without as much football in it?  In the first place, it's saved me the aggravation of enduring recent Bears hidings at the hands of their opponents, or of my once beloved Huskers getting shellacked by Wisconsin.  I've had the TV on a let less on the weekend, which has meant fewer hours spent watching commercials and listening to the kind of bloviating bores who are hired to announce and analyze the game.  During game time I've been out and about or doing yard work.  If I need a sports fix I watch English Premier League soccer early in the morning before my family is out the door.

I'm not judgmental or negative towards football fans, I of all people get the sport's appeal.  Perhaps I would still be following the sport, but the circumstances of my life have made me abandon many things I once cared deeply about (the Catholic Church, the historical profession, etc.), and that's made it easier to change my mind about football.  It's still America's number one spectator sport, so maybe I'm a total outlier, but I still wonder how long that will continue to be the case.

Football's Problems Are America's Problems

Even though football eclipsed baseball fifty years ago as America's primary spectator sport, baseball has maintained a symbolic importance that football has never had.  Historians and commentators have linked baseball's history to America's, seeing in Babe Ruth the exuberance of the Roaring Twenties, the Brooklyn Dodgers moving to LA as indicative of the Sun Belt's rise, and Jackie Robinson's struggle as a crucial moment in the civil rights movement.  However, football has rarely been interpreted as representing anything much beyond the game itself.

Recent events should make us rethink that separation, since recent scandals and controversies in football are reflective of larger dysfunctions in American life.  Take for instance today's bombshell in the New York Times, showing how authorities in Tallahassee have protected Florida State players to the point of obstructing justice.  That fits with a general pattern of behavior by universities, who have placed their star athletes above the law.  That lack of oversight was also apparent in allegations this week at a top high school football program in New Jersey, where seniors were accused of repeatedly sexually assaulting freshmen in the name of "hazing."  (Not to mention how Jerry Sandusky was able to prey upon children for years at Penn State.)  The willingness of educational institutions to turn a blind eye to criminal and abusive behavior by those who win football games reflects the general tendency in our society to protect "the stars," no matter how damaging their behavior.  Just recall how the bankers who wrecked the economy and acted in bad faith are collecting bonuses, not jail sentences.

At a time when corporate profits are booming when living standards are stagnant, football is raking in the dough while shafting the men who sacrifice their bodies.  The NCAA blocks the payment of money to the "student athletes" who make it billions of dollars.  The NFL drug its feet when it came to helping former players with scrambled brains, and recently locked out its own players rather than do more to share its wealth from those who actually generate it.  Roger Goodell is the kind of corporate technocrat ensconced at the top of America's major companies, with a one singular mission: generate profit above all else, even if some people suffer.

Last but not least, football's violence is part of American society's historical and insatiable lust for blood.  The players smash into each other with increasing force, with predictably damaging consequences for the men on the field.  Attempts to create new rules to moderate the force of the hits has brought mostly derision from the fans, who are upset about the loss of "real football."  If some of the modern gladiators lose the ability to remember where they are or commit suicide as a result of brain damage, so be it.  In some notable recent cases, the violence has spilled over from the field to the stands.  The league has finally been called out for its lax punishment of domestic abusers like Ray Rice, but Goodell's initial slap on the wrist reflected a general tendency in American society to not take action on domestic abuse.

With all of the Sturm und Drang about football's controversies and scandals, it's important to call out those responsible for a whole of crimes, from sexual assault to labor exploitation.  However, we should always keep in mind that these offenses are congruent with the corrupt, violent, and exploitative society that we all live in each and every day.

Cranky Bear Asks America To End Its Football Addiction

[Editor's note: It has been a long while since I have received a missive from my friend Cranky Bear, who appears content to live the quiet life in his compound and to stay above the fray of world affairs.  Cranky has also been sneering at my more domesticated lifestyle, calling me "soft" and a "sell-out."  However, after such a long silence I have received a message in a small microfilm canister via carrier pigeon, and would like to share it with you.]

Hello folks, Cranky Bear here with a cup of strong coffee in my hand and an axe to grind.  Last week marked the beginning of football season, and the sport seems to be a bigger part of our culture with each passing year.  College football coaches are often the highest-paid public employees in their respective states, and even the least nerdy among us participate in fantasy football.  NFL games have become reliable TV ratings bonanzas, and the Super Bowl is the most watched event in a given year.

I do not see this as a good thing.

All sports work within a social context, and football's context has changed to an extent that it is a national bloodsport that embodies so much of what is wrong with American society.  In the first place, playing the game has been shown to cause catastrophic brain trauma and all kinds of ill effects stemming from it.  Other players lucky to have their brains intact end up unable to walk, and are at a higher risk for ALS.  New rules adopted by the NFL will likely only make a dent in the problem, and even under these rules fans and players complain that the game isn't being played the way it ought to be.  Fans want the big collisions, and defensive players want to make the hardest hits that they can.  It would be easy to dismiss these feelings and say that the game must be reformed.  However, I take them at face value as proof that the game can only be played "right" when it is dangerous, and is therefore incapable of reform.  We will all be better off if it just goes away.

In our tight economic times, football is also a major economic drag.  High schools pour money into practice fields and expensive equipment, money better spent on actually educating students.  Our universities are struggling and slashing departments left and right, but they still build new athletic complexes, luxury boxes in the stadium, and pay coaches millions of dollars.  Several cities have been held hostage by their NFL franchises and extorted money to build new stadiums where perfectly good ones already stood.  The NFL is a "non-profit" organization that makes $9.5 billion in revenue, pays its wretched commissioner tens of millions of dollars, but does not pay a single red cent of federal income taxes.

Speaking of Goodell and the NFL, football is run by the biggest pack of shysters and liars that you'll ever see.  The NFL denied the facts on concussion when they knew they were true, it held back on punishing Ray Rice for spousal abuse, and has fought to stiff players whose bodies were broken in the service of amassing wealth for the owners and their cronies in the league office.  The case of Ray Rice demonstrates a disturbing tendency by the powers in college and professional football to protect the perpetrators of violence and sexual assault.

The NCAA, which manages college football, is even worse than the NFL.  They still peddle the stinking lie that big-time football players are "student athletes" who shouldn't be paid, all while rolling in the dough that they generate.  Have you ever seen the type of colored blazer wearing philistine who regularly occupies positions on bowl committees, events that rake in dollars made by the unpaid workers on the field that the people are paying money to see?  These well-fed respectable men about town act as if those young athletes owe them a living.  College football is nothing more than a giant wage-theft racket dressed in the romantic garb of "tradition."

Even worse, football is a vehicle for militarist propaganda.  The NFL colluded with the military to turn Pat Tillman from a skeptical soldier killed by friendly fire into a super-warrior martyr to recruit more cannon fodder.  The NFL takes every opportunity to associate itself with the military and praise its every action.  There has probably never been a more effective use of propaganda since World War II than Whitney Houston's rendition of the national anthem at the Super Bowl during the Gulf War, complete with military jet flyover.  Football's very language and ethos self-consciously recalls war, from the "trenches" on the front "lines" to the "field general" behind center and on the sideline.  Whether consciously or unconsciously, it encourages the people of this country to be obedient to their military leaders and to keep from asking questions until the body bags have come home and reality has set in.

Last but not least, football as a sport isn't all that great.  It is a game suited for television and rather underwhelming in person, but on television there are more commercial breaks than interesting plays in a given game.  The NFL in particular has become a dry, technocratic exercise about as inspiring as an annual earnings report.  Give me basketball's free-flowing poetry, baseball's cerebral contemplation, or soccer's athletic beauty any day.  Fuck football and every inch of its turgid violence, you can have it.