In 2021, I thought a lot about why I get obsessed with things (this year it’s the NFL)

Published on 5 December 2021

In 2021 I’ve thought a lot about the NFL, unexpectedly. I say unexpectedly because American football is a sport I’ve never really been much interested in (and I’m pretty uninterested in sport generally). It’s a sport I’ve never played and almost certainly never will play. It’s loud, brash and violent to the point of being morally objectionable.

Consider the evidence: I’m a middle-aged British man of slight and distinctly un-hench stature in a white collar job (which I’m currently doing pretty much full-time from my kitchen). I find violence of all forms morally repugnant. But I could talk for hours about the virtues of the West Coast Playbook, the Cover 4 Defence and the best techniques for block-shedding and tackling. 

Why could I tell you this and what purpose does this knowledge serve me? Goodness only knows.

And why this unexpected obsession (which follows others including road cycling, German house music and the novels of Patrick O’Brian)? In fact, why do I obsess over things generally?

Reason number 1: Escapism

This is an obvious one to start with. Particularly in 2021, when there’s been plenty to escape and precious few ways of escaping it. Taking an interest in the NFL means, in intellectual terms, hooking into something outside my general sphere of interest or experience. In practical terms if you want to listen to most live games you have to stay up to the early hours of Sunday and plug into some clandestine live feed from the Mid-West.

For a proper escapist obsession you need to hit that sweet spot between just about understanding and empathising with a subject, and it being so far outside your current life that it feels completely alien.

Reason number 2: There’s a new world of media to dive into

For a long-lasting obsession, this is vital. There needs to be a surrounding world of context and analysis to keep your interest going. This is an area where the NFL is brilliantly served. 

First up, the BBC coverage, while sparse, is BRILLIANT – analyst Osi Umenyiora is probably one of the most charismatic and interesting personalities on TV.

And in the same way that US journalism is way ahead of anything the UK produces, US sports journalism is top-notch. We get poorly photoshopped tabloid back pages, they get award-winning investigative journalist turned sports commentator Mina Kimes. We get dirge like Soccer AM, they get the Around the NFL podcast – one of the wittiest, most literate, most intelligent broadcasts around, where you’re as likely to hear musings on Middlemarch or mortality as you are a breakdown of the weekend’s action.

Reason number 3: It’s a way of parsing social events

Obviously this runs counter to the point I made about escapism, but one of the things that feeds an obsession is that it allows you to engage with social events and cultural change in a different way.

In 2021, senior figures in the NFL have been falling over themselves to embrace the Black Lives Matter cause. These were the same senior figures who a couple of years ago were blocking star quarterback Colin Kaepernick from the league after he started taking the knee during the national anthem. Kaepernick hasn’t played since 2016, but his gesture has been copied by sportspeople and teams around the world.

Earlier this year Carl Nassib of the Las Vegas Raiders became the first NFL player to publicly come out as gay. Four months later his boss, Raiders manager Jon Gruden, resigned after a series of his racist, misogynistic and (yes) homophobic emails came to light.

And – unlike many US institutions – the NFL has adopted a pretty hardline stance on Covid, with unvaccinated players facing a series of sanctions should they test positive, and clubs dishing out fines for players who breach social distancing or mask rules. 

As you might expect from one of the most popular sports in the US, it’s an excellent prism for cultural change. Watching this sport wrestling with social issues over the past year has been almost as fascinating as watching the games themselves.

Footnotes

If you want to obsess as well then:

Watch: The BBC’s NFL Show

Read: Mina Kimes’s articles

Listen to: Around the NFL