September 7th, 2011 at 2:20PM
And that’s because a large part of the NFL’s appeal ... is how well it reflects the frantic, frightened, double-loud dumbness of post 9/11 America. The grandiose sentimentality and self-importance in Goodell’s wish to heal very real national wounds through synchronized macro-memorializing makes sense, in this way, because it is very much in keeping with the NFL’s overwhelming, overarching dedication to idiot bigness. ... What sets the NFL apart from other leagues is how watching an NFL game miniaturizes and re-packages the nauseous anxiety of American life over the last decade. The giddy kick of the games themselves—the long periods of grunty stop-start inaction, the sudden bursts of almost cartoonish violence, the opaque, acronym-heavy strategery in the pursuit of trivial achievements that are treated like world-shaking events—is basically just the news, but even dumber.
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