Every year, around 100 million people tune into watch the Superbowl, an annual sporting event informally elevated to a national holiday. There’s a reason: football (in the American-style) is the greatest sport and I can prove it. The dynamics of football create an extroardinary display of athleticism and strategy and a premium viewing experience.
The Continunous-Physicality-Athleticism Balance
Football has a unique combination of three primary components of team sports: continuity, physicality, and finesse. Continuity refers to the pace: is it played as a continuous flow (soccer, rugby) or is it broken up into discrete plays (football, baseball). Physicality refers to how much contact is involved, which ranges on a scale from baseball (none) to Rugby (gratuitous). Finally, athleticism refers to the kinds of skill the sport requires: is it mostly speed, strength, or finesse. Football is the only popular sport that is discrete, highly physical, and has a high range of athleticism.
Continuity
Sports differ in terms of the flow of the game. On one extreme, we have soccer, where everything is continuous. They start the clock breaking only for halftime, and ad some extra running time at the end. There aren’t “plays” necessarily but more of a general approach to getting certain positioning and creating scoring opportunities. Football exists only through discrete plays with a game clock that starts and stops according to a complicated rulebook. Somewhere in between soccer and football is basketball, which has set schemes, like the famous triangle offense or 2-1-2 defense, but also has discrete plays, often ran sparingly, such as after a timeout before a game-winning shot attempt.
Both continuity and discontinuity have their advantages. Continuity allows players to demonstrate creativity or individual excellence, such as a basketball player creating his own shot through a complicated set of crossovers and spin moves. There’s also a certain beauty to a team playing like one synchronized organism, each player moving as they should within the scheme.
The chief advantage of discontinuity is the room it opens up for strategy. It allows the coach to have a real impact. The coach is like a general, and his adjustments and the staff’s war room machinations genuinely impact the game. This is true to a greater extent than any other sport. It should be obvious, but when the game is continuous, the coach’s in-game impacts are limited to substitutions, timeouts, and yelling from the sideline. Of course, there is a lot of room for influence through practice and team-building, but this stops once the game starts. I find the playcalling and in-game adjustments facillitated by discontinuity to add an intellectual aspect to football that is superior to all other sports. Coaches go back and forth outsmarting each other and adjusting to their counterpart’s gameplan. Football gives us the opportunity to see true excellence in coaching, which is why greats like Bill Bellicheck regularly lead their teams to excellence almost independent of talent. Other sports’ coaching greats are more dependent on talent; where would Phil Jackson be without Michael Jordano or Shaq and Kobe?
I don’t want to take away from the roles of individual players in football. While the coaches have an outsized effect, each play requires execution and ingenuity on the part of every position player. There are pre-play adjustments. For example, the quarterback may change the play at the line based on the defense’s alignment. There are small decisions for each teammate during within the bounds of every play. The receiver, for example, may have an option route, and how they run their route (whether it’s skinny or wide) bears greatly on the play’s success. The running back on a passing play must decide if and when to release from blocking for a check-down pass.
Physicality
Football is one of few mainstream contact sports. Basically, football, rugby, and ice hockey are the only main team sports that have a high level of physicality. This phyicality appeals to our primal nature, which has an important effect on how moved we are by the sport. Seeing people put their bodies on the line is simply more meaningful. It’s also a reason that football seems increasingly untenable in our modern age; it’s hard to justify the danger these modern gladiators go through for others’ entertainment.
Without getting too much into the state of nature and an instinctual need for violence or whatever, there is something to the mortal risk of the sport that elevates the stakes beyond a simple game. I’m not sure this is humane, but it does make football more interesting than its equivalent sans violence (e.g. flag football).
Athleticism
Football boasts a greater diversity of athletic talents than other sports. To the extent that sports appeal to us because they allow us to admire the greatest human specimens, football is hard to beat. You have people from all parts of the athleticism spectrum. Lineman, affectionately referred to as “hogs” in some circles, run faster than 95% of humans while carrying 350 pounds of bodyweight amid a 6’7” frame. They’re remarkably strong and fast, some of whom sport builds that could compete in World’s Strongest Man or Mr. Olympia. Then, you have skill players who possess world-class speed, agility, and leaping ability. Lanky receivers regularly jump three feet into the air to snag a projectile with a few fingers. The coordination this requires is hard to put into words. Running backs can change directions at elite speeds to elude defenders, hurdle over would-be tacklers, or lower their soldier and run through a 250 pound wall of muscle. Each offensive player is matched by a defensive counterpart, who must have the same athleticism and the technique to adjust immediately to whatever is thrown at him. On the pure finesse part of the spectrum, you have kickers who can reliably send the ball 60 yards through the air and, adjusting for winds, place the ball through a relatively narrow goalpost. Quarterbacks can send the football forty yards down the field perfectly placed to hit a receiver in double coverage. You get to see all kinds of athleticism on display, which is fairly unique to football. The routine accomplishments of each player represent the apex of our physical potential.
Viewing
In addition to the unique combination of athleticism, physicality, and strategty, football boasts a superior viewing experience for two primary reasons: scoring frequency and breaks.
Football hits the sweet spot of scoring. Every drive can end with a 3-and-out, or a score (by either team). Each possession is very decisive in the outcome of the game, which properly engages the viewer. Other sports have the drawback of rare scoring or too consistent scoring. Soccer and hockey games often end regular time with a score of 0-0. While I admit near-scores are exciting, you can go two hours without any team pulling ahead! It seems like a flaw that the enitre match is often played and we remain no closer to determining who the winner is, the starting score left entirely unchanged. Football games often end in a tie requiring overtime, but they never have no lead changes. Basketball, on the other hand, features a score almost every possession. It’s less exciting to watch when each possession is basically a foregone conclusion. A common criticism of such a sport is that the only thing that matters is the fourth quarter. For the rest of the game, the viewer’s enjoyment is not based on the actual outcome of the game but instead amusement at the interesting ways player’s manage to score.
Football’s frequent commercial breaks are important to the viewing experience. Some decry the frequent breaks as annoying commercialism. Indeed, the cynic thinks the breaks are only to squeeze in as much advertisment as the viewer will tolerate (stretching 60 minutes of gameplay to at least three hours). There is some truth to this, but this commercialism has a pleasant byproduct for the viewer, as the breaks allow for an important social experience. The stoppages allow viewers to discuss the game or other unrelated aspects of their life. You can easily get up to grab some food or another drink without missing any of the experience. Contrast this with soccer, where each half is continuous and there is no time to disengage and discuss. If you are able to talk through the action, it suggests the game isn’t sufficiently captivating and a serious viewer can be distracted for the game, which would seem to be aflaw. If a soccer game were as captivating as say a movie, people talking during it would be like people talking in a movie theatre, which no one likes. Natural breaks in the action are essential for a social viewing experiencee.
One downside to football I’ll acknowledge is lead preservation. Towards the end of the game, a team in the lead will invariably stall. This is not fun to watch. No one likes to see a team run the ball into the line several times and let the play clock wind down. In this Superbowl, the Chiefs had the ball within field goal range and ran the clock down. It’s frustrating that the Eagles had no chance to come back as the Chiefs literally avoided scoring a touchdown by sliding at the two yard line to run clock. I consider this a necessary evil in an otherwise perfect game. While every sport with a clock has this downfall in some way or another, football is especially bad with how easy it can be to possess the ball and run the clock. Even during a three-and-out, a team has the opportunity to run three minutes off the clock (5% of the total game).
Conclusion
It’s important to state there is no real hierarchy to sports. It’s entertainment, so if you like what you watch than good for you. While I have presented an imaginary competition over which sport is the best, the true purpose of this essay is to celebrate a unique sport and argue for its excellence. I mention other sports simply to highlight football’s specialness.