The Art of Manliness - #248： Why Football Matters

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. So football

00:00:18.980 is often used as a metaphor for life. What is it about football that makes it so adept

00:00:24.900 providing lessons on living? And what specific lessons can we glean from the sport? And are

00:00:29.800 those lessons worth the risk of physical injury that come with playing the game? Well, my

00:00:34.580 guest today takes a stab at answering these questions in his book, Why Football Matters,

00:00:38.520 My Education in the Game. His name is Mark Edmondson and he's a professor of English at the University

00:00:42.740 of Virginia. I had Mark on the show at the beginning of the year to talk about his fantastic

00:00:46.160 book, Self and Soul. If you haven't checked that out, listen to it. Today on the show,

00:00:50.360 Mark and I discuss his experience playing high school football and the lessons of character,

00:00:54.720 courage, loss, and manliness that he picked up from the game. And besides the upsides of

00:00:59.300 football, Mark also shares the negative lessons football can teach young men. If you played

00:01:04.540 football in high school like I did, you'll definitely resonate with this episode, but

00:01:07.880 it'll also be of interest to anyone who has a son who plays or simply enjoys watching the

00:01:11.980 game. After the show's over, make sure to check out the show notes at aom.is slash why football

00:01:17.180 matters for links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic.

00:01:20.080 Mark Edmondson, welcome back to the show.

00:01:28.400 Thanks so much. Delighted to be here.

00:01:30.120 So we had you on the show back in January to talk about your book, Self and Soul, and

00:01:37.820 got a lot of great feedback on that episode. People loved it. And today I want to bring you

00:01:42.560 back to talk about the first book that I read of yours that really turned me on to your writing.

00:01:46.780 It's called Why Football Matters. As someone who played football in middle school and high

00:01:52.260 school, I just resonated with what you wrote resonated with me a lot. And I'm sure a lot

00:01:58.140 of people who played football in high school or middle school will probably resonate with

00:02:02.680 what we talk about today. So let's talk about this. It's about your lessons you've learned

00:02:08.620 from football when you played back in high school.

00:02:11.120 But let's talk about your experience of football. What was your first contact with the game?

00:02:17.960 My first contact with the game was watching the New York football giants on a Sunday afternoon

00:02:23.760 with my dad. And my dad was a rabid fan. And there was a preliminary before the game. He would get

00:02:32.700 himself all set up with his cigarettes and his chair and his hasick. And then there was his chocolate

00:02:37.920 bar that had to be in the right place. And then the music would come on and he would be absolutely

00:02:42.660 glued and wrapped, especially if the Giants were playing against the Cleveland Browns.

00:02:46.920 And he could see Jim Brown. And my father was a very agitated person. He was always on the go.

00:02:52.520 He worked two jobs, two jobs as a short order cook, 16 hours a day sometimes. And he had a tremendous

00:02:58.560 amount of energy. And I think the only time I ever really saw him stabilize was in front of the TV

00:03:03.720 watching football. And so that was a time for me to get next to him and listen to him talk and maybe

00:03:08.920 ask him a question or two and get a little closer to him than I've been.

00:03:12.820 Yeah. And did your dad probably impart some lessons about manliness or being a man while you're watching

00:03:19.460 football, while watching Jim Brown or watching the Giants?

00:03:24.180 Yes, yes. You know, Jim Brown was somebody who had been given spectacular gifts by the gods.

00:03:29.660 And he had nourished those gifts and developed them. And he had become just the greatest football

00:03:35.620 player and maybe the greatest athlete who ever lived. I think the case can still be made.

00:03:40.340 So it was the example of somebody who had extraordinary gifts. My father was a little more

00:03:43.740 interested in Y.A. Tittle, who I understand just celebrated maybe his 91st birthday, one of the

00:03:49.280 two oldest people alive in the Football Hall of Fame. My father loved Y.A. Tittle, partly because

00:03:56.780 Tittle looked like somebody who really didn't have much natural ability. And he probably didn't.

00:04:03.360 And yet he had taken what he had and developed every single thing that he had to make himself

00:04:08.020 not just a good, but really an extremely good football player. He was nothing like Jim Brown.

00:04:13.300 But he was very good indeed. And I think that was my father's main kind of drift, the undercurrent of

00:04:19.500 his talk there. He was very interested in people who had not perfect skills or perfect

00:04:25.360 capacities, but nonetheless took what they had and used every single ounce of it to achieve

00:04:29.940 something that was worth achieving.

00:04:31.620 Okay. I think we can take that. We'll talk about this later. I think that's a good segue

00:04:35.800 or connection to your Hector and Achilles dichotomy you set up later on when you talk about courage

00:04:43.260 and football. But before we get there, so you watched the game with your dad and it was a way

00:04:50.060 for you to connect with your father. But you were this fat, asthmatic kid, wore glasses, you know, 1.00

00:04:56.520 the stereotypical non-jock. Yet in high school, I think you were a junior, you decided to go out for 0.94

00:05:01.500 the football team. What drove you to do that? Were you just wanting to have some fun, hang out with

00:05:06.900 friends, or did you have some larger existential reasons why you wanted to play?

00:05:11.140 If I did have those reasons, and I think I did, they probably weren't available to me consciously.

00:05:17.580 You know, I knew that my life was kind of flying off in every direction. Our home life was tough.

00:05:23.660 My sister had been very sick and she had died at the age of seven. It was really dubious whether my

00:05:29.340 family was going to stay together or not. It was really because of my mother's amazing

00:05:34.320 resilience that we did. And I was looking for some form of stability. I couldn't find it in

00:05:40.840 school because I had some academic talent, but I hated the classes. So I couldn't find it there.

00:05:46.400 I decided I would give football a shot. I'd always liked it down the park and I was surprisingly not

00:05:51.300 too bad for a fat kid with glasses and asthma. And so I spent the summer before that junior year

00:05:58.120 trying to get in shape a little bit. And I got a little stronger and a little faster. And I ended up

00:06:03.180 going up, I ended up going out for the team and making it, not by much, but make it, I did. And

00:06:10.140 in a lot of ways it changed my life and for the most part made it better.

00:06:14.540 And what position did you play?

00:06:17.640 I played guard, the glamour position and linebacker, or as I was called, because I played without my

00:06:23.960 glasses, blindbacker.

00:06:25.080 Blindbacker. All right. Okay. I was a center in my playing days.

00:06:30.420 That's the tough guy.

00:06:31.540 That's the tough guy. Yeah. No, here's the thing. I couldn't long snap. I couldn't do shotgun snap.

00:06:37.720 So we always had to go right from underneath.

00:06:41.520 Uh-huh. You also have to know what the count is when it actually gets hiked, which not everybody

00:06:45.880 can remember.

00:06:46.460 I could do that. I could do that, but I couldn't do shotgun snap.

00:06:49.020 All right. Um, so yeah, your, your book is about these lessons that you learned from playing

00:06:54.360 football and how you just said, you know, it really did improve your life, but at the same

00:06:58.280 time there, you're sort of the way you write it on the book, you're, you're kind of ambivalent

00:07:02.280 about the lessons you, um, you got from football. Uh, why is that? Why, why were you sort of

00:07:08.880 hesitant to be, you know, gush completely about how amazing football was? What is it about the

00:07:13.020 sport or your experience with it? It made you sort of, well, yeah, it's good, but there's

00:07:17.440 also, you had some reservations about it.

00:07:19.600 Yeah, I did. I mean, uh, overall, especially high school football, I am a great defender

00:07:25.180 of and appreciator, uh, of, um, and I think that some of the coaches and some of the players

00:07:31.080 who are involved with that game are just terrific teachers and terrific comrades and you, you

00:07:35.180 can't beat it. Um, but, um, you know, just talking about a virtue like character and character

00:07:41.320 is a great virtue and there are a lot of ways to define character, but just in a shorthand

00:07:44.840 way, I said, you know, character is the ability to get up every day and do pretty much a sequence

00:07:50.780 of very positive things that are helping you very gradually to grow. Uh, and football was

00:07:55.260 very good at teaching you that, you know, you, you learned how to block, you learned how

00:07:59.400 to tackle. Every day you learned a little more technique. Every day you got a little stronger

00:08:03.280 and more determined and you learned more and eventually you became a really quite a, quite

00:08:07.700 a better player. But the downside of that, and you can transfer that over into all kinds

00:08:12.040 of activities, right? You know, if you're a businessman, a building a business, if you're

00:08:15.780 a writer, building a book, if you're, uh, somebody with a website building up its resonance in

00:08:20.660 the world, you know, one little step at a time is often the way that it works. That's

00:08:24.180 fantastic. But, um, there's also a kind of lockstep automaton like quality to a football

00:08:31.780 character. You know, the, you're always doing what the coach says. You're always filling

00:08:36.060 out, you're always doing your job as Bill Belichick says. It's not a lot of improvisation,

00:08:40.060 especially if you're the guard. And, uh, and so there was this kind of a sense of, you

00:08:45.360 know, character is great, but too much character annuls, and I like this little pairing here,

00:08:49.700 annuls personality sometimes and, and flair and individuality. Fortunately, we had some

00:08:54.080 real individualists on our team who couldn't be, um, uh, much daunted by the robotic quality

00:08:59.120 of football, but they were mostly defensive backs and they were much more, um, glamorous

00:09:02.620 guys than we linemen, uh, were. But, you know, character has its downside. Courage has its

00:09:07.920 downside. It's all kinds of, all kinds of things came up as I was thinking about the

00:09:11.620 game. Right. And it's going back to this idea of character, um, sort of stick-to-tiveness

00:09:16.200 and, um, how has it played out in your life? I mean, you're a college professor now, you

00:09:21.760 write books. How is the character that you developed while playing high school football

00:09:27.140 helped you and how has it hurt you? I mean, have you ever caught yourself thinking, boy,

00:09:30.960 I am sort of becoming an automaton here.

00:09:34.840 It's been good. I, I've, you know, I had some really good educational chances after I

00:09:39.100 left, um, uh, after I left high school, I went to a very, uh, creatively oriented college,

00:09:45.500 Bennington College, and I went to a graduate school in English that was full of very imaginative

00:09:50.420 people, you know, Harold Bloom and Jeffrey Hartman. I went to Yale. And so that got, I got a chance

00:09:55.820 to stimulate the creative side of me, such, such that it is, it's not what, what other

00:10:00.200 people may, may have. Um, but I also spent a lot of time, uh, since I was an assistant

00:10:05.240 professor here at Virginia writing books. And there's something of book writing that is,

00:10:09.780 you know, it depends on character and it builds character. You just get out there and do the

00:10:13.680 same darn thing every day with a little bit of a difference. And you draft it again and 0.94

00:10:17.760 again and again, and you read your criticisms of it, uh, read criticisms of it to come to you

00:10:21.860 and you assimilate them and you move forward slowly. So there's a combination of

00:10:25.240 inspiration. You got to have a good idea that keeps you jazzed, but you also have to have the

00:10:29.180 everyday work a day virtues that football helped instill. And I think they, they, it came from

00:10:34.000 there. Um, also there's the fact that, um, that, um, I wasn't very good at football. The coaches

00:10:39.200 didn't care that much whether I got better or not. I just did. Um, so I learned how to work without

00:10:44.240 an audience or appreciation or without, you know, getting into the game very much on Saturday and

00:10:48.400 starring. I just learned how to work ahead, um, with nobody particularly looking on or cheering,

00:10:53.260 which is really good for a writer. Well, let's talk about this. I mean, so yeah,

00:10:56.860 you learned about character, but let's get back to a little, go a little meta here. I mean,

00:11:00.240 what is it about football, the game of football that makes it so adept at providing life lessons,

00:11:06.320 right? Like it's what, it's like the go-to sports analogy for just life. And it's hard to do that

00:11:11.580 with baseball. It's hard to do that. You know, you can do with basketball sometimes, uh, maybe

00:11:16.100 sprinting is a good one. Like, you know, Olympic spring, but like football just seems like it's

00:11:20.820 perfect for life lessons. What is it about the sport you think? Well, as you probably know,

00:11:26.900 as a fellow offensive lineman, um, at least in the high school level and the small college level,

00:11:31.900 it's not all about talent, right? It's about effort. And it, I think it's a sport where

00:11:36.840 you can make yourself a whole lot better, um, uh, by effort than almost any other sport I could

00:11:42.660 think of. It's real hard to, to hit a major league curve ball. If you don't have the eyes and

00:11:48.100 the hands fart, right? It's real hard to, to drop your time by a second in the a hundred meter dash

00:11:54.080 no matter what, right? But you can get to be a pretty darn good lineman, um, just through desire

00:12:00.400 and through commitment. And, um, you, uh, you, so that's a template that's available to lots and

00:12:05.820 lots of guys. Whereas some other sports, they exclude you just because of your relative lack

00:12:11.020 of talent. If you don't have the talent to be the wide receiver or the quarterback, there's still

00:12:14.320 probably room for you somewhere in the interior line, even if it's on the third string. And so

00:12:19.400 you get this chance to, to, uh, to educate yourself. And it's also a sport where effort

00:12:24.220 really does pay off. I mean, I played tennis before I could play tennis day after day, year

00:12:29.060 after year, and I would get no better. Um, because my, the fundamental talent isn't there, but football,

00:12:34.000 I could get better even if the coaches didn't see it. Right. And I think another aspect of football

00:12:38.840 is there's a lot of luck involved. Like there's things that just like a fumble happens,

00:12:42.520 you get a bad call and like, that's like life. Things just happen that you have no control over

00:12:47.220 and you have to, you have to deal with it. You're right. There's that beautiful tension

00:12:52.660 in football between the absolutely outrageously unexpected thing that just sort of happens,

00:12:58.040 the tip or the interception or the fumble. And then the fact that in order to succeed,

00:13:02.940 you also have to grind it out. Right. So the grinding out is part of the game, but the exuberant

00:13:07.620 moment is part of the game too. It makes it really exciting to watch. And it also, as you say,

00:13:11.160 as you suggest, it teaches you that like bad stuff happens. Right. And you just got to kind

00:13:16.320 of walk away from it and see if you can't recoup the next play. Right. Uh, so you talked about,

00:13:21.020 um, how you learn about character, developing character, but you also talk about how football

00:13:25.000 can teach courage. Um, so what kind of courage are we talking about here? Because this is a,

00:13:30.660 you know, there's all sorts of courage. There's moral courage, martial courage, uh, intellectual

00:13:37.020 courage. Right. I'm thinking about physical courage and, uh, I'm thinking about the ability,

00:13:42.760 uh, which I didn't have when I started, uh, to stick my head and shoulder in and make a tackle.

00:13:47.500 Um, it's just a very, it's counterintuitive. As they say, you don't really want to do that. If

00:13:52.300 you're somebody who is as kind of self-protective and somewhat timid as, uh, as I was. And I figured

00:13:58.640 out how to do that. I figured out how to do that, but it wasn't easy. The way I figured out how to do

00:14:02.800 it was that I would work myself up into a rage by thinking about different things that had made

00:14:07.280 me really angry or humiliated me a lot. Uh, and then I was kind of a beast out there and I was

00:14:11.660 really throwing myself here and there. Um, and that's, you know, that's one form of courage.

00:14:16.340 I don't know if that's what, um, Lawrence Taylor was doing when he was, uh, you know, running around

00:14:20.520 the line for the giants. I don't know if that's what Jim Brown was doing. I think maybe it was in

00:14:24.580 some measure, but that's what I was doing. And it's great. All right. But the problem with that

00:14:30.080 is that you have, as it were, let the beast out of the cage and the beast may come out

00:14:34.520 of the cage some other time when you don't really need it to. And when you're not in

00:14:37.280 the confines of the football field or in a football field, you may do something that

00:14:40.100 you eventually come to regret. So as I said in the book, you know, even though I feel

00:14:45.980 that I have a pretty good, um, uh, pretty good rap on my, um, uh, the aggressive side

00:14:51.480 that football stimulated in me, I'm still for, you know, a middle-aged or now early old

00:14:57.020 stage bourgeois guy, um, might be more likely than the others to get really too mad at somebody

00:15:02.740 and lose it. Um, I don't think I'm going to pop anybody in the nose anymore, but that's

00:15:06.520 partly because my shoulder hurts from playing basketball. So there is, there is that ambivalence

00:15:10.880 about football. There's a good thing, but then there's that also that dark side you have to

00:15:15.360 kind of keep your eye on. Yeah. But I think, you know, almost all constructive activities

00:15:18.800 have that, right? I mean, I did a PhD. It was great. I loved it. Learned a lot. Delightful.

00:15:24.700 Um, but, um, there are occupational hazards to that. You know, you, uh, you, you might tend to

00:15:31.500 dominate the dinner table with your own boring disquisitions on and on and on, or you might think

00:15:35.780 you know it all and know it all isn't what you really are. So I think every virtue you acquire

00:15:40.140 has an underside. It's just a matter of kind of looking into them and seeing what they might be.

00:15:43.940 I think the football virtues are pretty dramatic and the football risks are pretty dramatic too,

00:15:48.360 especially as you move forward in the game into big time college or big time pro.

00:15:52.020 Yeah. Well, in your chapter about courage, you, you talk about two models of courage. Um,

00:15:58.320 Homer or Hector, not Homer, Hector and Achilles. Um, Hector and Achilles, right? Yeah. What's the

00:16:03.820 difference between the two? Well, Achilles is the greatest of the Greek warriors and he is a natural

00:16:09.840 warrior, right? Um, he is unbeatable, uh, on the field. And, uh, the story about Achilles is that if he,

00:16:17.240 um, uh, if you stand to fight him, he'll cut you down. If you run from him, he will catch you.

00:16:22.800 There's just, there's simply nothing that you can do. When he has this dispute at the beginning

00:16:27.320 with Lord Agamemnon, who's the marshal of the armies about the slave girl. Um, there's this sense

00:16:32.440 that in a moment, in a moment, Achilles could destroy Agamemnon, formidable as he is, and the

00:16:37.660 gods intervene. They don't want that to, uh, to happen. So he's a natural warrior and everything

00:16:42.880 comes easily, uh, to him. Hector, on the other hand, it says at one point, I had to learn in order

00:16:49.320 to be a soldier. I had to learn to be a fighter. He's much more of a politician, I think, and a kind

00:16:54.240 and judicious one at that. He's the only one aside from Priam and Troy who's kindly to Helen, who's

00:17:00.320 in terrible stress, distress when she's there. And so, uh, Hector is the gentleman fighter and he's the

00:17:07.200 one who knows how to turn it on and turn it off. When Achilles is enraged at Hector for Hector's

00:17:12.520 murder of Patroclus, Achilles simply goes mad, right? Achilles simply goes mad. Um, you know,

00:17:18.420 you can go mad out there on the football field, but you're taking risks, not only on the football

00:17:22.080 field, but then later on in life. Um, maybe it's not an accident that Jim Brown, uh, got into

00:17:29.000 plenty of trouble and also got, got plenty of, uh, plenty of positive notice after he left football,

00:17:34.940 chiefly for spousal abuse, right? Um, Lawrence Taylor perennially in trouble, one of the greatest

00:17:40.220 linebackers, one of my favorite football players, but perennially in trouble for one thing. And

00:17:44.380 another, a Hector like player, I don't know, Steve Young, maybe. I don't think Steve Young

00:17:48.940 is going to get into a whole lot of trouble tomorrow. Um, he's a competitive guy and a tough

00:17:52.620 guy, but he knew how to turn it on and turn it off. And he's got quite a sense of humor about

00:17:56.080 himself and about what he achieved. Jim Brown has many magnificent qualities, but sense of humor,

00:18:00.260 I don't think is salient among, uh, them. Uh, but of course the moral of the story

00:18:04.860 in part is that when Hector and Achilles fight in, uh, in Homer, uh, uh, Hector loses. And in fact,

00:18:10.220 he's humiliated by Achilles and chases him around the walls of Troy and then butchers him and drags

00:18:14.580 him around behind his, uh, his chariot. So maybe the, uh, the, the wild man has the advantage over

00:18:20.220 the more civilized warrior. And that makes things pretty problematic. It seems to me.

00:18:24.380 Right. And you, you talk about Hector and Achilles in Self and Soul as well.

00:18:28.540 Yes. Yeah.

00:18:29.800 Kind of on the same ideas.

00:18:31.060 I got a little extra mileage out of that.

00:18:33.460 Right. No, it was, it's a great analogy. I love it. And particularly, I think it's a good

00:18:36.720 analogy for manliness too. Um, some, some people are just born with those, like they're born virile.

00:18:42.980 Other guys have to learn, learn how to do it.

00:18:46.660 Yeah. And I think the learners are probably more admirable people and the sorts of people you want

00:18:51.380 around, except that, I don't know when it's time to go, uh, take care of Osama bin Laden. I don't 0.98

00:18:57.520 know if you want Hector going, I think you might want Achilles and a few more guys like him.

00:19:00.800 Yeah. You want the Achilles.

00:19:03.060 Natural talent has the rage that he can't turn off. Um, so, okay, there's courage. Football

00:19:10.020 teaches us about loss. You have that in there. So this was very pertinent to you because at

00:19:16.640 the time you, as you said earlier, you lost a sister. Um, she was only seven to a sickness.

00:19:20.780 How did football and like losing in football, how did that help you deal with the loss of

00:19:26.160 your sister? Um, it, it gave me a sense of, um, uh, you know, like football is a theater.

00:19:34.120 And one of the lines in the book that I actually kind of like is that one of the reasons football

00:19:37.960 matters a lot is because it doesn't matter much at all, but it's just a game. And yet you

00:19:42.760 get to work out really strong kinds of emotional dramas on a football field. And I remember

00:19:50.100 vividly the first time, uh, we lost when I was a, uh, a junior, uh, we had a 12 game

00:19:55.220 winning streak and we lost to Somerville. They beat us up horribly. And, uh, the whole bus

00:20:00.680 is full of people crying and weeping and bemoaning themselves. And they were just a disaster area.

00:20:05.380 And, um, I was one of them. And, uh, then we sort of continued on in that vein and the coach

00:20:11.720 at a certain point said, enough, stop it. Here's what you did wrong last week. Now get to work on

00:20:17.280 these things. Now learn how to develop. So what he, he basically showed us was that, you know,

00:20:22.720 mourning for a game and then also mourning in life. So it's different in many ways, um, requires a

00:20:29.040 certain amount of, uh, giving into the thing. I mean, we really were sad. It was a little bit

00:20:33.980 theatrical. Um, and then also holding up and, uh, going back to work and doing what you, uh,

00:20:39.840 doing what you can. My sister had been deceased for quite a while then, but I did see how, um,

00:20:45.800 it did help me appreciate my mother who had, um, mourned very fiercely for Barbara. And, but then

00:20:51.560 after that was done, after that was done, she pulled herself back up because she would have been,

00:20:56.960 and as part of her was ready to mourn forever, just as we were on a smaller, uh, scale after we lost

00:21:02.260 to some of them, she pulled herself back up again. She put herself together and she began

00:21:06.280 serving dinners and lunches and breakfasts and washing the clothes and doing the things that a

00:21:11.040 fifties and sixties mom was, uh, was needing to do. And that we, my brother and I, and my father

00:21:15.920 desperately needed for her to do during those, uh, uh, during those days. So she kind of,

00:21:21.160 she brought her mourning to a certain point. She's wild with grief and then she stopped it.

00:21:25.260 Um, and, uh, that was a more profound lesson than the one I found in the football field.

00:21:29.220 But, you know, kids don't always learn from the parents immediately. Sometimes it takes,

00:21:33.900 you know, five, 10, 20 years. Well, that's a good question. I mean,

00:21:36.840 are these lessons you've gotten from football? I mean, were you aware of them when you were a kid

00:21:41.040 or is this you looking back as an older man? There's a, uh, there's a great, uh, word that

00:21:48.400 Freud has, noctraglokite. Noctraglokite means reasoning with a later reason. Uh, and I ask my

00:21:54.200 students all the time to look back into their lives and what they've done and to create the,

00:21:59.260 uh, reprise of that experience with words, uh, so that they can see who they are and how they got

00:22:05.200 there. Um, so a lot of it was, um, looking back with, um, uh, on, uh, you know, with an adult's

00:22:12.400 kind of insight, if insight it was, and, uh, seeing what it was that I'd actually learned there.

00:22:17.420 But for instance, I may have learned a certain amount of character in football. I may have applied

00:22:22.500 that to the writing of my dissertation and the writing of, uh, of books and maybe some other

00:22:26.360 things too. Um, and I wasn't able to articulate it at the time. I wouldn't have been able to

00:22:31.200 articulate at the time, but I was glad to, uh, afterwards. And I don't think the process is

00:22:35.300 ever quite done until you've tried to say what it is you have learned and try to evaluate it and

00:22:40.920 also try to evaluate its downside as we were just talking about. Um, so you, you mentioned earlier

00:22:45.000 before you went out for the team, you, uh, try to get in shape, you started working out and then,

00:22:49.320 uh, between your junior and senior year, you got really in to physical training. You said you,

00:22:53.700 you, you became the supplements guy. Like you got all the supplements to gain weight, to get,

00:22:57.880 you know, the whey protein. I did. Um, I did. Yeah. And I think I, I did that too. Uh, when I was,

00:23:04.040 I got really, I got really into it cause I wanted to be the best I could be. Um, yeah, but I'm curious,

00:23:10.100 what did that, your football training going back to your book, you know, like the self and soul,

00:23:17.400 what did football training teach you about training the mind and the soul, the sort of

00:23:21.960 physical visceral training teach you about this more abstract ethereal, ethereal aspect of our

00:23:26.640 lives? Well, it, it, it taught me that the development of the mind, for instance, is whole

00:23:33.100 lot like the development of the body, though people don't say so. Um, and when I talk to athletes about

00:23:37.900 becoming a better students, I say, you, you, you're much further alone than you think you are.

00:23:43.300 Everything you did as a swimmer or a hockey player, a football player, if you practiced a lot and if

00:23:48.280 you played hard, you already have the template in place for learning. It's just that people have

00:23:52.780 probably told you that you're not as good at learning as you are at sports, but it doesn't

00:23:57.220 matter in a certain way. You are who you are and you need to make gains in the intellectual field,

00:24:02.540 just as somebody like me who doesn't have much by way of athletic aptitude needed to make gains in

00:24:06.560 the physical field. So those two things I think are very close together and they're probably a little

00:24:11.560 bit underappreciated, the symbiosis between them. If you've done one, you can probably go off and do

00:24:16.120 the other. Right. I mean, there's no, there's a reason why, you know, Aristotle, I feel like the

00:24:19.320 Greeks and the Romans understood this, you know, they make references like, you know, Aristotle,

00:24:23.700 you know, this, you're training the soul just like a wrestler is training the body.

00:24:28.640 Yeah, absolutely. That's a good point. That's a good point. The Greeks had this concept,

00:24:32.460 I probably will pronounce it wrong, kalokogathia, the good mind and the good body feeding each other

00:24:36.560 and strengthening each other. Yeah. Do you have a chapter about,

00:24:40.500 do you discuss the connection between faith and football? And it is, because I remember when I

00:24:45.720 played high school, I'm in Oklahoma and football is religion. Christianity is big here. You know,

00:24:50.900 before every game we said the Lord's prayer, even the Muslim guy on our team like joined in and said

00:24:56.540 the Lord's prayer with us. Yeah. What do you make of that connection between faith and football? I mean,

00:25:03.100 what does it say about individuals who worship a Jesus who's meek and mild? Yeah. We'll go out

00:25:07.780 and harness their Achilles like rage to physically pummel their opponent on the football field.

00:25:13.300 Well, as you're pointing out, as the book moves forward, it becomes a little bit more a reflection

00:25:18.900 on America through football. And that's kind of the turning point where I start thinking about

00:25:23.060 American religion in relationship to, uh, uh, to the game. And, you know, it's simply a puzzle to me. 0.76

00:25:28.880 It's simply as a puzzle, um, that, uh, we have, um, uh, football so much associated with the

00:25:35.220 religion football association with the military makes a hundred percent sense from my point of

00:25:38.540 view. They, they do feed off each other in certain ways, but football association of religion,

00:25:43.320 incredibly strange. I mean, if somebody said, as Camille Paglia, my teacher at Bennington for

00:25:47.700 about an hour, um, said football is my religion. And I know exactly what she means by that.

00:25:52.440 She means that she's a pagan. She likes competition. She's not averse to physical struggle. 0.90

00:25:57.100 Um, she looks at things in terms of opposition. She's kind of gladiatorial. That all makes sense.

00:26:03.120 Um, but when somebody says, um, you know, I play football and, um, Jesus is my religion. I say,

00:26:09.100 whoa, that's a little strange. Jesus playing football is like the least violent person imaginable.

00:26:15.420 Um, so it's just very puzzling, but it points to the fact that Judeo-Christianity from some

00:26:20.900 perspectives is based on a little bit of tension to say the least. And that's the tension between the

00:26:25.260 relatively mild and relatively sweet natured, with some exceptions, Jesus, and the, uh, figure that's

00:26:31.660 claimed as his father, who is capable of getting rid of Sodom and Gomorrah in a flash and flooding

00:26:36.840 the whole world and drowning everybody. And so it's a very strange religion. You know, it's got these 1.00

00:26:40.900 two sides, the vengeful God on the one side and the forgiving God on the other side. And, uh, we,

00:26:47.740 we live in the midst of this, I'll just call it a tension, not a contradiction. And by looking at

00:26:53.060 football, you see it. I don't know what you do with it after you've seen it, but you see it.

00:26:56.920 Right. And it's kind of interesting about football. So when I, my experience with football were some

00:27:00.220 of my most, I had some of my most like touching kind of compassionate moments in football. Um,

00:27:06.540 yes, which is bizarre. Like, you know, where you really like when you mourn for a team member,

00:27:12.360 or that there's a player on the opposing team that goes down, like you all take a knee and,

00:27:16.560 you know, you feel for the guy and you want to help them out. Um, and also like, you know,

00:27:21.540 there's like a guy in my football team when we were playing that he was, he was, you know,

00:27:25.420 he was slow. Like he was in the special ed classes, but he came out for the team. Um,

00:27:30.080 and he got picked on by everyone else, but like on our football team, like you did not mess with him.

00:27:35.360 Like if we found out someone was messing with this guy, like you would have to deal with,

00:27:39.340 you know, 10, 250 pound linemen. And we like, we protected that guy. Um, which I think

00:27:46.240 is interesting. Like it actually, I was able to tap into sort of my nurturing side because of

00:27:51.400 football. Yeah, no, that's a very good point. There is something a little bit Christian about 1.00

00:27:55.140 that, isn't it? I hadn't thought of that. No, it's a band of brothers. There's no doubt about

00:27:58.760 that. And once you are accepted, uh, and have gone through the work and the pain and the strain

00:28:03.420 and the sorrow and the grief together, uh, you are, you are one, you're a family. When I went to my,

00:28:09.400 um, high school reunion must've been my, uh, Oh man, 45th high school reunion. Um, and a lot of

00:28:18.080 people I was delighted to see. It was great. I had a wonderful time, but there's a special place in

00:28:21.920 my heart for the guys I had played football with. And there are at least 10 or 12 of them there.

00:28:25.920 And, um, our pleasure in seeing each other, no matter how different we were now, no matter how

00:28:30.480 little or how much we had sets we had in common was overwhelming. It was overwhelming. It was great.

00:28:34.440 Yeah. Yeah. I haven't, I haven't been able to replicate that experience. Um, well,

00:28:39.100 bide your time, bide your time. Okay. I got a while. I'm only 30. You got a while. I got a while.

00:28:44.340 That's good to know. Um, yeah, well, it's great. Yeah. Um, so we mentioned earlier, uh, you know,

00:28:50.060 your dad kind of taught you about manliness with football. Um, sort of the life of Jim Brown and,

00:28:56.120 uh, Tisdale, Tidal. Uh, yeah. Uh, Tittle. Tittle. Tittle. Excuse me. Why a Tittle. Yeah. Yeah.

00:29:02.720 Uh, but it seems like, you know, we associate football with masculinity, obviously it's very

00:29:06.940 martial, but there's, um, there's a risk to it. That's kind of what makes football appealing.

00:29:12.360 Is that risk connection with football? Is that what makes football so appealing to men that

00:29:16.620 there's this risk factor to it? I think it varies over time. I was watching some clips of

00:29:22.940 high school football near me here in central Virginia the other night on Friday night.

00:29:26.820 And there's some really good football players out there, but they're not hitting each other so

00:29:30.520 hard that they're going to hurt each other very much at all. I mean, they just, you know,

00:29:33.920 they're not strong enough. They're not fast enough. And probably God knows they're not

00:29:37.000 mean enough. Every now and then you'll see a kid in the game who's bound for, um, uh, bound

00:29:41.720 for a college career, maybe even a pro career. And the other players are kind of, whoa, what's

00:29:46.420 coming my way? Um, so there's a kind of, in my favorite game, high school football, this,

00:29:52.460 this hard contact, but the violence is not as emphatic as it becomes when you start

00:29:58.780 to watch high power college football as I do. I live around the corner this, uh, this

00:30:02.440 fall from, uh, the UVA football stadium and especially the pros. I mean, the, the amazing

00:30:07.940 it's, it's, it's, you know, savage beauty, tragic beauty. You see out there, they just

00:30:13.620 whale each other. If you're down on the sidelines and you listen to them hit, it's like the

00:30:17.640 thunder going off. It's some kind of Jovian, uh, experience. Um, and I think people are really

00:30:23.660 having to deal with that in lots and lots of ways culturally. And it's not going to, it's not

00:30:28.240 going to be easy. I don't know how much football is going to be played or how football is going

00:30:31.740 to be played 20 years from now. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's, that brings it, we're having

00:30:35.300 that conversation, um, in our culture right now, whether football should even have a role. I mean,

00:30:39.860 so what are your thoughts? I mean, does football have a role or do the, the risk, the benefits

00:30:44.900 of football outweigh the risk of the sport? Um, well, you know, I'm, uh, as long as the coach

00:30:51.780 isn't crazy and some of them are, um, high school football is fantastic. Love it. Okay.

00:30:55.880 Small college football. Fantastic. Love it. Those guys are good. They play hard, but they're

00:31:00.640 not going to knock each other's spleens off or knock each other's heads off or break each

00:31:03.820 other's spines or anything like that. That's probably just not going to happen. As you move

00:31:08.360 up into big time college and big time pro, you're looking at a level of violence that is really

00:31:15.580 distressing. It seems to me, I still watch it. I feel a certain amount of anxiety about

00:31:19.460 watching it, a certain amount of guilt about watching it. My argument for it happening is the

00:31:23.260 libertarian argument basically, which is that, you know, you get some young guys and they

00:31:28.940 look out into the world and they see that they will trade the prospect of bodily harm

00:31:33.400 or even mental harm for the amazing excitement and camaraderie of the game and the money that's

00:31:39.100 involved and the perks that are involved, the privileges that are involved. And they're

00:31:44.000 willing to make that trade. Are they old enough to make that trade? Well, they're 21 and they

00:31:48.180 could also go off to Iraq or Afghanistan or could have while we were, while we were there.

00:31:52.280 So yes, they're old enough to make that trade. Um, but it still doesn't make me feel completely

00:31:57.740 happy about it. If we only had a small college and, um, uh, you know, uh, high school football

00:32:04.220 in America, I'd be a happier person. I'd go watch those games and all would be well.

00:32:07.860 Right. Again, there's that ambivalence, um, about the sport.

00:32:11.720 Yeah. Well, you know, but then you start really looking into sports and you find out that there

00:32:16.340 is many straight out concussions in soccer as there are in football, people banging into the goalposts.

00:32:22.020 And the hardest I ever got hit in the head in my life was when I tried to head a soccer ball. I

00:32:25.600 decided I'd never do that again. Um, but there are those sub concussive events in football that are

00:32:31.340 really, they build up and they can't be too good for you. They can't be too good for you in the long

00:32:36.240 run. Right. Right. Well, Mark, it's been decades since you played football. Do you miss playing the game?

00:32:44.180 Oh yeah. I mean, if, uh, if there's some way I could get back in there and take a shot, I would,

00:32:50.480 I would be thrilled, but my body would last about one play. Even if the guy across the line was being

00:32:55.560 especially kind to me, the closest I get is pick up basketball, which I'm sort of rehabbing my way

00:33:00.940 back into for what I hope will be one last long run. And that, that has some of the satisfactions of

00:33:06.360 football, but it's different. It is different. Cause I mean, like I remember before the last

00:33:11.320 game football career of my game during our playoffs, a coach told us seniors, like, you know,

00:33:16.280 this could be the last time you step on a field with ads. So play like it. And you know what? He

00:33:22.020 was right. I've, I've never, I've played flag football. I've played touch football. I've done

00:33:26.820 pickup basketball, you know, but flag and touch football aren't really football.

00:33:31.960 Not the same. No, they're not the same. No, that's a big day.

00:33:36.460 Yeah. I mean, what does the finitude, you know, the finitude of football teach us about

00:33:39.520 is there, is there a lesson there you think?

00:33:43.960 Well, you know, they say athletes die twice and that you die the last day that you play the

00:33:51.360 game and then you die of course, corporeally sometime later down the line. Um, and yeah,

00:33:58.160 I mean, it does teach you about finitude in a certain way, though. I guess I think that

00:34:03.800 it's always possible to take what you learned in football. And as long as you're not named

00:34:08.160 by the game to bring it over to pickup basketball or to other games that might serve you in middle

00:34:13.020 age, as well as football served you as a young guy, I played pickup basketball with the same

00:34:17.160 guys for 20 years. And, uh, that did more for me, uh, in terms of, you know, social life and

00:34:24.060 friends and mutual understanding between guys continuing on playing football in some

00:34:28.560 semi-pro league could ever possibly have done. So, you know, to everything, there's a season

00:34:32.820 and I was pleased to make that, uh, make that jump in terms of the intensities of football.

00:34:37.160 Well, you know, you're probably not going to find that other places, but I found intensity

00:34:40.920 plus camaraderie plus good intellectual exchange. This particular group was full of, you know,

00:34:45.660 book writers and, um, all kinds and doctors and therapists and all kinds of tremendously

00:34:51.920 interesting people that I never would have gotten to meet had it not been for the basketball

00:34:55.880 game. Okay. So you can look, still look for those opportunities elsewhere. You can, you can,

00:35:00.380 they're, they're different intensities, but they exist. They exist. Well, switch, let's switch gears

00:35:04.640 a bit. Um, you've got a new book out about writing, uh, can you tell us, which I read again, like your

00:35:10.360 other books, fantastic. Um, thank you so much. Can you tell us about what this, what this book is about

00:35:15.680 and like what you're hoping to convey through it? I'm hoping to convey the joy of writing. Uh,

00:35:21.920 why write is about, um, what you can gain by way of intellectual development, uh, rather than just

00:35:27.300 physical, physical or physical intellectual development by way of writing. You know, it teaches

00:35:31.320 you how to, um, uh, argue. It teaches you how to perceive things. It teaches you how to, as it were,

00:35:36.740 make sense. And, uh, it also, it discloses to you aspects of yourself that you never would have

00:35:42.640 known were there, you know? I mean, the third book I wrote was a book about Gothic, right?

00:35:47.000 About scary movies, scary books, stuff that had fascinated me when I was a boy. Did I know I was

00:35:51.660 ever going to write a book about that? No. But once I started writing it, I was obsessed by it.

00:35:56.480 And so a new part of myself grew and a new set of interests grew and it was incredibly exhilarating,

00:36:01.600 uh, to do that. Um, and I think the mind, as I said before, the mind strengthens the way the body

00:36:06.100 does and you can strengthen it through reading. And sometimes reading is, you know, kind of like

00:36:10.740 can be a little bland. Um, you're not really plunging in there or you can strengthen it

00:36:16.100 through writing where you try to get your ideas down on paper and show them to other people and

00:36:20.260 talk them over. And I think that's an incredibly enriching and enlarging experience. The best

00:36:24.400 education I know of really is the education by writing though. It's hard to do.

00:36:27.920 Yeah. Writing it. I find whenever I don't really know what I have to say until I actually sit down

00:36:32.980 and write it because it actually, nothing wrong with that.

00:36:36.940 Right. I mean, what do you, what do you tell for someone who's listening? I mean,

00:36:39.460 yeah, I love this analogy that writing is sort of exercise for the mind. Um, how does a guy who

00:36:44.820 gets started, who doesn't really write cause I'm not a writer, but I want to get that benefit from

00:36:48.500 how do you get, you just start writing and then, or is there sort of a regimen you can follow like

00:36:54.160 you would with your football training to get better at writing?

00:36:57.120 Yeah. Well, um, you know, you got to try. The thing I advise people to try, uh, first is to write

00:37:03.400 about their childhood a little bit. You know, what was it? Where'd you live? Who were your friends? What was it

00:37:06.760 like? Any stories you have from back then? Um, they're your stories, it's your life. And so you

00:37:11.760 have every right to them. And that's a place that people often can be very successful in, uh, in

00:37:17.120 writing. And then the other thing I say is don't expect too much. You know, I know people say, you

00:37:20.780 know, I've had this novel I've always wanted to write and I'm going away to New Hampshire for seven

00:37:24.500 days and I think I'm going to get it written then. Don't, I mean, maybe, maybe, but that's probably

00:37:29.120 not going to happen. You know, a little bit every day and a little bit more the next week and a

00:37:33.660 little bit more the next week, if you have the time, um, can help you a lot. And the other thing

00:37:38.100 is, you know, writing every day, if you can do it right every day, Stephen King writes every day,

00:37:42.780 but his birthday and Christmas, I think. And he's written some books. I don't love them all,

00:37:47.000 but he's written some books. Right. Well, Mark, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much

00:37:51.320 for your time. It's been a pleasure. Thanks. Those are just wonderful questions. I'm very grateful.

00:37:55.620 My guest today was Mark Edmondson. He's the author of the book, Why Football Matters. It's available

00:37:59.860 on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. And also while you're there, check out his new book, Why

00:38:03.580 Write. Great book. If you are a writer or want to become a writer, a lot of great insights there.

00:38:09.140 Also check out the show notes at aom.is slash why football matters for links to resources where you

00:38:13.720 can delve deeper into this topic.

00:38:25.620 Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,

00:38:30.580 make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. Our show is

00:38:34.100 edited by Creative Audio Lab here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. If you have any audio editing needs or music

00:38:38.120 production needs, check them out at creativeaudiolab.com. If you got a moment too, I'd appreciate it if you

00:38:43.020 give us a review on iTunes or Stitcher. It really helps us out. As always, I appreciate the continued

00:38:46.880 support. And until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay manly.

00:38:55.620 Bye.

The Art of Manliness - October 31, 2016

#248： Why Football Matters

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript