Happy Super Bowl Sunday! I don’t have the intensity for America’s game I once had, but I am taking part in the national ritual of having a party, eating bad food and fcousing more on the commercials than the game.
Just to keep it academic, here’s a 1977 New Republic article via longform.org on the moral equivalency of football…. I particularly like this quote:
Just as football has evolved in accordance with the evolving business ethic of American society, so has it evolved in accordance with the changing strategic assumptions about war. The development (or rebirth) of the T-formation in football coincided almost exactly with the development of a new era of mobility and speed in warfare best exemplified in the Blitzkrieg tactics of the German armies in Europe in 1939-40. The T-formation soon overwhelmed the “Maginot Line” mentality of traditional football, based as it was on rigid lines and massive concentrations of defensive and offensive power.
To draw this analogy out today, the NFL is bigger, more sophisticated and less dependent on “grind it out” offenses and more dependent on strong air attacks than when I grew up (drones anyone)???
Go Giants… as a Dolphins fan, I have sworn an oath to hate all AFC East rivals.
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