No matter where I go, I’m always happy to hear a good football story. It doesn’t matter if it’s a story from three or four decades ago, or three or four seasons ago — the football fan in me appreciates all generations of America’s biggest game.
But, no matter who I talk to, I always notice the same thing: there’s no group of American sports fans as divided on history as football fans.
Most recently, I went out to the Bealsville Community Center over the weekend to speak to a handful of people from the 1964-65 Marshall High School football team. We sat in the middle of the center’s main hall, packed with former Marshall students, and talked nothing but football for roughly 30 minutes. Hearing about the Dragons’ playing experiences, accomplishments — of which there were many — and star players was both captivating and enlightening. Learning about sports history has always been one of my favorite parts of the job.
I asked the gentlemen if they still preferred the game they grew up with, or if they now prefer to watch today’s game. I can’t say I didn’t expect the answers:
“That’s not even football anymore,” defensive end Hardie Sykes told me. “It’s a different game.”
Indeed, it is a different game. Everything’s been streamlined, from the gameplay to the uniforms, and what you and I will see in any game played this season will be both faster and more complex than anything that was played back in Marshall’s time. “Blur” offenses, read-options, the pistol formation, you name it — it would have all been completely radical if introduced in that game.
But I don’t hear anything get criticized more than football’s ever-changing rulebook, and I also can’t say I agree with all of the changes that are made on a regular basis.
Today’s players are infinitely more protected than yesteryear’s, even though severe injuries can and do still happen, but the game is undeniably “softer” than it used to be. This is a point of contention for older fans and, though I don’t exactly agree with them, I understand where they’re coming from.
That old George Carlin routine about baseball and football, in which the late comedian riffed on baseball’s lighthearted culture against football’s constant war references, still holds up to this day — even with football getting “soft.” A large part of football’s charm has always been its physicality, the promise that anyone who tunes into or attends a game would see rough men doing things most of us would never be capable of. If most of us could have stepped onto a field back then, we certainly wouldn’t have been another “Mean” Joe Greene or Jack Tatum. Those guys, with only a handful of exceptions, don’t exist anymore.
The presentation and scale of the game has been larger than life, even compared to the attention old baseball players used to get. That’s probably the highest compliment I can pay to NFL Films, which has always known how to tell a story and set it to iconic, larger-than-life musical scores. I don’t know that anyone’s ever done better gladiator movies on a consistent basis.
Today’s game, thanks in part to YouTube’s mixtape culture, plays out more like a highlight reel. The game may not be (physically) bigger, but it’s certainly faster, and many of the best plays that we now see on SportsCenter are just as exciting as any of the best plays of yesteryear. There’s more polish, more finesse than there’s ever been, and that’s eye candy for younger viewers, the demographic that all leagues are trying desperately to latch on to with its changes of play and overload of bold, new uniforms.
Since football, for all the bad press it’s gotten lately, is still far and away the most popular, profitable American sport, it’s safe to say that the game is more popular than ever.
So, it’s not going back to the way it used to be anytime soon.
For the older football fans out there, the good news is that there’s still a treasure trove of past game film available to you on the Internet. I’d also encourage younger fans to check it out, as there are plenty of past greats out there.