NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal - Why Football Matters with Chuck Klosterman

Episode Date: May 25, 2026

Gregg Rosenthal is joined by bestselling author Chuck Klosterman to talk about his new book "Football". Gregg and Chuck take a deep dive into the fandom around the sport of football, Chuck growing up a Cowboys fan and how being on the wrong side of a moment like "The Catch" can change a fan forever, the future of football globally and more!   NFL Daily YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/nflpodcastsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Welcome to NFL Daily, where we are always excited to talk about a new great football book. My guest today doing something a little different after this holiday weekend is to welcome in Chuck Closterman. I'm a longtime fan. He is the best-selling author of a new book, Football, that's like right in my background, but also the author of a gang of book, Sex, Drug. in Cocoa Puffs, which I really enjoy the 90s, Fargo Rock City, a couple novels, including

downtown owl. But Chuck, you're here because you wrote a book about football. And let's start there. I feel like we need more good current books about football. Like, why don't we have more current books about football? Well, it's funny you mentioned that because when I brought up the idea of writing this book, the publisher was not exactly enthusiastic based on the concept. that football books don't succeed.

But there is this cliche, I guess maybe it's not even cliche, maybe it's true, that in sports journalism, sports writing, if you want something to be successful, you want to use a game with the smallest possible ball. So there's lots of books about golf,

okay? There's actually a lot of books and lots of writing about tennis, some about baseball. But as you move up, it kind of dwindles off. I don't know why that relationship exists, but it certainly seems to. And, you know,

not only is a footballing medium-sized ball, it's a very oddly shaped ball, perhaps that plays a role. But I agree. There are less, I think there are less good books, or great books about football because the understanding of the game

does sort of, I guess, repel maybe the casual fan some degree. I mean, like, you know, if you read an interesting football book, it tends very, I mean, this one doesn't, but they often really get into the ex and ex's nose and things. And I don't know if that's as, um, as, you know, as as as reader friendly, maybe as some other games. But, uh, but, but, you know, I, it doesn't really affect my, what I do. So. Yeah, they, I, I wonder about that. Because it's one of the reasons I, when I started working in

football and it wasn't my favorite sport growing up. And then I really, realized, you know, starting to cover it. I like to cover it. And you, you start your book really with this point of like, there was the biggest gap, I thought, between the people that cover it and the people and the coaches that play it, which for someone going to work and I thought was exciting. Like, you're, you're trying to build that gap. There's almost like a need for someone to understand it as well as possible. But even then, I have a limit as someone who never played, never coached to understand it. You point out,

it's just unique among our sports and just so few people have played it. You played a different version of it growing up. I think, what was it, six-man football? I played nine-man. Nine-man football. Six-man is a little crazy.

Six-man is like, you know, I write about six-man because that's like, you know, central to Texas and all that, you know, for real small schools. In the Midwest, if you have a small enrollment, you know, a rural school, you play nine-man. Nine-man is an attempt really to simulate

what happens in 11-man football. The goal of 9-man football is to look exactly like 11-man football. The calls are very similar. Basically, on offense, you're removing the offensive tackles and playing with a two tight end set, so it's still a five-man line. And on defense, you pull out the corners, so the strong safety usually covers the wide-out and you have free safety. But if you didn't know any better,

if you were just kind of glancing by a field, it might seem tad empty, but it would look the same. You say you've never played football at all, let's really, I'm curious about this. So, just the idea of things like, oh, the way the backs are numbered, the way holes are numbered, how did you acquire that knowledge? Like, was there, was there some text that you read as a young man? Or, you know, it's like, because there's a whole sort of interior semantic language of football

that I feel is really hard to sort of understand unless you had some personal, a small amount personal experience. Yeah, I had a horrible strategy, which was read every football book possible. And so I actually do think like football literature is underrated. You write about Friday. Why would that be a horror? I think that would be the best strategy. Well, it helped me learn about the game. And I think the new thinking man's guide to football by Paul Zimmerman by Dr. Z. Like those are like the tomes where I think you do start to understand the sport and you understand the history. And I actually want to do an episode this summer of just like the greatest football bucks ever because there are many. But in terms of like the X's

and those, like I tried to read Finding the Winning Edge by Bill Walsh. And like how do you, but I only think you get so much. To me, you just learn by watching it over and over and listening to smart people. But I always am impressed by the people like a Ben Solac is at ESPN. He's a guy who does a great job breaking down X's. He didn't play football. And he does understand it on that at glan your level. I just accept that there's a difference, but also a lot of the people, like the people I work with that NFL network, they understand X's those incredibly, but they don't pay attention to the game nearly as closely as I do anyways. And so that that can make up a lot of ground. But I always just accept that there are a lot of things I will never

understand about what happens on a play-to-play basis. Well, you know, that Bill Walsh book, for example, yeah. In a, you know, I think at the center of that book, he's really writing that book for other coaches. And you see this a lot with like books that are written by coaches. You know, there's some, some, some, you know, Gus Malzahn books and stuff. He wrote, or at least took part of an high school or whatever. And they're really like, essentially manuals for the coach, you know, for another coach for a guy who's trying to kind of put a scheme together. Then they're like, you know, you have a daily podcast. So you're really tied into sort of the narrative news of the thing, you know, like transactions, injuries,

what's happening. What is sort of where we think? going right now. And then there's sort of like with this book I think is closer to is just probably in some ways the abstraction of football. By saying that I can hear, imagine someone listening to this being like, well, that sounds terrible. But what I mean by that is it's like, like, I think that you know, football plays a very unique and special role, not just in the world of sports, but in the world of American society, the way the American society operates. There's so many things about it that separate it from all the other games,

not just as popularity, but maybe the reasons that popularity happen. So it is kind of a hard needle to thread in some ways because there's a certain kind of person, and I can imagine him being like this podcast listener to this, is like, I want to read about football and learn something I did not know yesterday. Like I want to know something about, you know, you know,

I, you know, about Shell's own coverage that I didn't understand. And there's another kind of person who's like, well, I like football because everyone does.

It's not every weekend. I'm on my office, you know, fantasy league or whatever. It's hard to find that sort of middle groove between the person who watches football

because it's inescapable and the person who looks at football basically as something that is only valuable to them if they almost understand it in like a clinical, almost medical way. Right.

And I think, and there's some people that just want to follow it almost as a soap opera, a storyline that they can understand. Like, I would include my parents in this category on the most basic level. And yet they're, they're massive fans, but they're not among, you give the numbers out. Like, 1 million people play high school football. That turns to 80,000 in college, like a 2,700 as a pro. And it did get me thinking just how few people really do understand it. And for our listeners, by the way, I'm not, you know, having Chuck on because I'm not. I want his book has done great.

It was a best selling book. It's still selling. But I want people to read books that come out currently about football because I want more of them as a reader. One thing I know, like there were a lot of great football books back in the 70s, 80s, especially in the 60s, 70s that really got inside the game. And you just don't see as many of them anymore. You wrote about Friday Night Lights.

Did you re-read that? And that's part of like a bigger Texas football. chapter, but it does still kind of stand out to me as the best of its kind. Well, okay, if someone asked me just like, what's the best football book of all time? I think my reflexive answer would be Friday nightlights. And I think it's kind of a common answer. But what's tricky about it, of course, is that what is the big compliment people give about Friday night lights?

Oh, it's not really about football. Like football is the center of the story, but it's really about socioeconomics. It's really about race. It's really about sort of the experience of growing up somewhere where the entire community is dictated by this game, these guys who play high school football in this town, then like going to play college football, you know, and it just feels empty to them because like even, you know, being in Texas A&M doesn't feel like it did in high school or whatever. It's all these strange things.

So that's, you know, there is a lot of football in that book, but so often in sports writing and sports journalism in general, the goal seems to be. to transcend the genre, right? To somehow go beyond that. I think what you're talking about is the kind of the complexity or the lack of books that are really about football. That it's not an attempt to use football to describe some other thing. It's like, well, this is what the thing is. And it's tough because of the just intense level of complexity that is possible.

Like there's almost no ceiling to how deep into the weeds you can get on these things. And I think a lot of times writers struggle with like, well, okay, who am I talking to with this? Am I only, you know, am I only talking to offensive coordinators now when I write this section? Or, you know, it's a, but I know what you're saying, you know. Yeah, I mean, one of those books was, I mean, I read Bill Belichick Dad's book, Football Scouting Methods. That once helped to try to understand it. When you think of Texas football, though, you, you, you, you. you kind of talked about that dynamic of that the afterward of that book,

Friday Night Light, sticks with you more than anything else because it's a little sad almost about the players that that was like the peak of their life. And what that made me think. And I don't know if this aspect is in other parts of high school sports or whatever, but their experience almost mirrors, you know, professional football. Like professional players always say they experience some sort of, you know, death. when their career ends. And the high school players, like that is the peak for some of them you write about of their

entire lives. They don't get the financial benefits, but they kind of get all of the other benefits of just meaning and adulation and attention and something bigger than yourself. And then it's just over. Did you like experience any of that from your football experience playing or just writing about it? How do you think about that? I mean, I, you know, I came from rural North Dakota, much like you.

I mean, you know, football is my favorite sport to consume as a player. I cared about basketball more. So I didn't really have this thing like these kids did in Texas. But what you mention is it's an intriguing thing. I mean, okay, in the NFL level, you say like these guys experience a kind of death when they retire. And, you know, part of that is because to become the person who gets in that position, you have to have sort of this all-consuming drive that it's impossible to turn off

simply because you realize your body is starting to deteriorate. You know, it's like their whole life has sort of been about like, well, if there's 40 guys on this team, I need to be the best guy in this team. Oh, now I'm at high school. Now I've got to be the best player in the region.

I go to college. I need to get drafted, all these things. The thing that drives them is the impossible thing to stop and you see guys going on too long. And we almost talk like it's embarrassing for them. But like in their mind, it's embarrassing to stop. They're at a point in their life about happen.

The high school situation is different because obviously it is finite. When I played high school football, you know, we had a good team. We wanted to stay title when I was a sophomore. But there was never this idea that somehow this was the pinnacle of my life or that or that these memories I had was, you know, what would be the defining memories of my life. Now, maybe paradoxically, a lot of those things are the things I remember about my life. But I never viewed it as sort of like, oh, now it's out over. You know, now this is over.

I think guys at the college level, a problem might in some ways have one of the weirdest experiences, because assuming they don't go to play professional football, you know, they spend sort of this period of your life when for most people, I don't know where you went to college, but I'm guessing, I'm just getting. that your memories of college are like pretty positive and pretty fun. And like the relationships you had are like maybe some of the still relationships you have now. It was maybe the first time you were an adult, but you were still a young person, whereas the college football player essentially has now a real job where they're getting paid. And college now is just sort of like a just an institution that has no meaning except that this is where I go to practice and play

games or anything. So when that ends for them, they're like a full-on adult. Like you're a 23 or 24-year-old person. They're supposed to live now. And they'd spend all this time thinking really just one thing that is a simulation of reality. Yeah. Yeah. I went to Tulane. So, you know, we're enjoying the NL era. But I also, yeah, enjoyed myself quite a bit in college. In a way that would like never be able to replicate you. You talked about like that, I love the chapter on Texas, if it wasn't clear.

And yeah, the book goes and it hits everything. And that's what I like about it. It's football like right now. You talk about where gambling is at. You talk about college football. You know, at some point, I think, who did you compare?

It was Brian Kelly to a character on Little House in the Prairie. So that like that's a character from an old Lord Eagle. wild his book, yes. That is true. I'm just saying you're not going to find that in any other, in any other books. You grew up, though, like a big Stobach fan and you talk in that Texas chapter about like the Cowboys kind of in general. I do feel like Stobach, you have that in common with Bill Belichick, that you're a monster Stobach fan who I feel like is a little lost to the average fan history right now, just as like the guy. And also, also. also a legitimately, like, great quarterback, one of the greatest quarterbacks ever.

So I wanted to give you the chance to just, like, talk Stoback and make the case for Stoback as someone so vital to the history of the game. Well, I appreciate you doing that. Okay, so, like, Billichick's thing was different because his dad was at ease. So Billichick would, like, throw the football with Stalbock, but like run patterned and stuff while he was there. Like, he has a, it's a little easier to understand. I mean, for me, you know, okay, it's a strange thing because when I'm born in

1972, Roger was already 30. Like he really does in many ways belong to the generation that predates me. But I got into football, the young age. And, you know, he was just, to me, he was sort of what a person was supposed to be like. I mean, every quality he possesses a football player, but also sort of is just sort of like a person living in the world. It was, it, it's kind of seemed like one of these things that we're used to feeling are too good but you be true, okay? Like there's no one who's really like this or whatever. Well, he, he retires, I think I'm in second grade.

They got beat by the Rams in the playoffs and he had done a lot of concussions and was already older because he'd been in Vietnam and all that. So he retires, you know. So to some people, it's very strange. My, like, my hero or whatever is this person who, I only watched a handful of times, you know, but I mean, I really am of the belief that it's weird for an adult man to have a hero. Like even if they do heroic things. Like we're not, I don't like to use that word now.

You need a hero when you're eight. And who your hero is when your age is kind of your hero for life. So that's, that's just like Roger Stobach is still, I guess, my hero, if you're going to call that. But I just, what makes me so happy, but like you say a little bit lost to, to, to, to, to, two people. Well, that's almost every player, right? Like, it's hard to think of the guys to really stay. Interestingly, you know,

people used to sometimes compare and contrast Stabach with Joe Nameda. Not just because they were both great quarterbacks, one's in the NFL, one's in the NFL, one's in the NFL, but, you know, one was sort of a playboy and sort of like kind of countercultural idea, big kind of mutts chops in Stoback is,

you know, crew cut, clean cut, you know, Catholic, all of these things. I do suspect that the name Joe Namer is more familiar to a young football fan now than the name Roger Stobach. I think that by associating himself with the counterculture, that tends to be what the media likes to sort of go back and sort of reinvestigate later. It's like when we look at the history of the NFL, very often the names that come up are the very greatest players and the players who somehow sort of bucked. authority or added something new that hadn't been seen before, that maybe their entry in the league had some kind of racial connotation or all these things. That's kind of how we work in reverse.

And I don't know if this will happen to stop back as much. It's, you know, I think you could certainly argue that he was the best quarterback of the 70s. I mean, there are other names can throw in there, but I think that would be, you could certainly he'd be a candidate. But, you know, like, you know, the best running back of the 70s was O.J. Simpson. I don't know much we're going to talk about his career. You know, it's like sometimes things just change. I don't, it's amazing and sort of intriguing why some people get remembered and other guys don't.

Yeah, and Stalbock should be. I mean, you're right. He probably was the greatest quarterback of the 70s. People thought that back then when you're making those lists of like the greatest quarter. he might have been on top because football's always getting better at the time people thought maybe he's the greatest quarterback

of all time. Johnny Unitas had that title for a while. Then Joe Montana had it for a while and now no one even kind of, when people make the list, no one even puts Montana in the top five anymore. You made the argument, it was intriguing that Jim Thorpe

is the greatest football player of all time, partly just because when he was doing all the Jim Thorpe's things that he was doing, that's when the sport was sort of being created and he was doing it at a level in athleticism that we don't have proof for but ultimately was like you can't really replicate it now.

It almost be like if Shohay Otani was dropped into 1930s football and just did everything. I mean, that thing about Jim Thorpe really is an argument about the idea or the word great or greatness more so because the fact the matter is the way physiology changes, technology changes, the fact that we always can use the past as a way to get further.

The greatest player of all time is always going to be whoever is the greatest player right now if we're talking literally who's the best person on the field, the actual skills. Like, you know, in 20 years from now, who's ever the best player in the NFL 20 years from now will have been sort of, that's the furthest any football player would have went athletic. but that's not how you can think about these things. I mean, it doesn't make sense. It's kind of a meaningless designation. If it can change and evolve that easily, it's got to be sort of against the person's peers. And more importantly, it has to be the first elite rendering of greatness

that still appears or applies to the most modern version. And some of the early things that Jim Thorpe did, because that was sort of the, you know, the building. lock of the games. It's 11 on 11, touchdowns are six, first downs are 10. It wasn't the modern game the way we think of it, but in many ways it had all the rudiments of what football is. And when you see someone running a football now, carrying a football in the open field, breaking tackles and all these things, you are in some ways seeing Jim Thorpe. You're seeing the residue of that because he was the first player who was really in that, maybe it's perceived

as this is the best football player who ever lived. There are guys, before him that you could have said that about, but that's kind of where it begins, you know. And I just, I don't know, you know, there's a section in that essay or I kind of make a comparison to the Beatles. I talk about the idea of the Beatles greatness and, you know, how this can kind of be applied to Jim Thorpe. That could have been reversed. It could have been an entire essay about the Beatles with one paragraph about Jim Thorpe.

But I would read that too. I am thinking of the part, because you talked about growing up, you know, a Cowboys fan, and you were on the other side of the catch. So, you know, that's who the 49ers beat in that game. And it's devastating. And the Cowboys actually get the ball back briefly, but they lose that game. And that's a moment that I think a lot of readers can identify with that there's maybe like one game as a kid where you realize, oh, this can really hurt you.

It's fresh on my mind because my son just went through that in the playoffs last year. He has become a Houston Texans fan for no particular reason other than he just likes C.J. Stroud. And that loss that they had to the Patriots for some reason, like sent him into a devastated state that like it made me wonder. And it's kind of what I think about with my job in general. It's like, why why do we want it so much? Why do we want it so much as a kid? Why do, like, why do we care so much? Have you ever gotten to any bottom of that question?

Well, I mean, that's a pretty existential question, like why it matters so much. There is something about being a kid. I mean, that loss in 19, I guess I've been 82, 81 season, when Dallas lost to the 49ers, you know, it was like, you know, that game changed me as a person. Like, weird to say it, but it did. I mean, I was in fourth grade. and you know i you know roger was gone i love danny white now and all this and since that game i don't think i've ever been able to i know i have i've never been able to invest myself into any team the way i did at that age like i just i can't care as much it doesn't matter who's

playing it doesn't matter what they represent it doesn't matter where i live it's never going to be like that. Okay. And I think that like, you know, in a way that sort of makes me a little sad, I think some people are able to hang on to that. But it's odd because when you see an adult, just that's shattered by a loss. There's something a little unseemly about it or strange. It's like, you know, pathetic.

Yeah. You almost, but it's just a hard thing. You know, it's like whether you're talking about, you know, sports. or music or film or, you know, relationships you had. And you think back to the first one that really mattered in any of those things. You'd like to tell yourself that like, well, okay, well, that was, I was young and that happened. And then, you know, everyone later became more and more important. But in some ways, it's always the first one that matters most because that sort of creates your

understanding or the framework for what these feelings mean, you know? I think that that, you know, when I watch that, like, I don't know what I thought when that game started. Like, did I think that like, oh, Dallas is going to win, even though they're on the road, or if I thought, like, I deserve this somehow or like San Francisco sort of struggled for a bunch of years, they can't be that good. I don't know what it was. But all I know is that after that game, it just sort of been like, well, boy, I still love this sport. I wish I didn't almost wish I didn't care.

I feel like to know sometimes. I do too. It feels strange to me how important football is to me. Like I'm almost, I mean, I hate to use the word of shame, but it's like, it's like I don't, I spend my entire autumn trying to avoid things so that I can stay home to like watch like a Mac game, like Toledo playing, you know, North Mill, nor Illinois. I don't even know why.

I just want to see it. I just always want to see it in a way that seems to make me feel as anything else can be pushed to the side. I just don't know. It's a, the one thing I guess it's good about living in the U.S. is it's acceptable to be this way. Like, we accept to be obsessed about footballs. Okay. It's totally fine.

I mean, I feel like when it's football, okay, well, that's work. But I do feel ashamed about like when the Celtics make me that sad, that I'm not. over that. Yeah, I think your reaction to that football game, the catch, it was my reaction more to my first breakup. Then I won't let myself get that emotionally invested, but sports I still will. The Boston Celtics, I still will let myself

get that emotionally invested. Now, so are you, is basketball your favorite sport in football is your job? And is that? No, I love, I love football the most, but I don't feel as emotionally connect. I like different teams. I like different stories. I am a Patriots

fan, but it doesn't hit me the same way because it's been work for so long. Also maybe just because I've gotten to see them win so much. I don't really know in a way that like the basketball experience is more just I feel like a pure phantom. It's the one team that for some, for whatever reason, has, has like maintained that childish feeling. I wonder did you when you're writing though, like making it your job for a minute change your relationship to staying home and watching, you know, it did a little bit, although not. maybe in the way you think.

Like, while I was writing the book, I almost felt like, you know, what if, what if something changes about football so dramatically that I have to like completely reinvent my thinking about something?

Like what if I'm watching a game and someone does die on the field? Or like, honestly, a lot of what has happened with college football complicates my writing about the, college game because when I think about college football, when I, you know, I actually, one of these people who prefers the college game, the pro game, you know, that when I think about what I love about college football, it does, a lot of it was illusionary, like some of the

things were fake, but like you could accept, you could live with that illusion, like we would pretend. And now all that pretending is done. Now college football is just semi-pro professional football. There's just no, there's, you know, play it's. And it kind of, it was odd because at times like, you know, I wanted to write about college football at times. And I'd be like, well, well, this just not seem like nostalgia. Because essentially what I'll be describing is something that doesn't and cannot exist anymore. Our radio celebrates Asian Heritage Month. Discover powerful stories, vibrant cultures, and unforgettable music. From inspiring podcasts to playlist that span east.

South, Southeast and West Asian artists. The voices shaping our world. Listen now on the free IHard Radio app. And at IHardio.ca. Did you write this book as just like a long excuse to have the essay where you just destroy three-down football and like take down all of Canada for some reason? I wanted to write about Canadian football

because it comes up in my life every year. And I mention this in the book every summer. At some point after the NBA finals, I find myself, oh, there's a Canadian football game on. This is the year I'm going to start watching Canadian football. Because I always think to myself, it's like, this will like, you know, I'll be able to do it casually. But at the same time, it's still a lot like football,

the way I understand it in the U.S. But it never works out. It always comes down to this three-down issue and how much that changes the game, even though it's very easy to understand why the CFL uses three downs. There's a historical argument, and there's also sort of like a practical argument.

We all kind of agree that the most exciting part of offensive football is the passing game. So it might seem reasonable to say, like, well, let's just create something that spurs passing, causes more pass, but it doesn't, it's got to be four downs. Five wouldn't work either.

It's got to be four. but just in terms of writing the book in general like it was i say this in the book it is true like i've written now at 14 books or whatever this was the most fun i had writing a book since the very first one because the old the similarities between those two books that was called like far rock city it's about like listening to air metal bands you know and like poison and guns and roses and stuff both of those situations where these these these pursuits that I had unconsciously spent my whole

life thinking about it. Like I mean, I've been thinking about football for now. I'm 50. I'm 50. I'm going to be 54. So I'm guessing for 40 eight years or whatever, you know? And it was strange in some ways

how easy it came. Like how much, you know, because I always talk about writing sort of like, I mean, almost like in your brain, there's like a ball of yarn and then writing is like pulling the string and straightening the you know, straightening the thread. And I just had a lot of things I thought about football over this time.

You know, a lot of things that, you know, I, it seemed to imbue my sense of reality so many times throughout my life, both when I was really little now as a middle age person. but every kind of every step along the way you know um so it was like it was i wouldn't say it was cathartic or anything but it was it was just it wasn't like a struggle so often when you're writing something it's like you sit down and you're like i'm not going to do this today it's like what's what do i add this is this is what that wasn't like that like this book you just i could just do you know like i wrote it real fast i probably wrote that whole thing in five months that's that's that's That's outstanding.

And yeah, like, look, one of the things I liked about it was a good, it's a thought exercise, it's thinking, kind of taking a step back. But it also is very much, like, I haven't seen a long essay about Matt. Like, the way you play Madden, incidentally, is an insane style where you're more worried about making it look like, like real football rather than winning. I was saying, but you have, which is a wild way to play. You, but you play, like, there's stuff on Madden. you have like a chapter about kind of how much gambling has changed everything and some

ambivalence there. But I know as we wrap up here, I don't have you all day, that you're here on NFL media, you know, that that's who produces this podcast. And you have a whole chapter with a speculative idea of how football is just going to end or professional football could potentially end. You know, that almost feels transgressive to me, that you're on NFL media after writing that we're all going down in like 50 years. Or maybe less.

Here's what I find interesting about that. There is one section of the book near the end where I do talk about how I can imagine not football disappearing entirely, but completely receding from the center of the culture. Right now it's like the only monoculture there really is like that maybe Taylor Swift or whatever. It's the only things where it's like a person who doesn't even care is kind of for forced to know about it. So I write this little section. It's not that long. It's not, but there

everybody who's interviewed me wants to talk about that. They want to talk about that specific section. And it in some ways, like inadvertently illustrates the point I was trying to make, which is that, you know, there's this phrase, uh, you sometimes hear like anti-capitalists say. They'll be like, it's easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine a world without capitalism. That's one of those things they say. People cannot fathom the idea of football not existing. Like I'm a little surprised, actually, how angry some people were by that. And I'm saying this is going to happen in 70 years.

I'm basically saying in 60 or 70 years, at least a couple generations removed. You know, so maybe 50 years, that the world is going to change and the culture of television is going to change. and the way we sort of, the interpersonal relationship most people have with the game, not just as something, like I think we're increasingly moving to a world where football is just like an entertaining distraction

that people don't feel a real personal relationship to, that this is going to change things. And people just, they cannot see that, you know? Like it's, it's, I don't, I'm not, I can't even think of what a comparison would be that people were so alarmed by,

a theoretical possibility that would happen after they die. And they're like, I will not accept that. I was not angry. I thought it would, I thought it was just funny to think about. It's like Chuck Gloucesterman, NFL's worst nightmare. You've ended football, Chuck. Well, I mean, nothing I can do about it. I mean, I don't want it to.

I'm hoping that when I die, people are annoyed that they got to go to my funeral because they're missing a football game. I hope that's still happening. But then, you know, like with all these, I'm sure you guys have, covered like all these international games are kind of you know that we go every year yeah one one game and you know it's it's i understand why the nifel is doing that because the nfl operates from this position where they can only get bigger they they cannot they're the biggest thing there is but we must get bigger but what is kind of particular and specific to football is that it really

is only an american sport like yeah they play in canada they're interested in mexico a little bit in Germany, you know, Isle of Samoa, a little bit Australia, but not really, right? So you look at baseball now, best players from Japan. Look at the NBA. I would say the five best players are non-Americans in the league. Football is different, though, because in order to become, you know, a Patrick Bohmahom's type figure, you almost need to live your whole life in that channel, raised is that. So as we moved to this international idea where there's these games and, you know, you know, Australia and Rio and all these places.

I can't tell if they're thinking is, we just need to sort of present this spectacle to other countries. And they will like the spectacle of it. Or if the thinking is closer to say like the 1992 dream team in basketball, where that initially was a spectacle, but that completely altered the relationship these other countries had to the sport. And, you know, when you look at like in 1992, the best international players with like Tony Kukouch, couldn't start for the Bulls yet, the end of Subonis, you know,

Oscar Schmidt in Brazil who couldn't have played in the NBA. You know, then now we have like a huge chunk of professional basketball as international plays. So do you think the hope is with the NFL's hope is that by playing a game Sanrio and playing a game in Australia and Germany that this is going to. cause a groundswell of youth participation in those countries. And that in 50 years, you know, we could be saying like, well, the best quarterback in the league is from France, which is an impossible thing to imagine right now.

Absolutely. And how that feeds. That is the goal. I think, well, that's the goal as just a function to keep expanding and making that money. That was the persuasive part of your argument was just kind of capitalism, eating itself, that it just, you always have to be growing. And when you hear Roger Goodell and the NFL talk about, okay, this is our billion dollar goal for that.

You're like, the way to do that at some point is only to keep expanding the pie. And look, they have a U.S. Football Academy. I don't think people, because I go to London every year, I don't think people really get what a entrenched, like somewhere between niche and actually popular sport. Like, it truly has built a real fandom in the UK that is also true in terms.

Germany and is not really true basically anywhere else. But if you look at the fact that, yeah, like they're starting the academies there. They're starting the academies in Africa. I'm friends with a Henry Hodgson, who's his job is to kind of play up these successes that we have, Jordan Milata from Australia and these different players that are coming through the pipeline and get taken in the fifth round and to like just keep growing that. And I absolutely do think like in a perfect world, that is their, their dream that that football continues to grow elsewhere just so they can ultimately make more

money is I think the idea. Well, let me ask you this, though. Like when you're over in the UK around these people in that academy, do you feel that the people of, in the UK or the people in Germany, do they still view football as this distinctly American thing? Like it's almost like they're participating in an American idea less than like a sport. because one of the things that like that changed about basketball in the 90s is that it had always been played in these other countries

but I think that it kind of went from this like well this is this thing Americans invented and Americans are great at and soon it's like well maybe you know here in Serbia or whatever we can have our own kind of basketball culture are they trying to actually build a culture of football in England

a culture of football in you know Australia you know I think they're trying but no I think it's your first answer, which is that they do it as a distinctly American thing and people that are attracted to it. I mean, that's maybe a little part of the attraction. But I think a lot of people there who aren't as big fans of their football and kind of see American football as almost a transgressive, like, cool thing to root for. And it was on their air in the 90s. And so a lot of people grew up. And they just saw it and they fall in love with the sport. But it is kind of like

almost a counterculture sport there, which is strange to experience. Chuck Closterman, we did it. Hey, thanks for having me on, man. I appreciate you. And like I said, everyone should check out his book, Football, one of the best-selling books. I was surprised. I shouldn't have done this, but I, for some, you know, I checked because I didn't know if your paperback was anywhere soon, but it's only been out since January.

So the paperback's not soon. So I happened to pop on Amazon. And I saw you were like the second, you know, among football books. right now that weren't like he did rivalry knockoffs. Well, no, I think what was number one? I thought I thought the only books that were beating me were like they Exactly. So only one was, but it, but this is why I want our listeners to go out and help you out here.

The Belichick book that he did last year, Art of Winning, which I spent the whole episode killing because one of the worst books I've ever read in my life. What a wasted opportunity. It clearly didn't do well. And they're selling it now for just 198. So that because it's 198, it was just, it was edged the head of you at full price.

So forget that and let's get you back in front. On Amazon, my book is reduced price, which I think they may have done for Father's Day. But not to 198. Yours is that a normal life. It's not a $1.98. That's not a $2 book.

But yes, you know, but it's so hard to sell books now. It's just impossible. Like it's just, I've done this for 25 years. It was hard when I started. It's just crazy now.

Like guys do not buy nonfiction books. They listen to podcasts. or they read substacks. They just do not, it's really, you almost are going to trick them into it. It's like, I don't want to do that. I don't want to trick people and they're buying my books. I mean, you know, but I still want, you know,

and you try not to be obsessed with the sales or whatever, but the sales are it would allow you to keep doing it. Like if people don't buy my books, I'm not to be able to keep writing them. No one's going to pay me to write books. Nobody reads. Well, I'm trying to be the change. I want to see.

So I buy a lot of books. You should follow me on good. by the way, people out there, if you're ever curious what I am reading. But yeah, football by Chuck Gloucesterman was the last book that I will be marking in there. Thank you, Chuck. Appreciate you. Next luck. All right, that was Chuck Closterman.

That was awesome. I really enjoyed that conversation. Like I said, we couldn't get to half the things that are in his book. The Madden and Gambling chapter, to me, we're really fascinating. So check that out. And, you know, a lot of people have retail. What football books should I read? Look, I have an article on NFL.com going through like the, my football reading list, which you could find easily.

Chris Wessling has the same. But I do want to do a football episode, football book episode this summer. So stay tuned because I think we'll break down the greatest books. In terms of learning the game, like history-wise, it's America's game by Michael McCambridge. But that's like a history book. We're actually learning about football. Even though it's set in the 70s, it's Paul Zimmerman, thinking man's guide. And you might as well get the updated version because that's closer.

to the present. That's like in the 80s. That taught me more about football than any book I've ever read. All right, that's it for Memorial Day. What better way to celebrate Memorial Day than talking football and football books? We will be back in the studio on Tuesday. What's happening on Tuesday? I don't know. I think we're going to go over all the news because at this point it's been too long since we updated you. So some things we learned on Tuesday, Jordan Rodriguez, back in the studio this week as well. We will see you then. This is an I-Heart podcast, guaranteed human.