MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Games can be understood on multiple levels. For simplicity’s sake lets say that they can be analyzed on a surface level and a subsurface level or, put differently, at a common sense level and at an analytic level as in there is more to the game than meets the eye. The game of football can be understood in this way. Based on available data, such as attendance figures and television, radio, and social media ratings, football is America’s most popular sport. This has been the case for many years. A legitimate question is why is football so popular in America? Why has it become our national past time, supplanting baseball for that number one spot? A few years ago, using Clifford Geertz’s anthropological method of deep description, I wrote a paper analyzing the game of football and arguing that football was a game that on the surface was simply a competitive game that people watched because of its inherent qualities as a game, i.e.pitting two teams against each other in a highly competitive sporting event that created a dramatic and engrossing spectacle. However, I also analyzed football for its deeper meaning, i.e. as a game that externalizes in dramatic play key elements of American culture. Thus football symbolizes deeply held beliefs and values of our way of life. This paper examines how football represents the soul of the American way of life and as such, following Durkheim, is in the realm of the sacred. Looked at as something sacred helps to understand why all behaviors not conforming to the sacred “texts” incurs the wrath of many football faithful and also how its sacred aspect can be exploited for political ends.