I suppose that I’ve always been prone to pessimistic over-analysis, that’s just who I am, but the handful of weeks that have passed since I finished my educational career have given me far more time to occupy myself with the indulgences of introspection. Naked to the urgent winds of post-university reality, I have taken it upon myself to take a step back and look more fully at the tasks over which I regularly obsess. Needless to say, as I spend a great deal of my time writing (or at least attempting to do so), my activities as a blogger have not escaped close scrutiny.
While the simple act of committing words to the page, of watching them take shape and arrive at an acceptable structure, has always given – and will continue to give – me great pleasure, I have found it difficult to reach an answer as to why I insist on placing football on the pedestal which it enjoys both amongst the professional and amateur media. An ultimately futile distraction from our own mortality (as is the case, I suppose, with any pastime), quite why so many rush to spend such large portions of their lives frantically studying the game to the very smallest detail is something for which I cannot find a reasonable answer.
As much as the game of football provides us with short-term happiness; a victory for “our” team, a moment or two of physical elegance – I have always been wary of the sport’s potential to come to define the individual. Football, as enjoyable as it can be, has the capacity to consume us, to occupy thoughts during every waking hour, to absorb us into its false precedence. Of course, I am aware that such effects are not unique only to sports, but their scope in that particular realm often appears magnified, lives becoming defined along the lines of empty rivalries and hollow allegiances, conflicts constructed only to defy more pressing realities.
As a cursory glance at any fans forum or social networking platform will reveal, football has become a ubiquitous reference point across a wide range of fields. Even when conversation strays from the strictly sporting, talk is regularly framed in terms of the game, those who stray too far from the unspoken boundaries being all too quickly chastised or even wholly ostracised. The “football community” (if such a thing can be said to exist) has little time for those who aren’t quite prepared to fully commit to its special brand of introspection, little time for those who wish to combine their interest with a passion for a wider range of subjects. I may be exaggerating to emphasise my point, but I believe these assertions ring at least partially true, and surely that cannot be healthy?
My own personal issue is that, in the grand scheme of things, I’m not even sure that I love football for what it actually is. As someone who relishes simply the process of writing, I chose the game as a medium because it is a subject which I have a relatively sound knowledge of, as well as being a topic so popular that, if I may be brutally honest, it is perhaps easier to have one’s work noticed by a larger audience. However, the more I mull things over in my head, the more I begin to think that my understanding of the game’s “culture” was really rather underdeveloped in the first instance. The case may be that I just don’t understand football as well as I thought I did; I thought there was a deeper meaning and purpose than that which appears on the surface, but that may very well not be the case at all.
Clearly, football provides a ready-made and self-renewing folklore for any writer to drop themselves into and begin to explore, but that is surely still not reason enough for so many to spend their hours, days, weeks and months pouring over its trivialities. Why, when there are whole worlds of literature, music, religion, science and philosophy out there to discover, is there such common fixation – as moths to flames – with twenty-two men kicking spheres into goals within a small range of differing contexts? Football may provide fleeting pleasures, but where books and other forms of artistic expression may seek practicable answers and inform our intellect through the enjoyment they communicate, football appears to offer only superficial gratification.
And yet I still come back to it, time after time after time. It may be, in my own mind at least, a futile preoccupation, but it is one which I cannot shake loose. Let there be no doubt about it, football has an inherent attraction, a ritualistic narrative all of its own that appeals to the voyeur in all of us. Quite often all we seek is an aesthetic diversion from the everyday, and there is of course a place for that in all cultures and in all people. Indeed, the purpose of this piece was not to write off football as a total irrelevance, I hope my work shows that that is not an opinion I hold, but merely to ask why it has the capacity to induce such blinkered intensity.
Enjoy football, even go as far as to love it, but don’t let it overwhelm the more significant realities of which it is a mere by-product.
The Equaliser 
“I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
It may be that the pure simplicity of football is the answer. It just is … on so many levels.
AMEN. I think football is artistic just assimilated into our culture as simple gratification at times (often actually). Football and say the political or socio-cultural ramifications of it aren’t popular I think because politics in general isn’t. There is a 2 line struggle from elevating the game to its rightful space within the bigger realities of society and keeping it an escape for convenience.
People attach their own context to the things they consider important. Some would scoff at books being held in such high esteem whilst simultaneously refreshing 5 blogs looking for the latest celebrity gossip. This post could apply not just to football but all sports in general (Vancouver riots for example). Can anything that inspires such passion be considered futile?
This is worth a read also, along similar lines: http://www.runofplay.com/2011/05/05/your-stupid-rage-2/
I agree with your sentiments to a point, although I would argue that a medium such as literature often (although not always) seeks answers to important questions and expresses a great deal of insight into how we live our lives. While that’s not always the case, I would say (as I point out in the third last paragraph) that football is a far more superficial pastime than something like literature or philosophy.
Again, that’s not to say that I don’t value football (I do), but I think what it contributes in general is of ‘lesser’ importance than what we can access in other spheres.
Of course, I agree with you on that. Philosophy is about answering questions that have been pondered for centuries; football is about kicking a ball into a goal. Only one of the two is going significantly alter our collective understanding of the world.
But for the vast majority of fans, football has more relevance to their own lives on a day-to-day level than philosophy ever will. Though the sport itself contributes little of consequence to general society in the way that philosophy does, it is of great importance to a sizeable chunk of its members. It could be argued that this makes it of equal importance to a single idea genius idea that completely alters the lives of a much smaller section of society. I’m painting in broad strokes of course but it all depends on your perspective I suppose. (A good read btw)
People do attach their own context to things which they find important, but that’s not to say that it’s a completely mistaken practice.
Relentless introspection without any goal in sight can be equally damaging.
I agree with much of your post Chris and I understand the sentiment that comes with facing the demands, obligations, and ambitions of life which football and other great pastimes are free from. But, that’s not to say that it always lessens the significance of those pastimes. It’s just startling once you realize how in-congruent it is to those demands.
But more so, I think that football has transcended being a mere pastime. It has become more of an art like Cooking or Literature or Theatre. Most apparently with Cooking, one can see that it’s a combination of man’s intellect and his need. I think football has also evolved to approach a phenomenon of that sort. As to what it reveals that we need is an entirely separate, but fascinating, question on its own.
i said to me dad the other day, ‘i love football, apart from actually having to watch it’
[…] The Attraction of the Futile “I suppose that I’ve always been prone to pessimistic over-analysis, that’s just who I am, but the handful of weeks that have passed since I finished my educational career have given me far more time to occupy myself with the indulgences of introspection. Naked to the urgent winds of post-university reality, I have taken it upon myself to take a step back and look more fully at the tasks over which I regularly obsess. Needless to say, as I spend a great deal of my time writing (or at least attempting to do so), my activities as a blogger have not escaped close scrutiny.” The Equaliser […]
My obsession with football has died down somewhat in recent months (although you’d expect that given that the season ended not so long ago), but I think that my initial obsession that started about a year ago (I was a big football fan before that, just not as obsessed) was fuelled by an ambition to know more about football than any of my friends, family or colleagues, a desire to be able to instantly slap down (in conversation) the “Ingerlund” breed that stalk my country’s many pubs and also the naive hope of being able to make a living out of the game in some way. It’s also much easier to become an expert on football than it is on, say, philosophy, literature or economics, the latter of which has always been a big interest of mine.
They’re what I’d think would be my more unique reasons. Of course there’s the usual ones of the fact that I do actually enjoy watching the game (and reading “Inverting The Pyramid” has only heightened that experience), I madly support a particular team (Man United) and there’s all the camaraderie and identity that comes with that.
But having started reading Hitch-22 by Christopher Hitchens in the last couple of weeks, it’s only re-asserted my feelings that there are more intelectually simtulating and, quite frankly, important pursuits out there in the world that, to be honest, it would be rude to ignore. Poeple for whom football is there only major interest have, in my opinion, got it wrong. Having been there I understand their position, but in a way I think it’s quite a selfish attitude to have.
Although I partly agree with the comments here I do not buy into the thought that football is ‘ just 22 men trying to kick a ball into a goal’ as I feel that overly simplifies what football is as much as you could say that true love is just two people staring at each other and rolling around together till they die or the universe is just a bunch of hot stuff floating around some cold space or even that life in general is just some things, milling around, eating and drinking till they die.
I personally love football for the art of it, you could even say its much like life and that all what makes life fascinating and wonderful as well as brutal and despicable in life can be found in football.
Football and life are unpredictable, both are about teamwork but individual flashes of brilliance or ugliness can progress or regress the game as a whole not unlike philosophers, scientists, dictators, politicians do. That negativity can stop beauty but anyone can redeem themselves in a moment, different cultures and styles work together to make it better, more varied or hinder it’s development. Money rules but that doesn’t stop the peasant rising up to become legend and it always carries on, new generations take the place of the old learning from their mistakes and sometimes making the same ones again but becoming richer for it anyway.
I’m sure the list goes on and maybe I’m being overly romantic but it’s the way I see it and I love it for those very reasons. I’ve never been one for petty rivalries, tribalism or trivial gossip about footballers private lives or the idea that the people who play the game I love are somehow role-models, all of which reflects the way I live my life outside of football.
I suppose given that you could say football(and I guess any other past time we indulge in) and what we all take from them reflect who we are as people.
Any way great article, the first I’ve ever read on this site and I’ll definitely be coming back to read some more.
[…] issue from the self as does the SONA. In an entry from the Equaliser Football blog entitled “The Attraction of the Futile” it is discussed how football can turn into an escape. True enough I am one of those victims, yet […]
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