But even reasonable people can have qualms about the game—the rampant commercialism, the slightly seedy, very intimate relationship with gambling. For the NFL, the very success of the league makes it hard to identify with the players. That is, unless you also happen to be a highly paid, oversized, world-class athlete who's been given special treatment since grade school.

Whatever form, and whoever makes them, the arguments against football boil down to one of two basic objections. First, the games simply don't matter—not in the grand scheme of things. Does anybody lose their house because of those 22 guys running after a little brown ball? Does anybody die because some kicker misses a field-goal that would have won a game for the home team?

Yes on both counts. First, if the kick was missed in Oakland or Philly, the kicker himself would be in deep water. And, given the aforementioned relationship between football and gambling, you can also be pretty sure that someone's life—or at least their thumbs and kneecaps—is riding on every point.

The larger idea—that football games aren't life-or-death for most fans—is true, but couldn't be more irrelevant. Of course, the games don't matter. That's the whole idea. Life is serious, confusing, and scary. Sports are a refuge from real-world problems—and a place to release all the angst they cause. To be a football fan is to enter a world where you can paint your face, whoop and holler, and wear the silliest hat you can find—provided it's in team colors. You can be primal, tribal in a way that's simply not socially acceptable in any other context. If life-and-death issues were at stake, it wouldn't be entertainment.

In football, unlike life, the rules are always well-defined, the end is always clear, and distinguishing between good and evil is as simple as looking at the color of a jersey. In football, wrongs are instantly punished, with any injustices corrected through replay. If the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to simultaneously hold two opposing ideas and still function, a fan must know that the outcome of a game doesn't matter one bit, yet simultaneously believe that nothing could ever be more important.

The other ubiquitous argument against the game, sport, national metaphor, way of life, and pseudo-faith of American tackle football is that it is violent.

Certainly, football demands speed and timing, meticulous planning, and pinpoint execution. The athletes are magnificent. The coaches, at their best, are chess grandmasters. Undoubtedly, fans also love the game for the feeling of community that comes from rooting for team, and the sheer sensory overload, and wild electricity of a packed, frenzied stadium. But the essence of the game is unquestionably brute force. The entire football-industrial complex—every beer commercial, every pom-pom and PSL—runs on the idea that Americans like to watch very large human beings smash into each other.