“Football is created just after the Civil War. It evolves in its own way for 70 years. It then intersects with the rise of television in the 1950s, and everything about it changes. It turns out that football is perfect for television and that television becomes really the central experience of watching football. … Unlike other sports, football is a completely mediated event, even when there's no media involved.”
Recode Media · Media & Creator Economy · November 2026
Context
Peter Kafka was comparing football's constant resets to how streaming shows are told to repeat their premise. Klosterman says football's fit with TV was an accident, and that this is the central argument of his book.
Transcript
…it's an interesting deal. It's like I'm promoting this book called football. So now I'm watching a football game. So now I'm hyper-aware of, well, what really is happening here in a way maybe that I allow my unconscious to control a lot of now it's really in the front of my mind. Yeah. So you're
…show because the assumption is people have their phone out and are doing other stuff. And so you need to remind them of that. Football has its own sort of version of that, right? They're constantly resetting it. They assume you've walked out. They assume you're not paying attention for a while.
…or any filmmaker, like kind of almost a troubling thing that the exposition needs to be more embedded in there because you just have to work from the premise that they can't follow a narrative that is unclear. And so what they're really saying is you got to think about this when you construct this new thing. What is incredible about football is that this is, of course, all an accident. I mean, football is created just after the Civil War. It evolves in its own way for 70 years. It then intersects with the rise of television in the 1950s, and everything about it changes. It turns out that football is perfect for television and that television becomes really the central experience of watching football. That, you know, one of my points in this book is that unlike other sports, football is a completely mediated event, even when there's no media involved. Our understanding of the experience of watching football is the television experience. And
watching a football game in person at the stadium is just a weird artifact that some people still do, but it's not the point of it.
There are hundreds of reasons to see a football game live that are valid. The experience, the sense of community. You feel like maybe you're supporting the team and affecting the outcome. You just like being in a large group. It's a neat thing to see. But one reason that you can never use is I…
at home is your couch. The best seat for the game is your couch at home.
More from Recode Media
