Monday, January 7, 2002
Updated: January 8, 12:55 PM ET
The wonderful absurdity of football
By Jeff Merron
ESPN.com
Review of Tuesday Morning Quarterback: Haiku and Other Whimsical Observations to Help You Understand the Modern Game, by Gregg Easterbrook Universe Publishing, 2001; 74 pages with illustrations $15.95 hardcover
If you read a lot, you might wonder how Gregg Easterbrook can be in so many places at once: Last month the New Republic, last week the Atlantic Monthly, today Beliefnet.com, tomorrow the New York Times Magazine, and then -- hey! -- there's a new book out about post-9/11 foreign policy, and who's one of the contributors? Gregg Easterbrook. It's hard to imagine the man comes up with too many words that don't make it into print, somewhere, somehow.
Which is a very good thing for football fans. Easterbrook writes a weekly column for Slate called "Tuesday Morning Quarterback," and it's terrific stuff. He knows the game, he's witty, he's weird, he sees everything, and he goes long -- 4,677 words in a recent column, or eight single-spaced pages.
Now Easterbrook is out with a 74-page book called, yes, "Tuesday Morning Quarterback," consisting of new material plus some stunning, retro black-and-white photos. These old-school pictures emphasize such details as shoes with individual cleats that seem the size of stout walnuts, and just about every photo demonstrates perfect execution. In one, a runner breaks free, holding the ball in textbook form, as the lead blocker positions himself perfectly to head off tacklers. Another photo features a holder still gazing at his finger a full second after the kicker has booted the ball. Grimaces, follow-throughs, even the way the players sit on the bench, in a straight line, attentive -- in these photographs you can just imagine a 1950s coach saying, "This is the way you do it, men."
Easterbrook's inclusion of these stock photos seems whimsical, but sincere -- as he writes in the introduction, football has a "wonderful absurdity" and a "preposterous flavor" that seem to only heighten his love for the game.
It's a fan's perspective, tempered just slightly by Easterbrook's serious, visionary side -- he is, among other things, a fellow at the prestigious Brookings Institution, a public policy think tank. In one instance in "Tuesday Morning Quarterback," Easterbrook, writing before the disasters of Sept. 11, conveys a sentiment that has become commonplace since that fateful day:
We should not look on pro athletes as heroes or praise them for courage. Though demanding and physically taxing, what happens on the field of sports is artificial and unrelated to the kinds of true courage shown by men and women in law enforcement, the military, health care, teaching -- or parenting. Pro athletes are entertainers. Being an entertainer is a respectable profession, but it's not heroic ...
But that's about it for serious stuff. This is a fun book, and as a fun book should, it begins with an ode to former Oakland Raiders third-string halfback Preston Ridlehuber, who Easterbrook calls "the most important player in NFL history," for reasons I won't reveal here.
Other worthwhile goodies in the book: a listing of great college football team nicknames ("The Fighting Artichokes," etc.); odd correlations (successful fake kicks = victory); some observations on what's wrong with the game, as televised (too many shots of coaches, not enough shots of cheerleaders); and examples of what's wrong with the pro game, as it is played, but doesn't have to be (teams should "take more risks," with a notable exception -- blitzing isn't just risky, it's stupid).
TMQ the column often features reader-submitted haiku, which works fine in that medium. TMQ the book is also filled with football haiku, but I was hungry, instead, for more of Easterbrook's good, dense prose, and light verse just wasn't an ample substitute.
What's not here? Easterbrook's Slate column, so unlike anything before it, is a minor miracle of modern sports journalism, and this reader, at least, would have enjoyed knowing a bit about how it started, and how it's developed, and his thoughts about the column's popularity. Along the same lines, the author mentions in the introduction that he played college football, but immediately says he won't discuss it. Finally, Easterbrook's readers from Slate may miss his rundowns of best plays, worst plays, stupid calls, and so on, which make up some of the best observations in his column.
But, once you realize that TMQ between covers is not the same thing as TMQ online, you're likely to finish the book a smile on your face and at least a few new ways to think about the game.
Jeff Merron writes the Surfin' Insider column for ESPN.com.
