Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to Philosophy on the Fringes, a podcast that explores the philosophical dimensions of the strange and the mundane.
Speaker: We're your hosts, Megan Fritz and Frank Cabrera.
Speaker: On today's episode, we're talking about football.
Speaker: What are the metaphysical identity conditions for sports teams?
Speaker: What makes a rule a good rule?
Speaker: And does the extreme injury risk of football make it America's most immoral pastime?
Speaker: Welcome back to Philosophy on the Fringes.
Speaker: It has been a minute, more than a minute, like two months, right, Frank?
Speaker: Yeah, it's been a while.
Speaker: Do you want to explain why that is?
Speaker: Yeah, so we've been on an unplanned hiatus for the last couple of months, and I guess there's been a couple of reasons for that.
Speaker: We haven't really made...
Speaker: this public in any way our family knows.
Speaker: But because we feel so close and intimate with you, our listeners, we just decided we would let you know why.
Speaker: The primary reason why we have not been recording any episodes for the past couple months is that I am pregnant and I have been just incredibly ill.
Speaker: Very, very sick.
Speaker: Yes, it's been hard, but we've been managing.
Speaker: Frank has been my nursemaid and I have been on the couch pretty much for the last eight weeks.
Speaker: But this week, things are really starting to look up, getting close to the end of the first trimester.
Speaker: You ladies who have had babies out there know what I'm talking about.
Speaker: So and then the other reason.
Speaker: that we also haven't had the opportunity to record is that recently our 16 month old had just decided to just see what would happen if she stopped sleeping like completely like prisoner of war torture style kind of no sleeping
Speaker: Yeah, that was hard too.
Speaker: But things have improved.
Speaker: On that front as well.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Here we are.
Speaker: Here we are finally back with all of you guys again.
Speaker: We are very, very happy to be back to talk about American football.
Speaker: American football.
Speaker: The sport, not the band.
Speaker: Although I really like that band.
Speaker: If people know who that band is, they're a great band.
Speaker: If there's a demand for us to have a podcast about the band, I'm sure Frank would be excited about that too.
Speaker: Definitely.
Speaker: But I'm actually, Frank knows this, sad that this is the week that we're recording the episode on football because my team, the Kansas City Chiefs, have recently suffered a really devastating and, I feel free to say, embarrassing loss over the weekend.
Speaker: Yeah, it was really hard watching them play.
Speaker: It was ugly.
Speaker: Yeah, there was one point where I think the offensive lineman accidentally pretty much sacked his own quarterback.
Speaker: That was bad.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Some people have said that the reason why the Chiefs lost is that Taylor Swift was not at the game.
Speaker: Some people have said that.
Speaker: Thoughts about that?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, as a Chiefs fan first and admittedly not a Swifty, I don't have anything against her.
Speaker: I just I'm just nothing her.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: We're both neutral with respect to Taylor Swift.
Speaker: Completely neutral.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But as a Chiefs fan first, I guess like other Chiefs fans, I tend to find the coverage of that romance a bit over the top.
Speaker: But you know, if she's doing something that helps them win.
Speaker: It's good for football.
Speaker: I see people in the United Kingdom asking questions about how football works on Twitter.
Speaker: So it seems like NFL is benefiting from the Taylor Swift seal of approval.
Speaker: The Taylor Swiftization of American football.
Speaker: So actually, it's not that bad that we had to wait to record this podcast because football is now even more relevant than it used to be.
Speaker: Reaching new demographics that it may never have reached before.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I guess that's a thing.
Speaker: So Frank, we're both football fans.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What would you how did you get into football initially or what do you like about football?
Speaker: Yeah, good.
Speaker: So I remember pretty vividly the moment I was first in the football.
Speaker: I was like nine or 10 years old.
Speaker: It was during the Super Bowl.
Speaker: I think it was the 1999 or 2000 Super Bowl.
Speaker: It was between the Tennessee Titans and the St.
Speaker: Louis Rams.
Speaker: This is when the quarterback Kurt Warner was playing for the Rams.
Speaker: And back when the Rams were in St.
Speaker: Louis.
Speaker: Yeah, a long time ago, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the Titans lost by one yard.
Speaker: Like, I remember seeing this guy.
Speaker: It was the last play of the game, and he's just one yard short.
Speaker: He's trying to have the ball cross the end zone.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I just felt so bad for him.
Speaker: And I felt so bad for the Titans that I became a Titans fan.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I guess I just like the underdog.
Speaker: Like the Rams were like the best team in the NFL by far.
Speaker: I never even heard of the Titans.
Speaker: And I just, I don't know.
Speaker: Like something about that guy's struggle to get that ball over the line of the end zone and score the touchdown, but failing.
Speaker: really got me into football.
Speaker: And then after that, you know, I was a teenager.
Speaker: I played some video games.
Speaker: I played Madden a lot in my teen years.
Speaker: But after that, I sort of stopped following football.
Speaker: I sort of stopped following sports.
Speaker: And I guess I'd probably say that I wasn't really into football again until I met you and we started all watching the Chiefs together with your family and all of that.
Speaker: So yeah, I'm in a weird place when it comes to football because I used to play Madden, so I know a lot about the stats and the rules and different plays, but that was a long time ago.
Speaker: I remember it all and I still really like football and I think it's a cool game, but yeah, I'm not a fan of any particular team really.
Speaker: I like watching games still, but that's sort of where I'm at.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: So did this was this game?
Speaker: Is that what inspired you to get your childhood Tennessee Titans betting?
Speaker: Yeah, so we still have that somewhere.
Speaker: Well, that's really that's really neat.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: One yard short.
Speaker: That's yeah, that's a good game.
Speaker: I forget the guy's name like Dyson or something.
Speaker: Kevin Dyson, I think was the guy.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Yeah, he just failed by one yard.
Speaker: God.
Speaker: Yeah, I have been a football fan.
Speaker: Well, so my family's always been a football family.
Speaker: I'll say we've always watched football, but we grew up watching college football.
Speaker: My parents went to Kansas State and they have obviously a football team, a famous college football team.
Speaker: And
Speaker: also very regionally famous rivalries with surrounding schools like mizzou and ku so we watched a lot of college football i didn't really care about it and to this day i do not care about college football we're going to talk about that later but when i was in college i don't i guess it was just like a lark i was sort of like i want to learn how football works to
Speaker: You know, I think a lot of my friends did fantasy football.
Speaker: And I was like, well, this would be fun.
Speaker: A fun group activity that I could join.
Speaker: So you read a book about how football works, right?
Speaker: Is that correct?
Speaker: Well, my friend gave it to me.
Speaker: Yeah, so my friend Sam was really into football and he was really good at fantasy football and organized the league and everything.
Speaker: And he's like, I have got the perfect book for you.
Speaker: And I'm trying to remember the name of it.
Speaker: I don't remember the name right now, but we will put it.
Speaker: I'll put, I will link this book in the- Football for Dummies?
Speaker: No, football for dummies.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: No, but it was a very helpful book.
Speaker: Shut up.
Speaker: I can't believe that that book series exists.
Speaker: I'm going to read something.
Speaker: I want to read something that calls me a dummy.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Whatever.
Speaker: But I'll find the book and I'll link it.
Speaker: But anyway, it was really helpful and it really helped me understand like the technicalities and the rules of the game.
Speaker: And what I did afterward was kind of funny because normally I think you become a fan of a team either, you know, because of your family or because like maybe, you know, some weird story like yours where you just get like inspired by a team.
Speaker: But I actually just chose a team to be a fan of for the sake of having an incentive to watch games and learn more.
Speaker: Yeah, it's like for like Pascalian reason.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You like you willed it to be the case.
Speaker: I bootstrapped some reasons for liking this.
Speaker: You brought it about.
Speaker: But I didn't start with the Chiefs.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: If you remember.
Speaker: Packers.
Speaker: It was the Packers.
Speaker: Is that because you were moving to Wisconsin?
Speaker: It was before that.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: It was before I knew I was moving to Wisconsin.
Speaker: Another one of my friends was a big fan of the Packers.
Speaker: And I think that just sort of made it easy for me to be like, all right, you know what?
Speaker: They are a good team.
Speaker: This was back when Aaron Rodgers was, you know, really good.
Speaker: And and they had a really good team.
Speaker: And
Speaker: kind of before he um changed but but yeah but they were a really good team at the time and I was like well this will be a great team to you know learn technicalities from and figure out how to watch football of course now everyone who knows anything about me knows that I'm a huge diehard Chiefs fan before they went to the Super Bowl but uh yeah so so now um watching football is a true joy of mine except for the game on Sunday which I could not even bring myself to look at
Speaker: I always really like that story about you.
Speaker: I think it's really reflective of your personality.
Speaker: You're like, here's a good that I'm not immediately attracted to, but I'm going to bring it about that I appreciate this good.
Speaker: A lot of people don't really think that way.
Speaker: They just sort of like they seek out the things they like, but you tried to cultivate a new interest because you trusted other people that it would be good for you.
Speaker: So I think that's a cool story.
Speaker: Well, thank you.
Speaker: So I guess so we're doing a podcast on American football.
Speaker: This is a philosophy podcast.
Speaker: Why are we doing philosophy of football?
Speaker: Do you have thoughts on, I guess, just philosophy of sports in general or football in particular?
Speaker: I guess we should start with whether this is a fringe topic.
Speaker: So there is a field of study called philosophy of sport.
Speaker: There is a journal of philosophy of sport.
Speaker: I even once saw a job advertised where the area of specialization is philosophy of sport.
Speaker: That was one time.
Speaker: So it
Speaker: It is a field of study.
Speaker: I do think it's pretty fringe just as a subdiscipline.
Speaker: And you don't often see courses on philosophy of sport being offered in universities and certainly not philosophy of American football.
Speaker: I did a little research with respect to what's out there when it comes to sports.
Speaker: Philosophy of sport.
Speaker: And it doesn't seem like there's a lot of philosophy of American football.
Speaker: Why that might be is a good question.
Speaker: I think maybe one reason is like pretty much only Americans play American football.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The NFL tried to have a Euro league way back in the day, but that failed.
Speaker: So maybe it's just because it doesn't have worldwide popularity or anything like that.
Speaker: But as a philosopher, I think I don't do any research in philosophy of sport, but I often use sports as a kind of teaching tool.
Speaker: I think a lot of interesting discussions in ethics say the ethics of genetic enhancement.
Speaker: They dovetail quite nicely with standard topics in the philosophy of sport, like should performing and enhancing drugs be banned?
Speaker: And if so, why?
Speaker: If not, why not?
Speaker: So whenever I teach genetic enhancement, it's often a nice thing to reference.
Speaker: Students often find that a good analogy, a good way to apply some of this stuff from enhancement.
Speaker: So I think that's cool.
Speaker: I also think philosophy sports is cool because people like sports, right?
Speaker: We always say as academics, we want to make our discipline relevant to the people.
Speaker: Well, you know, 100 million people watch the Super Bowl every year.
Speaker: So I think it would behoove academics, philosophers in particular, to care a little more about sports, try to connect what they're talking about to sports.
Speaker: I think sports is a rich area to draw from for examples or to apply to.
Speaker: various concepts or principles to, and as I hope we will demonstrate today in this episode.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: I mean, the interesting thing is I think now, you know, intuitively we think of like sports or athletics is really separate from, you know, academics, philosophy in particular.
Speaker: Maybe we tend to think of philosophers kind of pale, sickly.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Some of them were.
Speaker: Descartes was, but Plato, notably, was a wrestler.
Speaker: So you saw where I was going with this.
Speaker: The ancients would absolutely have hated this idea that you could separate physical excellence and the pursuit thereof with wisdom, the pursuit of wisdom in general.
Speaker: And in fact, Plato's academy, part of your education was physical education.
Speaker: Plato was an athlete.
Speaker: And Aristotle's ethics
Speaker: Often, points he makes about virtue and vice are illustrated through discussing, like, athletics, because the idea is that the attainment of virtue, just like the attainment of athletic excellence, is, you know, sort of practice-based.
Speaker: Yeah, so that's another example where sports is a nice tool to explain various concepts in philosophy.
Speaker: Do you want to talk about the idea of a virtue or a vice or practical wisdom?
Speaker: Often you can make good analogies to sports.
Speaker: Yeah, so a lot of the philosophy of sport that's out there is, at least from what I've seen, it's either on sports and athleticism in general.
Speaker: There might be a paper on teamwork or something like that.
Speaker: Or if it focuses on a specific sport, a lot of it's on...
Speaker: European football, soccer, what we call soccer, or maybe baseball?
Speaker: Is there?
Speaker: I don't.
Speaker: Yeah, I think I've seen some stuff on like what really makes for the MVP where the sport discussed most was baseball.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So but as far as we could find, nothing on American football.
Speaker: Not much.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Obviously, there's something.
Speaker: There was a philosophy and popular culture book published several years ago on American football.
Speaker: One of those like handbook things.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But not too much.
Speaker: So, yeah, so let's let's try to do some philosophy of American football.
Speaker: We'll make some reference to other sports along the way.
Speaker: But yeah, what's our first topic, Megan?
Speaker: Well, so one thing that we thought was interesting, and I guess this I mean, this kind of could apply to any sports, but I think that we want to think about it specifically in terms of football is this question of what makes for a good rule, because as anyone who follows sports knows, the rules have not stayed the same since the beginning of
Speaker: you know, since the birth of football or the birth of any sport, rules change and guidelines get changed as the years go by, presumably in an effort to make the rules better, make the gameplay go better.
Speaker: But what is it that makes a rule better or worse in maybe in general and in football in particular?
Speaker: Yeah, this is a great question.
Speaker: I often puzzle about this question because so philosophers, for instance, think a lot about normativity, but we often think about moral normativity or aesthetic normativity.
Speaker: What's normativity?
Speaker: Normativity is of or relating to oughts, goodness, what you should do, what you should believe, that sort of thing, as opposed to descriptive stuff, nearly describing.
Speaker: So a rule is something normative.
Speaker: It's saying this ought to be the case, you should do this.
Speaker: That, it's a rule, gives you some reason to act.
Speaker: So it's interesting that in sports in general, and football in particular, we have this sort of domain of normativity that isn't really analyzed too much by philosophers.
Speaker: So, you know, if there's some philosophers of sports out there listening, I'm sure you're like, well, I analyze it.
Speaker: Well, obviously, but not your typical philosopher.
Speaker: You guys are special.
Speaker: Yeah, you guys are great.
Speaker: But yeah, so rules are normative.
Speaker: What makes for a good rule?
Speaker: I think this is a great question.
Speaker: And so I think we want to say that there's some rhyme or reason to why a rule is changed.
Speaker: So I've already mentioned performance enhancing drugs, right?
Speaker: So they are against the rules in the NFL.
Speaker: They're prohibited.
Speaker: I looked up some stats on this.
Speaker: People still take performance enhancing drugs kind of time.
Speaker: There's been about 258 known violations since 2001.
Speaker: So that's about what, like 10 per year.
Speaker: I mean, that's, you know, that's that many.
Speaker: That's just the ones we know of, though.
Speaker: See, when I think of people getting busted for doping or taking a performance in hand, I think of baseball.
Speaker: Yeah, I think of baseball too.
Speaker: So baseball cracked down on this too.
Speaker: I don't know if it's more of a problem in football than baseball.
Speaker: But back to the question at hand, that's a rule.
Speaker: Why is it a rule?
Speaker: So I guess this makes us think about what the values of the sport are.
Speaker: Why do we watch this?
Speaker: Do we watch it merely to be entertained?
Speaker: I'm not sure that is the case because I think people might be really entertained by super monstrously strong people like hitting each other, people who are just all on performance enhancing drugs.
Speaker: We know that this is – look at wrestling, professional wrestling.
Speaker: So people might be entertained by that, but I think there's still a resistance to embracing performance enhancing drugs even if they are safe.
Speaker: So one reason why you might say they shouldn't be allowed is that they're on
Speaker: safe.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So that's one sort of way of addressing this question.
Speaker: What are the values we're trying to cultivate in the sport or the values we're trying to manifest or or what do we what do we want to see?
Speaker: Because obviously other performance enhancement measures are not only allowed, but encouraged, you know, extra training, you know, particular expensive trainers, anything you can, you know, specialty diet.
Speaker: All those things are performance enhancers.
Speaker: But there's something about it being like a substance.
Speaker: I guess the idea is that it's like a non-natural performance enhancement.
Speaker: And that certainly has different vibes.
Speaker: But I think philosophers like to think about this question of whether naturalness is actually something to be pursued or if it's meaningless.
Speaker: Yeah, because the obvious objection is that that it's merely natural is not a good reason to commend it and that it's unnatural is not a reason to prohibit it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So tornadoes are natural.
Speaker: They're bad.
Speaker: Modern medicine's unnatural, but it's good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The fact that it's natural doesn't really tell us much.
Speaker: The fact that it's unnatural doesn't really tell us much.
Speaker: But unnatural performance enhancement disallowed.
Speaker: But natural performance enhancement encouraged.
Speaker: It does seem like kind of a vibe because, I mean, I think we're OK.
Speaker: Yeah, like you said, we're OK with some some enhancers.
Speaker: So you better, you better diet, like more.
Speaker: better personal trainers, even better equipment that people are okay with.
Speaker: One really interesting case here to appeal to another sport is the case of Olympic swimming.
Speaker: So in the late 2000s, with the help of NASA, they developed these swimsuits that were made out of polyurethane that allowed swimmers to just break all the world records.
Speaker: So anyone who used these suits, they were just winning and winning and winning.
Speaker: Because of what their Speedo was made of?
Speaker: Because of what the Speedo was made of.
Speaker: Yeah, it was made of particular material that reduced like drag or whatever, increased buoyancy.
Speaker: And yeah, and they were like, Michael Phelps wore this suit.
Speaker: It took like 30 minutes to put on.
Speaker: You could only wear it a few amount of times.
Speaker: It was 500 bucks.
Speaker: And eventually the governing bodies banned this.
Speaker: This suit was referred to as technical doping.
Speaker: So here's a case where, you know, this thing is increasing performance.
Speaker: But we're not OK with it, right, for some reason.
Speaker: There's something about the performance that's not tied closely enough to the individual themselves.
Speaker: The effort of the individual puts into it, right?
Speaker: So obviously, we don't think effort's the only thing that matters.
Speaker: No one wants to watch me play basketball.
Speaker: I'm not that good.
Speaker: But so we think natural talent matters.
Speaker: But yeah, I think...
Speaker: I wish there were a more principled answer we can give to this question because really it just seems like, well, you know it when you see it.
Speaker: I find it like a little unsatisfactory.
Speaker: But I think we do watch sports because, at least in part, because we want to see, you know, what the Greeks would have called arete, this kind of excellence in performance.
Speaker: And we might think, well, you know, being super fast because you're on speed isn't really excellence of performance.
Speaker: Like this is entirely artificial.
Speaker: Yeah, I wonder if like our preferences in like later generations could change over time, though.
Speaker: So I think back to this old Super Nintendo game called Baseball 2020.
Speaker: So in Baseball 2020, robots and humans with bionic parts play baseball.
Speaker: When was this game made?
Speaker: I don't know, 1991 or something like that.
Speaker: So yeah, so back in the day and yeah, the human, the baseball players have jet packs to catch the balls and the fly balls in the air.
Speaker: So obviously seems absurd to us now.
Speaker: I don't think people have the interest in that sort of thing.
Speaker: But I wonder if like 200 years if if our preferences would change and we'd be OK with it.
Speaker: I don't know how historically contingent is the stuff we're talking about now.
Speaker: I mean, I would watch jetpack baseball right now, but I don't know.
Speaker: I'm not a huge baseball fan.
Speaker: Well, maybe there should be like a performance enhancing drug league and a performance enhancing, no performance enhancing drug league, right?
Speaker: People have proposed this.
Speaker: You have your enhanced league and your unenhanced league.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And let the market decide.
Speaker: Because, I mean, we kind of already do that with wrestling, right?
Speaker: There's like actual wrestling and then there's wrestling.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And there's big difference.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So there's one rule that Megan thinks should be changed in American football.
Speaker: And that's the opening coin toss.
Speaker: So football is unique compared to...
Speaker: basketball and like soccer, where the team that gets the ball is not just decided at random.
Speaker: So in football or in basketball, there is a tip off.
Speaker: Both guys jump up and try to hit the ball to their side.
Speaker: In soccer, there's something similar.
Speaker: In baseball, the away team just bats first.
Speaker: So it's not random.
Speaker: But in football, whether you get the ball first or not is random.
Speaker: It's decided by a coin toss.
Speaker: If you win the coin toss, you can say, I want the ball first, or you could decide to give it to the other team.
Speaker: So Megan doesn't like this.
Speaker: So she thinks maybe there's something wrong with randomness playing a large role in the sport.
Speaker: Yeah, obviously there's randomness inherent to every sport to some extent.
Speaker: But who gets the ball first is, so I guess statistically it doesn't have a big impact.
Speaker: It's basically 50-50.
Speaker: Yeah, some years it's like 51-49.
Speaker: It's very close.
Speaker: It really doesn't matter.
Speaker: The team that wins the coin toss in the regular season game does not win more frequently than the team that doesn't.
Speaker: I mean, I guess you can't... Even if it doesn't matter statistically, you still don't like it, right?
Speaker: You want to see something wrong with it.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, so, but let's say, I don't know.
Speaker: I just feel like it must be doing something.
Speaker: It just seems like too big of a part of the game to let a coin decide.
Speaker: Like there should be some kind of, you know, performance aspect of it.
Speaker: You should earn the right to have the ball first.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So regardless of what the statistics say, you just, you know, something unseemly about it.
Speaker: You want to see them earn that, earn that ball.
Speaker: I would like to see them wrestle for it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So that's, that's your proposal.
Speaker: They'll wrestle for it.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, like they have to dive for it, I think.
Speaker: So we'll drop the ball from up high, right?
Speaker: And then we'll get like five dudes on each side and they jump on it.
Speaker: And then whoever has it gets the ball.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Well, I think that would be better.
Speaker: Yeah, I think everyone agrees with me.
Speaker: Yeah, we'll shoot the NFL an email about this.
Speaker: Thanks.
Speaker: So, all right, so here's enough.
Speaker: This is unrelated to the rules thing, but in all of our examples, and we both do this, we just automatically default to saying, you know, guys or dudes or whatever, which is interesting.
Speaker: I mean, I guess it's natural because men's sports, as everybody knows, are way more popular than women's sports.
Speaker: You know, the women's U.S. soccer team had to fight to get equal pay.
Speaker: It was a long fight.
Speaker: The WNBA, I think, is probably the most successful women's sport.
Speaker: There is no women's American football.
Speaker: Maybe there's flag football.
Speaker: There is lingerie football.
Speaker: There's puppy ball.
Speaker: Puppy football.
Speaker: There's puppy football.
Speaker: But yeah, so there's this question.
Speaker: Why men's sports?
Speaker: Why is it so much more popular than women's sports?
Speaker: The men can jump higher and run fast.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: So maybe it's just that we just like
Speaker: seeing people be as like athletic as possible and in general obviously not in every case men can outperform women and things like running speed or jumping height things that are big parts of you know most major sports and so we just like to see the raw athleticism
Speaker: Here, I have some thoughts on this.
Speaker: They are like a quarter baked, but you tell me what you think.
Speaker: So obviously men's and women's bodies are objectified by culture, but in different ways.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Obviously, in general, women tends to be more objectified in this like sexual way.
Speaker: Women's bodies, the object of like sexual control by the dominant culture.
Speaker: But maybe there's this overlooked way in which male bodies are objectified by the culture in the realm of sport.
Speaker: That they're objectified for, you know, similarly for the purposes of entertainment and pleasure, you know, through other means, through non-sexual means.
Speaker: This sort of like situations that are dangerous, where they get hurt, that are violent.
Speaker: And it's just sort of like the male equivalent of physical objectification.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: And so maybe people have like separated these two spheres in their minds.
Speaker: Yeah, interesting.
Speaker: I'm not sure.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Like, I mean, it's calling it a quarter bait is generous, but I always have this thought, like, why don't people watch women's sport?
Speaker: The answer for me is that the only sport I really care about is football, and there's not women's football.
Speaker: Well, would you watch women's American football?
Speaker: I totally would.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I honestly, really, I'm not.
Speaker: I mean, they have like.
Speaker: I'm not blowing smoke.
Speaker: I really would.
Speaker: Women's roller derby, that could be pretty aggressive.
Speaker: That's true, but it's just not, it's not football.
Speaker: You're not out on the grass, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: But I would totally watch women's football if it were a thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: As you know, I simply don't care about basketball or baseball.
Speaker: Or soccer.
Speaker: Definitely not soccer.
Speaker: It's the last sport I'd watch.
Speaker: Yeah, so another thing that makes sports interesting to philosophize about is that there's actually, they're actually highly technical.
Speaker: There's a lot of data that goes into them.
Speaker: And Frank, as the numbers guy for our podcast, and as someone who got into football via the numbers, kind of, by playing Madden and knowing all these stats, you have a lot of thoughts about the use of data analytics in professional sports, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I think this is another instance where the binary between like the academic and the sports fan really is a false one because there's a lot of like a lot of avenues for nerdiness in sports, too, when it comes to stats and all of that.
Speaker: But yeah, data analysis.
Speaker: like using computational algorithms and advanced statistics to advise coaches in the games has increased markedly within the last like 10 years.
Speaker: So, you know, 10, 15 years ago, having a data analyst on your team was kind of oddity.
Speaker: Now pretty much every team has a data analyst, at least one in-house.
Speaker: And these people are advising the coaches what to do, what sort of plays are optimal for them to undertake.
Speaker: And this has led to changes in the way football is played, like really, really big changes.
Speaker: So for instance, it is now a lot more common for teams to go for it on fourth down, right?
Speaker: So when you got the fourth down, if you don't convert and make it a first down, you lose the ball, right?
Speaker: So back in the day, actually not too long ago, maybe 10, 15 years ago, it was pretty uncommon for teams to go for it on fourth and one.
Speaker: That is, you need one yard to get a first down and keep the ball.
Speaker: Now it's very common for teams to go for it on fourth and one.
Speaker: It's like 70% of the time they go for it on fourth and one.
Speaker: When I was playing Madden, I always thought this.
Speaker: I'm like, look, I always convert on fourth and one.
Speaker: Why don't teams go for it in real life?
Speaker: I always succeed in my video game to do this.
Speaker: But this is, a lot of people attribute this to the data analysts.
Speaker: They've crunched the numbers.
Speaker: They've realized that the expected points earned by going four and fourth and one just is greater than the expected points earned by punting it or being more conservative.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So the data analytics has led to more aggressive play on the one hand.
Speaker: But on the other hand, it also has, some people attribute this at least to it, it's also led to a decrease in rushing the ball, right?
Speaker: So passing the ball, like throwing the ball is much more common
Speaker: in football nowadays than it was like 10, 15 years ago.
Speaker: And some people attribute this to the data analysts.
Speaker: The data analysts have crunched the numbers and they've realized that your expected points earned if you throw the ball is higher than your expected points earned if you rush the ball.
Speaker: And so now we don't really see running the ball as much.
Speaker: There aren't really superstar running backs as much as there used to be.
Speaker: And this is a way the game has changed.
Speaker: And some people have argued for it's changed in a negative way.
Speaker: So there's a slogan when it comes to baseball, at least.
Speaker: I don't think there's a slogan in football, but sometimes people say the nerds are ruining baseball because they're feeding the coaches these decisions that they ought to do that are based on the stats.
Speaker: And in some ways, these decisions that are based on the stats.
Speaker: are contrary to the spirit of the game.
Speaker: It's contrary to the spirit of the game to always be trying to optimize, to always try to be the most efficient.
Speaker: That crowds out other values like athleticism.
Speaker: For instance, the athleticism of seeing the running back just try to force his way through a bunch of guys lined up to get that extra yard.
Speaker: That was a cool display of grit and athleticism that you don't see as much anymore because the data analysts have said, hey, that doesn't maximize expected points earned.
Speaker: So
Speaker: Obviously, they still run the ball, but it's like much less common.
Speaker: It's not as indispensable a tool as it used to be.
Speaker: The game is very much a passing game now.
Speaker: And that's pretty interesting, right?
Speaker: I mean, and you can apply this sort of thing in other domains.
Speaker: Like how has data analytics affected our lives in other ways?
Speaker: And has it crowded out other values that are important?
Speaker: I mean, I think in sports, like it's you're not just losing out on it's not just crowding out athleticism, but you might think that there are like these talents inherent to coaching that it's also crowding out.
Speaker: Like, I mean, think of the, you know, the old withered coach in like Rocky.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You love it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Mickey.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, thank you, Mickey.
Speaker: Imagine if, you know, instead of just being like this weathered wise man whose intuitions are always right or whatever, he just like sat down at a computer and was like, well, let's see.
Speaker: Let's see what moves, you know, give us the highest expected utility.
Speaker: Well, I'm sure the data analysts think that's the future.
Speaker: Like, I'm sure they see themselves as one day replacing coaches.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: But I think, right, right.
Speaker: But I'm saying like, I think if we think that there is a value like, you know, coaching intuition or something like that, then that's like also a thing that would, that is getting like lost or eaten up in this new approach.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, to put it a little bit like vaguely, there's a danger that you'd lose the human element.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So that the sport might be dehumanized in the sense that the human is out of the loop.
Speaker: It's not really a human endeavor anymore.
Speaker: It's sort of a battle between statisticians.
Speaker: That's one reason why people objected to the super advanced swimsuits.
Speaker: Like it suddenly seemed to be the case that swimming wasn't a competition between swimmers, but between swimwear engineer.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think especially in American football, people are very interested in like the human strategists.
Speaker: You know, like if you're a fan of a football team, you probably know...
Speaker: Not only who the coach is, but also the offensive coordinator and the defensive coordinator.
Speaker: And, you know, we don't think of them as just like sitting down at a computer and like typing numbers in.
Speaker: But we think of them as, you know, really thinking through like the specific talents of their team, who their opponents are going to be in planning, you know, with their own talents and their own skills as an individual, strategizing what the plays are going to be and that that's actually part of the game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So humans are maybe not maybe aren't as efficient as the algorithm might be in the future, but that's OK.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's a human game.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Who cares about efficiency?
Speaker: That's OK.
Speaker: And maybe that's preferable because that's what we're watching it for.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So anyway, I think.
Speaker: I think the data analytics thing is interesting.
Speaker: Like I said, I'm not fully opposed to it.
Speaker: I think it's good that the teams are being more aggressive and going for it on fourth down.
Speaker: I like to see that.
Speaker: I've always thought that the game was a little bit conservative in that respect.
Speaker: So I like to see that.
Speaker: But yeah, I do worry about the technology replacing human beings.
Speaker: And this is a general concern people have that applies elsewhere too.
Speaker: But I want, so here's like a question about how this all works for you.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: You may not know the answer, but like, it seems like it'd be actually hard to run the numbers given how different each team is.
Speaker: Like, I mean, doesn't, something that has to come into play surely is just like the individual strengths and weaknesses of your team and your opponents.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, there's, there's probably stats on that too.
Speaker: I mean, uh, so they are like, they're, they're like personalized.
Speaker: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker: Like, uh, I mean, they have like very advanced models.
Speaker: They could plug in like your team's data into this, uh,
Speaker: So, yeah, it is certainly not the case that data analysts are replacing coaches anytime soon.
Speaker: But that does seem to be the end result of the data revolution.
Speaker: Right, right, right, right.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker: To me, I think I'm even more pessimistic about it than you are.
Speaker: Like, I just want to see people like in the dirt or like on the gridiron, you know, with their whiteboard or their notepad, just like thinking, you know, this to me, this like the ideal is a very like Friday Night Lights kind of set up.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: We haven't mentioned that.
Speaker: We love Friday Night Lights.
Speaker: We watched this a few years ago.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Gosh, was it that long ago?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, we loved it.
Speaker: It's absolutely- Great show.
Speaker: Great show.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Great show.
Speaker: But speaking of Friday Night Lights, this is actually a great segue to our next topic.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: In Friday Night Lights, they're in high school.
Speaker: They're playing tackle football.
Speaker: What happens in the very first episode?
Speaker: Some guy gets, like, seriously injured.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The star quarterback gets seriously injured and partially paralyzed.
Speaker: So what most people know about football is...
Speaker: is that probably more than any other major sport, it is incredibly violent.
Speaker: People get very, very bad injuries from it.
Speaker: And that is not relegated to professional football, but in all levels of contact football, there are very serious injuries that are very, very common.
Speaker: And this has been a point of extreme controversy for football.
Speaker: Yeah, especially recently.
Speaker: So I think we all have this sense that like, oh, yeah, you get hit too many times, you're going to get brain damage or whatever.
Speaker: But we also watch these plays and it does just look like they bounce off of each other.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: So that's true.
Speaker: I think we're of two minds about this.
Speaker: If you were to tell someone like, hey, football, you play it a lot, you're going to have brain damage.
Speaker: They probably wouldn't think that that was anything too controversial.
Speaker: But also, yeah, you're right.
Speaker: It doesn't really seem like the hits are that hard on television, but they are, right?
Speaker: I mean, I've never been tackled by a professional football player.
Speaker: It probably hurts a lot.
Speaker: And the players are experiencing this all the time.
Speaker: So I did a bit of research on this issue for the podcast.
Speaker: And very, very concerningly, it turned out to be a lot worse than I thought.
Speaker: So this is being increasingly known that
Speaker: that football players are particularly susceptible to a neurodegenerative disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
Speaker: So this is found not just in football players, but also people that play contact sports, sometimes also people in the military.
Speaker: So what this is, is that because of constant hits to the head.
Speaker: Repeated concussions.
Speaker: Not necessarily concussions, though.
Speaker: So it's really the concussion thing is a red herring.
Speaker: It's sub-concussive hits is what it's called.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: So not even concussive hits.
Speaker: Sub-concussive hits can lead to this disease.
Speaker: So this disease is characterized by...
Speaker: Symptoms like memory loss, confusion, impaired judgment, impulse control problems, aggression, depression, suicidality, and eventually dementia.
Speaker: So what happens just in a nutshell is just a protein builds up around the brain.
Speaker: You can see it in brain scans.
Speaker: It looks really, really, really bad.
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: I guess it's like a protective response from your body.
Speaker: I'm not really sure, but the protein shouldn't be there.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And the protein leads to these problems.
Speaker: So there's been like from pretty high profile cases of this, some of these problems manifesting in former football players.
Speaker: So one guy named Aaron Hernandez from several years ago, he was...
Speaker: convicted of murdering someone and he hanged himself in prison.
Speaker: His brain was analyzed by doctors at Boston University.
Speaker: So this is where the CTE Research Center is, the main CTE Research Center at Boston University.
Speaker: And the director there said that his brain was one of the worst she had ever seen.
Speaker: He's only 27.
Speaker: She'd never seen a brain look this bad.
Speaker: At such a young age.
Speaker: So, yeah, this is very concerning.
Speaker: You can find lots of studies where they're like, BU fines CTE in nearly 92% of ex-NFL players studied.
Speaker: So that's 92%.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, right.
Speaker: So that's a high number.
Speaker: We should be we should be realistic about what this means, though.
Speaker: Obviously, there's a selection bias here.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Your brain gets donated to the CTE Research Center because your relatives think you had this disease.
Speaker: So it doesn't mean that you died.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it doesn't mean that 92 percent of people had 92 percent of NFL players are going to get CTE.
Speaker: But you can do some math here to determine like what the rate might be.
Speaker: So so for instance.
Speaker: In another study, 110 out of 111 NFL players' brains that were examined.
Speaker: By the way, you can only diagnose this after they're dead, right?
Speaker: So there's no, there's no, you can't diagnose it when they're alive.
Speaker: Why can't you see it through a scan?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: You just can't.
Speaker: So you have to analyze the brain when they're dead.
Speaker: And so in this one study, 110 out of 111 NFL players were found, their brains were found to have CTE.
Speaker: So even if you say that that...
Speaker: Those were all the brains that had CTE during that period.
Speaker: And no one else had CTE.
Speaker: That would still mean the rate for that period of time was 10%, whereas the general population rate of CTE is 1%.
Speaker: So at the very bare minimum, given the implausible assumption that all the CTE brains were gathered up in that period of time, there'd still be 10% of all players.
Speaker: So best case scenario, playing football increases your risk by 10.
Speaker: Best case scenario, like one in 10 players or about five players in every NFL roster have this or will have this.
Speaker: So, yeah, it's just incredibly bleak.
Speaker: Yeah, it just gets worse and worse.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I mean, so it's not just found in.
Speaker: NFL players.
Speaker: So there was a study where they analyzed athletes who had died young, so youth athletes, so people who had just played youth sports or college football.
Speaker: And in 40% of the athletes that they analyzed, their brains that they've analyzed that died before 30, they had CTE.
Speaker: So because of the cumulative effect, obviously, the earlier you start playing, the worse off you're going to be.
Speaker: Also the position you play.
Speaker: So there's studies.
Speaker: So obviously, if you're a lineman, right, you're getting hit all the time.
Speaker: If you're a quarterback, you're probably okay.
Speaker: So it's not as bad for a quarterback, but it is really bad for a lineman, like markedly worse.
Speaker: So, yeah, this is a huge problem.
Speaker: It's really a lot worse than I had thought.
Speaker: One might wonder, what's the NFL doing about this?
Speaker: Have they acknowledged this?
Speaker: So they have acknowledged it in courts, but they haven't done anything about it, at least according to the director of the CTE center.
Speaker: So she says the NFL hasn't done anything substantive about it.
Speaker: So they have tried to do some things, but it just doesn't seem like there's really anything you can do because it's not about concussions.
Speaker: The NFL is focusing on concussions.
Speaker: It's not about concussions.
Speaker: It's about just the sheer accumulation of force on your body.
Speaker: And there's no helmets you can make where your head feels nothing.
Speaker: Yeah, they're trying to make better helmets, but it really just seems like it's part of the game.
Speaker: And you might say, well, yeah, it is part of the game.
Speaker: Back in the day, they used to have this segment on ESPN called Jacked Up where they'd show the hardest hits ever.
Speaker: During the week, they quietly got rid of that after all the concussions stuff came out.
Speaker: Didn't they all, didn't like, in really, really early football, I may be misremembering this, but I feel like I remember them having like, they didn't even have hard helmets.
Speaker: Yeah, they definitely did not.
Speaker: They definitely did not.
Speaker: Like the helmets they have now are much more advanced than the helmets.
Speaker: They just look like little hoods or something.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah, it's really bad.
Speaker: I mean, like, yeah, it's super bad.
Speaker: Like it's and it's like realistically, the percentage of players that have or are going to have CT is higher than 10 percent.
Speaker: I've seen some reasonable estimates as being like 20 to 30 percent, like probably something like the number that was seen in that one study of the youth, the youth athletes, 40 percent of athletes who died before 30 had had CTs.
Speaker: So the dark side of Friday Night Lights is that these kids are, you know, in some cases like 14 and they're already, you know, and obviously all of their goal is to go play football in college and professional football.
Speaker: And if they succeed, then they'll be at the super high risk for all of these terrible health effects and psychological effects.
Speaker: And so we were just talking about this the other day between amongst ourselves and
Speaker: We were talking about whether we would we would want to let our kids play like football if they wanted to.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I think definitely not.
Speaker: And there have been some high profile athletes that have said the same thing.
Speaker: So LeBron James, for instance, was asked this in 2014.
Speaker: And he said, no football in my house.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Not until they're in high school because of the health problem, health issues.
Speaker: I mean, so it isn't.
Speaker: I mean, I'm looking at the chart here.
Speaker: It's not that bad for kids that play high school.
Speaker: So if you're a lineman and you play four years of high school, you quadruple your risk of getting CTE compared to someone that plays youth football for two years.
Speaker: So it's not terrible.
Speaker: If you're a lineman that plays professionally for six years after going through high school and college, that is 109 times increase.
Speaker: So if you stop after high school, you're OK.
Speaker: If you stop after high school, it's not that bad.
Speaker: Yeah, I guess.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But you feel pretty concerning if you start in high school and go on.
Speaker: That's really bad.
Speaker: And I think probably the majority of of really successful professional football players.
Speaker: I don't I don't know if this is true, but it seems like probably they would have started in high school.
Speaker: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker: Because it's so competitive.
Speaker: Like you have to start training early.
Speaker: There are some instances of players switching sports and not playing football in college.
Speaker: It's pretty rare, though.
Speaker: But yeah, I mean, I definitely would not.
Speaker: It's just not worth the risk.
Speaker: There's lots of other sports youths can play that are just comparatively less risky.
Speaker: Lots of other sports they can play to cultivate the virtues that sports allow for and that provide them independence and that don't quadruple their risk of getting CTE.
Speaker: So if we so let's say that legislation is passed on this and we we we banned tackle football for people under 18 for minors.
Speaker: How I mean, do you think that that would like kill football?
Speaker: I don't think so.
Speaker: I think I think I think the game would evolve.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I mean, because I think I do think it's possible to transfer.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: To just kind of start out and get good?
Speaker: Yeah, I think so.
Speaker: Yeah, I think so.
Speaker: Maybe if you could do some other kind of training, like just make sure they know the game really well or something.
Speaker: Well, one interesting article I found in my research here is it was arguing that OSHA should get involved here.
Speaker: I mean, this is an interesting sort of argument.
Speaker: I mean, the NFL players are employees.
Speaker: They're workers.
Speaker: Their workplace is pretty dangerous, right?
Speaker: Like, shouldn't OSHA be involved here?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, on one hand, it's horrifying.
Speaker: Obviously, I'm having some, I don't even want to say cognitive dissonance because I don't think any part of me is like okay with that rationally.
Speaker: Although, of course, I still, in my heart, I still carry a torch for... Yeah, I mean, so there's another question to ask here, right?
Speaker: Is it wrong knowing this?
Speaker: Is it wrong for us to watch football, right?
Speaker: I mean, like, do these numbers give us any reason to change our behavior?
Speaker: Yeah, and...
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: You don't want to know.
Speaker: I don't want to know.
Speaker: Yeah, precisely.
Speaker: So I guess here's the thing that I kind of wanted to talk about before we get into our final topic.
Speaker: I think it's a good bridging topic here, which is the the topic of teams.
Speaker: So Frank and I were having a conversation the other night about it was when the Chiefs were losing.
Speaker: I was I was really upset.
Speaker: And he said,
Speaker: He was being nice, but I could tell he didn't really fully understand the depths of my rage.
Speaker: Or heartbreak, I guess, is more like it.
Speaker: But I said- I failed in my husbandly duty to be as upset as Megan was.
Speaker: It was just that you couldn't-
Speaker: You couldn't empathize because you hadn't maybe had, well, at least what I accused him of is, you know, not ever really truly being a fan of a team rather than just a fan of football in general, which I think he admitted was right.
Speaker: Yeah, the line you uttered was, you're not a fan of any team, you just admire them.
Speaker: That's pretty fair.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because to be a fan of a team, I think means, you know, wanting to watch them and be loyal to them, even when there really is nothing to admire about them.
Speaker: As everyone who's been a fan of the Kansas City Royals knows, it's hard to be a fan of the Royals.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Especially now.
Speaker: But anyway.
Speaker: That's baseball.
Speaker: But the topic of teams is interesting, especially when it comes to college football, because, or sorry, not college football, professional football.
Speaker: In college, you have pretty clear delineation on what a team is.
Speaker: It's just the football team associated with the university, with the particular college.
Speaker: In high school, same thing.
Speaker: It's just the team that is at the high school.
Speaker: With professional teams, it's a little bit different.
Speaker: They're tied to a city, but not indefinitely, right?
Speaker: Teams can move.
Speaker: The Rams moved from St.
Speaker: Louis to L.A.,
Speaker: Probably many other teams have moved that I can't think of examples right now.
Speaker: Obviously, their roster completely changes.
Speaker: Like, ship of Thessius, every piece is replaced every, you know, 10 years at least.
Speaker: So what is it that makes a professional team a team that keeps it the same team?
Speaker: And what is it that makes people attached to it given that it can change in all these seemingly really essential ways?
Speaker: Yeah, great question.
Speaker: Kind of like a metaphysical question of identity thing going on here.
Speaker: This reminds me of a particularly puzzling case that I used to think about as a youth.
Speaker: So this involves the Cleveland Browns.
Speaker: I think this case should be a lot more well known among philosophers because it's another sort of interesting puzzle where you can ask questions about identity over time.
Speaker: So here's the setup.
Speaker: So the Browns, very old team.
Speaker: They've been around since like the 50s or something like that.
Speaker: In 1995, their owner decided he wanted to leave Cleveland, leave Cleveland and go to Baltimore and rename the Browns the Ravens.
Speaker: So he did this.
Speaker: This was very controversial.
Speaker: This doesn't happen very often where a storied team leaves their city and changes their name and then becomes something completely different.
Speaker: There's a lot of controversy about this, but the league allowed it, provided that the owner allowed a new Browns team to sprout up in Cleveland.
Speaker: So he could take his Browns, bring them to Baltimore, name them the Ravens, and then a new team would sprout up a couple of years later.
Speaker: So it's literally a ship of festivities.
Speaker: It's something like that, right?
Speaker: So I've always thought about this, right?
Speaker: In 1999...
Speaker: When the new Browns team was in Cleveland, like, who's the real Browns, right?
Speaker: Yeah, and where'd the fans go?
Speaker: Where'd the fans go, yeah.
Speaker: In fact, there was a... I thought about this question because when I was young, I had a... We owned a board game that was like NFL Monopoly.
Speaker: And the Browns weren't on there, but the Ravens were.
Speaker: So I thought to myself, oh, that's just the Browns, right?
Speaker: The Ravens.
Speaker: Oh, that new team, that's just the Browns.
Speaker: I literally thought that.
Speaker: But now, like, I don't know.
Speaker: Like, who...
Speaker: Who is the Browns?
Speaker: Is it the expansion team, the team that arose with completely new roster, completely new owner in 1999?
Speaker: Or is it the team that's now called the Ravens?
Speaker: I mean, if you look who owns the Ravens now, there's an unbroken line between other owners.
Speaker: Like that guy bought it from that person, that person bought it from that person, that person bought it from that person, going all the way back to the 40s or whatever.
Speaker: So yeah, this is an interesting little metaphysical puzzle, right?
Speaker: There has to be like, so this does not obviously answer the question.
Speaker: There must be data on like where fans actually went.
Speaker: I looked on Reddit, you know, very scientific source.
Speaker: Research.
Speaker: And it seems like most people regarded the Browns as the Browns, or they didn't think the Ravens were really the Browns, although some people did.
Speaker: And here's an interesting argument.
Speaker: The Browns are good.
Speaker: The new Browns are bad.
Speaker: So that's not the Browns.
Speaker: And in fact, like the Ravens are one of the most successful teams like ever, like since the expansion, they've like won.
Speaker: They're like the third best winning percentage since they've come to exist.
Speaker: And the Browns have been really bad ever since this happened.
Speaker: So yeah, I mean, if you're a Browns fan, what do you think?
Speaker: Do you think the Ravens are really the Browns?
Speaker: So the new Browns are like the accursed Frankenstein homunculus fake Browns.
Speaker: I lean toward that view.
Speaker: I think according to the correct theory of reference, philosophical theory of reference, the Ravens are really the Browns.
Speaker: And the Browns, that team that calls them the Browns, they're a pseudo-Browns.
Speaker: They're fake Browns.
Speaker: So that'd be something like a causal theory of reference, right?
Speaker: Something like that.
Speaker: There's an unbroken causal chain, whereas in the case of the new Browns, there's not.
Speaker: For instance, the Titans, my favorite team as a youth, they used to be called, they used to be the Houston Oilers.
Speaker: We don't pretend that they're a new team.
Speaker: That's just the team now.
Speaker: They changed their name.
Speaker: They changed their location.
Speaker: The Titans used to be the Oilers.
Speaker: The Ravens used to be the Browns.
Speaker: That team in Cleveland is a fake team.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: So there's just an imposter team.
Speaker: Yeah, I think so.
Speaker: That's absolutely incredible.
Speaker: So so most people but but you said most fans of the old Browns went with the new Browns.
Speaker: So it seems like maybe there's something about just like I don't want to say slogan, but just I mean, I do think it had most more to do with the name or the city.
Speaker: So the team had moved had stayed the Browns and the new team that sprung up in Cleveland had been the Ravens.
Speaker: Do you think the outcome would have been different?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a good question, right?
Speaker: So let's just suppose I'm wrong and the people in Cleveland who are Browns fans are correct.
Speaker: Like, why are they correct?
Speaker: You might think it's just a conventional matter, just a matter of convention.
Speaker: But maybe it just has to do with the name and the logo and the team.
Speaker: You know, they're all there.
Speaker: The Ravens are a different team.
Speaker: You already have the merch.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Yeah, I wish I... It might be the city.
Speaker: I mean, people are loyal to teams in their city often.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We got to find a philosopher who's a Browns fan to talk to about this.
Speaker: Ben Schwan.
Speaker: Ben Schwan.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We should send this to him.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The only one I know.
Speaker: Maybe the only Browns fan I know in general, probably.
Speaker: It's been rough for the Browns.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But I think that this is a good segue into our final topic when talking about teams, because the ultimate showdown between the top two teams in professional football, as everybody knows, is the Super Bowl.
Speaker: And the Super Bowl is a really, really interesting, I think even just like sociologically interesting event in that it's I mean, it's the most watched thing on television in America, right?
Speaker: I would say so.
Speaker: I mean, I looked up the numbers every year.
Speaker: It's around like 110 million, 115 million people watch this.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a lot.
Speaker: It's probably more than any other thing on television.
Speaker: The thing that most people watch.
Speaker: And the clues to this is that every single person wants to advertise during the Super Bowl because most people in America are watching it.
Speaker: And it's this huge thing.
Speaker: Frank was talking about the Super Bowl as kind of being, I think he was speaking fondly of it as a kind of rare American, I don't know, ritual.
Speaker: Yeah, I think it's cool that 100 million people watch the same thing every year.
Speaker: I mean, culture is increasingly fragmented into niche subcultures.
Speaker: You can see this with, you know, tastes in music.
Speaker: Of course, there's the Swifties, but there's a lot of like niche subcultures when it comes to genres.
Speaker: Social media.
Speaker: Social media too.
Speaker: There's a million social medias now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so like things are increasingly fragmented and there's very few things that like most of the country watches or consumes.
Speaker: I like that there's a thing that we can all point to.
Speaker: It'd be like, oh, did you see the Super Bowl?
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: And maybe that's something to commend Taylor Swift to bring this back to, you know, we talked about earlier, right?
Speaker: Maybe it's good that so many people like Taylor Swift.
Speaker: There's something everyone can get on board with.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Well, because so many people I know who do not like football still watch the Super Bowl and have like Super Bowl parties and stuff.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I think that's cool.
Speaker: I think, you know, rituals are cool.
Speaker: They bind communities together.
Speaker: Ritual is a common topic in ancient Chinese philosophy.
Speaker: Confucianism in particular emphasizes ritual and...
Speaker: Yeah, I think... Yeah, Confucius thinks that rituals are like an essential aspect of... Moral virtue, right?
Speaker: It's not just mere custom.
Speaker: Ritual is ethically inflected.
Speaker: It's a kind of virtue.
Speaker: And yeah, it's an occasion to express various attitudes.
Speaker: You can express attitudes of friendliness and hospitality during the Super Bowl when you have your Super Bowl party.
Speaker: So, yeah, I like I like the Super Bowl because it's a it's a it's a cool ritual.
Speaker: Rituals are ethically important and I hope it retains its prominence.
Speaker: I don't really care for all the advertisement, though.
Speaker: I hate being advertised that.
Speaker: But that's neither.
Speaker: There's a dark side of the Super Bowl, of course.
Speaker: A lot of a lot of sort of darker uses of.
Speaker: money and people taking advantage of the extreme popularity of it for a lot of unsavory purposes.
Speaker: So obviously, you know, the Super Bowl isn't a big, you know, jar of roses.
Speaker: Is that is that an idiom?
Speaker: No, I'm going to say no.
Speaker: I guess you wouldn't put rose.
Speaker: Whatever.
Speaker: There's better roses, better roses go on the bed, not the jar.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So it's not a bed of roses.
Speaker: There is certainly a dark side to the Super Bowl, especially as it's become a thing that more and more money is dependent upon.
Speaker: But but right, I think like I think I agree with Frank that there are so many things that are so few things, almost nothing anymore that most of America just stops and does that.
Speaker: This has a nice now.
Speaker: I mean, now if we were thinking like a Confucian, we might wonder what values this particular ritual is instilling.
Speaker: Some good, maybe some bad.
Speaker: Yes, like team spirit, you know, communal solidarity, things like that.
Speaker: Maybe also overconsumption.
Speaker: So maybe some bad values as well.
Speaker: But I'm a big fan of the Super Bowl.
Speaker: I was not a fan for a while when there was kind of this unholy monopoly on it by the Patriots.
Speaker: But now that we've broken that curse, it's a really fun game.
Speaker: Although...
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: You might have ruined football for me forever.
Speaker: Like eventually I just, I worry that this knowledge of the injuries is going to eat away at my ability to enjoy it slowly over, over many years.
Speaker: Knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: That's why we do what we do.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Thanks so much for joining us today.
Speaker: Please join us for our next episode, which will be episode 13 on near death experiences.
