What is a Running Back in Football?

In preparation for the rapidly approaching football season, Dear Sports Fan is publishing a series about the basics of football. Some previous posts answer the questions: Why Do People Like Football, How do I Begin to Enjoy Football, Why Are People Obsessing About Fantasy Football Now, and What’s a Down in Football? Today’s post is the first in a set that explores each of the key football positions.

What is a Running Back in Football?

If football were a farm, the running back would be the pig. Like a good pig, a good running back is compact, strong, and very hard to catch. The job of a running back is multifaceted. Running backs are expected to be able to catch the football reliably and to prevent defenders, who are often much bigger than them, from getting to the quarterback, but that’s only part of it: the primary job of the running back is to take a few steps, grab the football as it’s handed to them, and then charge off down the field while avoiding as many defenders as possible before being tackled or pushed out-of-bounds.

Running back is one of the toughest jobs in football. A running back either gets hit or hits a defender on almost every single play. Sometimes both happen in a single play. Running backs have the shortest professional careers of all the positions (4.35 years according to a 2002 Dartmouth study), but they make up in immediate impact what they lose in longevity. Running backs don’t waste time growing into their professional careers; unlike other positions, they can be effective right out of the gate. The diverse skill set of a great running back includes some very unexpected qualities, like great peripheral vision and low center of gravity.

There is an overall trend in professional football to run the ball less and throw it more. This has made running backs a less important part of football strategy. The running back remains essential to most teams’ fortunes but there is a romantic air of inevitable obsolescence that lingers around the position.

What Kinds of Running Backs are There?

Feature back

A feature back is the running back on a team that gives the majority of its carries (plays when a running back takes a hand-off and runs the ball up the field) to a single person. A great running back can make an enormous difference to a team’s fortunes so it’s no surprise that teams who have star running backs feature them a lot. Twenty carries per game has traditionally been the average that defines a feature back but, like the fullback, this number has declined in the past ten years. Last year only three running backs averaged more than 20 carries per game over the whole 16 game season.

You won’t hear a lot of people refer to a running back as a feature back — it’s a term that will be used to differentiate one person who plays the running back position from another who does it but does it in a different way. As you might expect from a position that requires so many different skills, there are players who specialize in one aspect of the position. Increasingly over the past ten years, teams have used several specialized running backs instead of one great generalist. This approach is called “running back by committee.”

Fullback

The fullback is a blocking specialist. He often lines up right in front of a running back and uses himself as a bowling ball, scattering would-be tacklers away from the path of the running back who has the ball. Fullbacks are big, hulking guys with necks the size of medium-sized tree trunks. Alas, the fullback is a dying breed in the NFL. Over the past fifteen years, teams have gradually moved away from using fullbacks. This season it will be pretty rare to see a fullback on the field. Although the fullback is officially one type of running back, it is specialized enough that it’s basically considered another position, as opposed to the types of running backs we’re about to describe.

Third-Down Back

The third-down back is usually a smaller, quicker running back who is better than most at catching the ball. This is dictated by the situation teams find themselves in on third downs. If a team is not within a yard or two of getting a first down, they will almost definitely be passing the ball. The third down back is the best running back on the offense for when the team is planning on passing. Sometimes, instead of playing their best receiving running back on third down, teams will choose to put a veteran who can reliably “read the blitz” (figure out who it’s their job to block). When it comes down to it, regardless of strategy, the third down back is a back who plays mostly on third down.

Goal-Line Back

Some teams have a running back who specializes in getting into the end-zone when their offense is within five yards of scoring a touchdown. Like a third-down back, this specialty is defined by situation. Unlike the third-down back, the goal line back tends to be bigger and stronger instead of quicker and more wriggly. Plays close to the end-zone are much more compact than those that start somewhere in the middle of the field, because all twenty-two players on the field are smushed into only a few yards instead of the twenty to thirty yards that could be expected otherwise. Goal line backs use patience and vision to find small weak spots in the defense and then use their formidable strength to push through them to make it to the end-zone.

What is the Fantasy Football Importance of the Running Back?

Traditionally the running back was the most important position in fantasy football. This is because most fantasy football leagues require each fantasy team (twelve is the most common number) to use the stats from two running backs each week but only one quarterback. The statistical difference between the best quarterback and the twelfth best was not as great as that between the best running back and the twenty-fourth best. This is still true today but much less so because of the overall decline in use of the running game and the splintering of the position into specialist running backs that split the work. As in real life, fantasy fortunes are often cyclical, so the glory days of a running back’s importance may come again.

What is a Good Football Book? The Blind Side

Dear Sports Fan,

I have a question for you from my coworker. He is making a last ditch attempt to get his wife interested in sports, especially pro football. She loves murder mysteries, so he asked for book recommendations that would merge the two. Do you have any recommendations? Preferably murder mysteries, but any engaging book will do!

Thanks,
Helen

— — —

Dear Helen,

Last ditch attempt, huh? I too am a lover of detective novels but when it comes to introducing someone to American Football through a mind-blowingly good read, there’s only one book I would recommend: Michael Lewis’ The Blind Side. I know you might be thinking “wasn’t that that chick flick from a couple years back starring the woman from Speed?” And you’d be right — yes, the material from the book was made into a movie starring Sandra Bullock in 2009. I’ve seen parts of it and I think it’s probably a good movie but it probably wouldn’t get your friend’s wife into football. The book? The book might just do it.

Michael Lewis is an economist and a writer and a sports fan and he uses all three to great success in The Blind Side. The book has two key chronological stories. One, the one that the movie focuses on, is the story of a young, poor black boy growing up near Memphis. Michael Oher, the kid, is taken in by a rich white family and grows physically and academically until he is a 6’4″, 300 pound potential star college and eventual high NFL draft pick playing the position of left tackle. This is a great story in and of itself, and Lewis does a great job telling it without flinching or sensationalizing any of its many dicey elements — from Oher’s extreme poverty, to his academic and social struggles, to the suspicion that the Tuohy family (who basically adopt Oher) have designs on his playing for their alma mater, Ole Miss.

The other side of the story is a remarkably accessible history of football’s tactical evolution from being dominated by teams that could run the ball the best to teams that pass the ball the best and the effect that this evolution had on the position of left tackle. The left tackle is one of the offensive line-men, and thirty years ago the left tackle was just one of the offensive linemen, the big guys whose job it is to either clear the defense away from where the running back wants to run or to protect the quarterback from defensive players). As football began to tilt towards emphasizing the pass and the left tackle starting increasing in importance until around the time Michael Oher was in high school, when the left tackle was usually one of the top three players in terms of salary and importance. Why the left instead of the right tackle? Well, because most quarterbacks are right handed, when they prepare to throw the ball, their body is perpendicular to where they want to throw it, with their right arm cocked back. In this position, they cannot see defenders attacking them from the left side of the field. The left tackle protects a quarterback’s blind side when he is passing the ball.

The brilliance of the book and the cleverness of its title comes also from a mostly hidden third narrative. This narrative asks a tough question about our society. If so many semi-miraculous things had to go right for Michael Oher’s talent to make him successful, how many other talented poor children are we missing out on? If rags to riches is so insanely difficult on the football field, where talent is so objectively measurable (again — 6’4″, 300 pounds, and unbelievably athletic) how difficult is it for our society to identify talent in more subjective fields? The quarterback’s blind side makes him vulnerable to defensive rushes. He needs a strong left tackle to protect him. Social stratification makes our culture vulnerable to missing out on some of its brightest talents. Where’s our country’s left tackle? On top of being a touching story and a great tactical history of football, The Blind Side, is an insightful, challenging book about America.

Let me know if this works,
Ezra Fischer

Aaron Hernandez, Sports and Crime

Dear Sports Fan,

What is going on up in Boston with the football player Aaron Hernandez? Did he really kill someone? Why does it seem like athletes are in trouble with the law so often?

Thanks,
AJ

— — —

Hi AJ,

It’s not completely clear what’s going on in Boston with Patriots’ Tight End Aaron Hernandez. Here’s what we do know: a 27 year-old man named Odin Lloyd is dead. He was found Monday morning and by Wednesday his death had been ruled a homicide. As the Boston Globe reports, Aaron Hernandez is “embroiled” in this story in a number of ways. Lloyd either was or had been dating Hernandez’ sister. Hernandez was out with Lloyd and some other people the night Lloyd died. Hernandez apparently drove Lloyd and two other friends in a car away from the club where Lloyd was last seen alive. The car, a rental, was found abandoned near the body and had been registered to Hernandez. Hernandez also is said to have destroyed his home security system and cell-phone sometime after Monday night.

The media of course (including this website, I guess, although this is our first and hopefully last post on the subject) has been ALL over this story. According to the New York Times which clearly likes to see itself as above the fray:

“Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?” said Michael McDowell, a laborer for a mason contractor, as he cleared off the bed of a company truck and looked up at a chopper overhead. He wore a faded Patriots T-shirt. “Football player, on the run.” Hernandez was not running from the police; he was evading the news media, who sprang into action for a relatively mundane pursuit when he left his house on Thursday morning.

The blog-o-sphere has been equally focused. Deadspin.com even ran a post covering a tweet which relayed the information that an edible arrangement had just been sent to Aaron Hernandez’ house. Meanwhile the police have been fairly silent on the topic aside from saying that Hernandez is a “person of interest.” The most recent development is that lots of sites reported that an arrest warrant for Hernandez for obstructing justice had been issued. That report was pretty quickly disputed and as of now it seems as though no warrant has been issued.

So what do we make of all of this? There are a few things I find interesting. First is of course the question you asked about why it seems like athletes are always mixed up in stuff like this. I’m cautious about commenting on this authoritatively but most of what I find online suggests that “it is not clear that athletes are any more involved in serious crime than the general population is.” An interesting Duke study concludes that athletes actually commit fewer crimes than a similar segment of the general population. When they do commit crimes, it stands to reason that they will be far more public than the general population. Second is whether or not Hernandez committed a crime. My guess is that he did, but it seems just as likely that he is guilty of aiding, abetting, and protecting someone who committed murder as it is that he committed murder himself. Last is my own reaction which has been a small but constant voice in my head saying “this guy was on my fantasy football team!??!” As if somehow that makes me connected to the incident or more shocking that someone I’m related to that closely is involved with a murder. This speaks either to the power of fantasy sports or to my having a screw loose.

Thanks,
Ezra Fischer

Why is Soccer a Summer Sport in the United States?

Dear Sports Fan,

Why is soccer a summer sports in the United States, but an autumn/winter sport in most of the rest of the soccer-playing world (i.e., the rest of the world)? I’ve long associated soccer with drizzle and mud and it’s bizarre to see it played in the hot sun on a dry pitch. There’s no overlap with players as far as I know–the big stars play in Europe exclusively.

Thanks,
Guy

Dear Guy

When I was a kid, I played on a “traveling” soccer team and I seem to remember that soccer season was fall and spring… although we also played indoor soccer in the winter… and went to soccer camps in the Summer. So I guess I do remember growing up playing soccer year round although when it comes to scholastic sports in America, soccer is a fall sport ending in early winter.

The most popular soccer league in the world, the English Premier League runs from August to May so you’re right, that’s mostly Fall/Winter with a little bit of Summer and Spring peeking out the sides. Major League Soccer (MLS is America’s attempt at professional soccer,) which is not as popular as other soccer leagues around the world – does have a summer-heavy schedule (March to December,) though the playoffs extend well into the fall and winter.

The reason for that is simple: competition. Not athletic competition, mind you – but TV competition. The summer is traditionally a TV sports dead zone, when baseball is in full swing but only truly captivating to a subset of the population, basketball and hockey are ending and, every two years, the Olympics may capture the nation’s attention for a couple of weeks, depending on the charisma of that year’s girl’s gymnastics team. Most importantly, American football – the dominant sports TV franchise in America, even though soccer (or football, as the rest of the world calls it) is the most popular sport in the world – is completely off the air.

So it makes sense that, in trying to make professional soccer a competitive economic enterprise in America – where TV viewership is the key – the powers that be focused on that dead zone and scheduled the bulk of the season for the summer.

Hope this answers your question – certainly I think it’s a more responsive answer than my gut reaction, which was to say that you associate soccer with cold and rainy weather because you’re used to watching soccer in England where – to indulge an ignorant American stereotype – everything from warm beer to Marmite is associated with cold and rainy weather.

Thanks,
Dean Russell Bell

Gifts for Sports Fans: Nesting Russian Dolls

We’re starting a new feature for Dear Sports Fan — gift suggestions for the sports fan in your life. Please let us know what you think of this! Do you ever need recommendations for sports related gifts? How do you feel about giving sports related gifts? We’re thinking we will mostly search for gifts that are a little off the beaten path of jerseys, hats, etc. How can we customize this section for you? Thanks!

Custom Sports Team Nesting Russian Dolls

What says sports and sports culture more than dolls? I saw these dolls first on the Brooklyn Game, a Brooklyn Nets blog that I read. An excited Devin Kharpertian wrote this about the dolls:

These Brooklyn Nets matryoshka dolls, better known as nesting dolls, are… pretty much everything I’ve ever wanted in a Brooklyn Nets gift. Shout out to Russian culture? Check. A recognition by Russian doll makers that Andray Blatche and Brook Lopez succeeded together? Check. A tiny Andray Blatche? All the checks

Not every team has a Russian owner but that’s no reason to think that the sports fan in your life would appreciate these dolls any less. These dolls have a fascinating history. According to Wikipedia, the first set of matryoshka dolls was “carved in 1890 by Vasily Zvyozdochkin from a design by Sergey Malyutin, who was a folk crafts painter in the Abramtsevo estate of the Russian industrialist and patron of arts Savva Mamontov.”

The doll figures usually create a set, like cats, dogs, astronauts, politicians, etc., so the idea of creating one out of a team seems to be a natural fit. Plus they nest. Which means they are fairly compact when a social occasion calls more for white table-cloth and less for a matching set of Kansas City Royals infielders…

The dolls can be purchased on Etsy for $60 which seems to include shipping. If you don’t see your fan’s favorite team, you can order a custom set for the same price. One note of warning — not all the sets seem to have differentiated figures modeled after actual players. For instance, my Pittsburgh Penguins all look roughly like a cross between Evgeni Malkin and Donald Duck.

What is a Sweep?

Dear Sports Fan,

I’ve been following the NBA playoffs and have heard announcers talking about one team sweeping another. What does that mean?

Thanks,
Don

Dear Don,

When one team wins all of its games against another team in a particular set of games, it is said to have swept the other team. The reason you’re hearing it so much now is that the NBA playoffs are organized into best four out of seven series. For a team to move on to the next round of the playoffs, it must beat its opponent four times within those seven games. If it were a set of three games instead of seven, a team would have to win a majority of two out of the three to win the series. If a team gets to having won a majority of the games in a series by winning consecutive games, they have swept the series.

You’ll hear talk about sweeps most often in sports that organize their games like basketball does. The NHL and MLB playoffs also are organized around seven game series. In the NFL, where the playoffs are single elimination, you may still hear someone talk about a team sweeping a “season series ” against another team. This means the team won all (usually it is just two) games against a particular opponent even if the games were not consecutive.

Being swept is seen as humiliating in professional sports and players are determined not to let it happen to them. It’s actually fairly common though — as of 2009, 18% of NHL playoff series ended in a sweep. In this NBA playoffs so far, there are four teams at risk for being swept: the Celtics by the Knicks,^[1] the Bucks by the Heat, the Lakers by the Spurs, and the Rockets by the Thunder.

If you’re having trouble remembering what a sweep is, here are two possible derivations that might help. One possibility is that the usage comes from the image of using a broom to sweep your opponent out of the way — that opponent put up so little fight that you could use the broom instead of having to pull a mop out or get on your hands and knees to scrub. Another possibility is that this usage shares a derivation with the word sweepstakes — a contest where one party sweeps all of the possible winnings into their lap — the image of one of those miniature shuffleboard sticks that roulette dealers use comes to mind.

Enjoy the playoffs!
Ezra Fischer

Footnotes (↵ returns to text)

Not anymore, since I started writing this, the Celtics won in overtime to avoid being swept 4-0.↵

Super Bowl Prep Talk, Part Three: A Beginner's Guide to Football Betting

In this series, Dear Sports Fan will try to prepare non-sports fans and sports fans alike to converse knowledgeably during this Sunday’s Super Bowl parties. Super Bowl Sunday is probably the day when the most non-sports fans gather in front of televisions and mingle with their sport loving friends and family. In Part One-A and One-B of this series, we covered some of the key story-lines and plot points around the game. We also had a special post on Super Bowl party behavior written by one non-fan for others. This post will cover a few of the most common ways people gamble on the Super Bowl.

As Lisa wrote in her post on Super Bowl party behavior, Super Bowl Sunday is the day when the most people who don’t normally watch football watch a football game. Likewise it is a day when many, many people who don’t normally gamble on football have at least a few dollars riding on the game. Even if you don’t choose to gamble today, many of your friends and family will. There is likely to be almost 100 million dollars bet on the game legally in Vegas, and that’s just if you want to be legal about it. Here’s a quick explanation of the four most common types of bets that they’ll be making.

Betting the Line

This is the most common form of football betting. You’ve probably heard someone say that a football team is “favored by three points” or is a “ten point underdog.” This is where those phrases and figures come from. A sports book in Vegas will “set a line” for a game and then bettors will gamble on either side of that line. The easiest way to think of a line is to remember that for an actual sports game, the line is ALWAYS at zero. Whichever team wins by even as little as one point wins the game. In the world of the bet, that’s not the case. The betting line is adjusted in favor of one team or the other so that in order to win the bet, you need a team to win by more than a certain number of points. We’ll get to why the line is set where it is in a few paragraphs.

In today’s game, San Fransisco is favored by four points (somewhat confusingly expressed as “San Fransisco -4.”) This means that people who bet on San Fransisco need them to win by more than four points to win (also called “cover”) their bet. People who bet on Baltimore can cover even if Baltimore loses by up to three points. Knowing this may help you make sense of why people will sometimes seem incredibly engaged in the game at odd times.

Betting the Over/Under

This is a very common form of football line betting. When someone bets the over/under they are making a prediction about what the combined scores of the two teams will be. Basically, you need to predict whether the game will be high or low scoring. The over/under for today’s game is 48 points. If you bet on the over, you’re predicting that the combined score of the two teams will add up to more than 48; the under, less.

A quick note on lines (because the over/under is another form of line betting) and the logic of how they are set. The underlying principle of any type of gambling, is that the “house” (the entity that people bet against,) because they take a small fee on every transaction will always make money if they can balance the amount bet on both sides of a line (half on the under, half on the over; half on San Fransisco -4, half on Baltimore +4.) The house effectively pays the winners of a bet with the money they get from the losers. The only time the house can lose is if they take more winning bets than losing bets.

As you might expect, Vegas is freakishly good at balancing the bets. So, you would think that the combined score of the game is most likely to be what the line says it is, 48, but there are two things that qualify this. First — some bets are more “fun” than others — the public tends to enjoy betting an over more than an under, so the over/under will often be a little bit higher than Vegas thinks the combined scores will be. Second, well, the people who set the lines have chosen to work in Vegas. Sometimes they like to gamble a bit too.

Buying a Super Bowl Box

The Super Bowl Box is the most casual form of Super Bowl betting. You’ve probably taken part in one yourself! You make a ten by ten grid, put your name in a box, and pay someone a few bucks. After all hundred boxes are filled out someone randomly assigns a number from 0 to 9 to each row and column on the chart. Each box therefore represents a pair of one digit numbers like 4 and 7. These numbers correspond to the ones digit of the score of the teams at particular moments of the game — usually at the end of each quarter. If your numbers come up, say San Fransisco 14, Baltimore 7 (or 27) at halftime, you win a bunch of money.

This is gambling at it’s most pure. Unlike the previous two forms of betting, you don’t get to make any decisions at all. When you scribble your name on a box and put in your money, you are spending 1/100 of all the money involved for a 1/100 chance to win. As soon as they assign numbers to boxes, your chances have either gone up or down as you can see from this awesome “sucky box-o-meter.”

Making a Prop Bet

Prop bets are another form of betting that thrives during the Super Bowl. Prop is short for proposition (as you probably know from The Wire) and these bets are all about answering questions that ask “will something happen today?” These are incredibly fun to bet on, and as you might imagine because of that, are usually difficult to win. Most of these are about the game, but a good number of them are about the spectacle surrounding the game. There are two good articles on Grantland.com about this, one by a football analyst and one by a gambling comedy writer. Here are just a few of the bets they cover:

Will there be overtime?
Will the largest lead of the game be more or less than 14 points?
Will Vonta Leach (a guy on the Ravens who almost never gets to touch the ball) score the first touchdown?
Will the opening coin toss be heads?
Will Alicia Keys’ rendition of the national anthem be longer than 2:15?

That last one is ridiculous but I’d be willing to bet that someone at your Super Bowl party has their eyes on their watch while she’s singing. Look around and let me know.

Enjoy the party and the game,
Ezra Fischer

How Not to Behave at a Super Bowl Party: From One Non-Fan to Another

If you are anything like me, the only thing worse than the football season is the one night a year when everyone gets together to celebrate the football season: Super Bowl Sunday. And while I try to avoid it every year, I somehow always manage to get sucked into attending a party. Attending a party in which you have zero interest in the main event can be rather tricky. To help you on your path to being the perfect Super Bowl party guest, I have compiled a list of behaviors to avoid at your party this year.

DON’T stand around repeatedly announcing to any and everyone how much you hate football. There are so many great reasons to hate football. It is needlessly violent and leads to serious life injuries for the players. They only play for about seven seconds before stopping for five minutes. One minute of football time is the equivalent of fifteen minutes of real life time. I could go on, but I won’t. As you can see, it gets pretty annoying pretty quickly.

DON’T stand (or sit) in the room with the TV and talk loudly through the whole entire game. Believe it or not, some people actually want to watch the football game. More than that, some people actually want to hear the inane announcers talk about the football game. If you are not one of them, there are so many better places for you to be than in the room with the TV. There is a perfectly good table full of food and booze somewhere else where you will find like-minded people which whom you can pass the evening discussing hockey.

DON’T ask 1,000 annoying questions to the person in the room who is the most interested in watching the game. Maybe you’ve decided that this year you are going to try to pay attention to the game, only to realize that you have absolutely no idea what is going on. It is ok to ask questions now and then, and there will definitely be people excited to familiarize you with their favorite sport. Just be conscientious about how many questions you ask and who you ask them to. There are people who are going to want to watch the game more than they want to educate you on what is going on.

DON’T loudly root for the team that no one else is rooting for, while maintaining that football is dumb. People take football very seriously. Drunk people take football even more seriously. Try not to piss off a bunch of drunk football fans, unless your date for the party happens to be large enough to defend your honor. If this is the case, by all means, instigate. Fights are the best part of sports.

DON’T end the evening with a loud exasperated sigh of “Thank Goodness Football is over!” When the game ends, try to keep your glee to a minimum, especially if the home team (i.e. the team that everyone at the party is rooting for) just lost. No one will appreciate your joy in the midst of their mourning.

DON’T show up empty handed. For all of my bad behavior at Super Bowl parties, even I know better than to show up at someone’s house empty handed. Super Bowl parties are as much about the food and beverages as anything else. If they weren’t, why would any of us non-fans even bother to show up? If you are going to be a football-naysayer, then make up for it by bringing a really amazing dish or a whole lot of beer. People will forgive just about anything given the right culinary incentive. But show up with nothing, consume all of the food and drinks, and complain through the whole game, and I promise you won’t be invited next year.

So now you know all the ways not to behave at a Super Bowl party. If you are interested in knowing how you should behave instead, well, you’ll have to ask someone else. I fully intend to break all of my own rules and maybe even discover some new ones come Sunday night.

So who’s having the party??
Lisa Filipek

Super Bowl Prep Talk, Part One-B: Harbaugh Brothers and New Orleans

In this series, Dear Sports Fan will try to prepare non-sports fans and sports fans alike to converse knowledgeably during this Sunday’s Super Bowl parties. Super Bowl Sunday is probably the day when the most non-sports fans gather in front of televisions and mingle with their sport loving friends and family. In Part One-A of this series, we covered the many, many plot lines centered around Ray Lewis. In this post, we’ll cover two more story lines, the Harbaugh brothers and New Orleans, the host city.

The Harbaugh Brothers

Unlike the normal one-game-a-Sunday cadence of the football season over the past few months, there are two weeks between the semi-finals and the Super Bowl. This gives everyone time to take any interesting story and drive it into the ground. By the time the game comes around for those of us who watch and listen and read a lot about sports, the narrative of many stories will have shifted from this-is-an-interesting-story to this-story-is-going-to-kill-me-if-I-hear-it-one-more-time. Then, of course, that becomes the story!

The story of the Harbaugh brothers is one of those stories. It goes like this: the head coach of the Baltimore Ravens, John Harbaugh, is the older brother of the head coach of the San Fransisco Forty-Niners, Jim Harbaugh. That’s pretty much the whole story. But what the hell… their father Jack was a football player and coach himself. There’s a pretty sweet story about the sons going out of their way to help him when he was struggling as the head coach of Western Kentucky University. Sweet, however, is not the emotion this family is most known for. The sons are intense — even for football coaches. Jim, the younger one, is particularly demonstrative.

Says the New York Times:

His San Francisco 49ers players love to imitate the cartoonish nature of their coach: the clenched teeth, the dropped jaw, the wide eyes, the narrowed brow. Each has their favorite Harbaugh face.

John had is own blog-ready moment. When he was asked about coaching against his brother, he responded by saying it was a “great moment for our country.” I don’t know if I’d go that far, but you know… even if it’s not an incredibly interesting story… it is kinda cool to think about two kids playing super bowl in their back yards years ago and then growing up to face each other in that exact situation.

New Orleans

The host of the Super Bowl this year is New Orleans.Usually it’s not interesting who’s hosting the Super Bowl. But this year, there’s some drama. If the NFL and New Orleans were Facebook friends, their relationship status would be, “It’s Complicated.” Here’s the timeline.

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, the Superdome became an emergency shelter for 20,000 plus people. The stadium, which had hosted football and basketball games, the pope and the Rolling Stones, quickly became a symbol of the desperate, tragic situation.

Then, a little more than a year later, the Superdome became a symbol for the rebirth of the city when the city’s beloved Saints returned, like so many New Orleans residents did, from San Antonio. Roger Goodell, now the commissioner of the NFL, then the assistant commissioner, played a big role in this, remembers NOLA.com:

Goodell worked with local leaders to rebuild the Superdome. He cleared bureaucratic hurdles in Washington D.C. to accelerate the construction process. And he was a constant motivator, sending local officials late-night emails for inspiration: “We’re winning! Don’t stop! We’re in this to win!”

Three years after the team returned to New Orleans, they won the Super Bowl. So, it’s a positive, feel good story, right? Well… not so fast.

This past summer, a scandal broke out (predictably Clintonized to “Bountygate”) when it was revealed that the New Orleans Saints had a bounty system set up to provide financial rewards for injuring opposing players, including targeting the heads of players with histories of concussions. Goodell, now commissioner, suspended several team coaches and players for the season. Goodell has widely been accused of everything from tyranny to hypocrisy to ineptitude. He was sued by a suspended player. He eventually had to ask his predecessor to step in and try to clean up some of the mess. Paul Tagliabue cleaned up the mess by essentially repealing as many of Goodell’s decisions as possible.

So, where do we stand today? My guess is that Goodell is more hated than he is loved but that the hate is mostly a good-natured, whaddayagonnado type of hate. My favorite story about this is the signs that have started appearing in the windows of New Orleans restaurants and bars: “Do Not Serve This Man,” they say.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

Super Bowl Prep Talk, Part One-A

As is often the case with big sporting events, many fans will be following the Super Bowl for its dramatic, soap opera-esque stories. Although the game this year does not have any story half as inspiring as an athlete over-coming the twin deaths of his grandmother and girlfriend or half as bizarre as the revelation that that girlfriend never existed, this game has plenty of juicy stories orbiting it.

Ray Lewis is Everything

Ray Lewis is the starting middle linebacker of the Baltimore Ravens. He’s a very controversial figure. Some people love him, some people hate him, and some people will represent both sides of the issue while attacking the seven layer dip like a fiend. This playoff season has brought out the best, the worst, and the most dramatic elements of Lewis — let me tell you about some of it.

First, Lewis is undeniably great at his job. He’s been playing for the Baltimore Ravens since their inaugural season 17 years ago. He has been to 13 Pro Bowls, been the NFL Defensive Player of the Year twice, and was the Super Bowl Most Valuable Player in 2001 when the Ravens won last. Also… maybe he’s overrated.

We’re now done with the football side of Lewis. Before this year’s playoffs, he announced that he would be retiring at the end of the season. Boston area NESN wondered in early January (before the Ravens knocked the New England Patriots out of contention) whether or not this would inspire the Ravens to win the Super Bowl.

Lewis missed the final ten games of the regular season this year after he tore his triceps muscle. Now he’s back playing. Some say (and probably some at your super bowl party will say) that this has to be thanks to some serious performance enhancing drugs. Or even some kind of silly ones.

Lewis’ response to being asked about using deer antler spray shows another side of him — the religious crazy person side. He commented that the allegations were “the trick of the devil.” There is no question that if Lewis were not a football player, he might have been a charismatic preacher. He fires up his team before the game, cries dramatically during the national anthem, and answers post-game questions with mildly incoherent scripture.

Back in 2000, the year before Baltimore was last in the Super Bowl, Lewis was embroiled in a less goofy controversy. He was arrested for murder and aggravated assault in the stabbing death of two men outside a night club. Lewis cut a plea bargain where his charge was reduced to virtually nothing in return for testifying against his two friends. They were eventually acquitted.

Oh, and did I mention that he has a signature dance? It’s brilliant. Teach yourself it and impress your friends with an imitation. Like the mayor of Denver. Or Keenan Williams of SNL.

Good luck learning the dance! In the next two installments of this series, we’ll cover the two opposing head coaches being brothers and the complicated relationship of the host city, New Orleans, with the NFL.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra