Fans and non-NFL fans, alike. Do yourself a favor and cough up two bucks and watch this rather incredible documentary on the 1983 World Champion Raiders. There are some great characters in there--Marcus Allen, Howie Long, Todd Christensen. Here's a snippet from the NFL's site. I don't think I'd really appreciate the intelligence and heart required to play football, as well as the sheer beauty of the game, if not for NFL Films. The doc is one in a series--apparently they're now doing one on great teams that lost the Super Bowl.
The thing about the 1983 Raiders is that I have deep memories of that game. The Cowboys lost in the playoffs that year, and I was about to root for the Skins in the Super Bowl, out of NFC East loyalty. But I couldn't do it. My Mom bought me all this Redskins stuff a few days before the game. But when she gave it to me, I just looked at her and said, "Ma. The Redskins are gonna get killed."
The Raiders destroyed them, and it was capped by this Marcus Allen run below. I can remember leaping and yelling while I was watching it (I was only eight.) Every time I see this clip, it's like going back to that moment. The documentary talks about how the Raiders experienced the run. Todd Christensen (who was a beast in his time) actually starts crying while recalling the run, and years later seeing seeing the NFL Films' rendition of it where Jon Facenda says, "On came Marcus Allen, Running with the night..." What great poetry.
I watch this run and it captures what I mean about football actually being an art. A truly great football play, is a great story. It has a narrative arc--the hero begins his journey, (the Raiders hike the ball) encounters a seemingly insurmountable obstacle (surrounded in the backfield by Redskins,) appears to be done for (Allen reversing field,) and then somehow defeats them (Allen breaks out.) It's a beautiful thing to see, play out.
Watch the documentary. Out of the ones I've seen in the series, it's the best.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
TNC,
I think you've been reading too much Joseph Campbell. It's just a game, man. People can create art in talking, writing, or painting about football, but the narrative arc is a derivative of the game, not something inherent in it.
Nah. There is no "it." I see it as performance art. That's my perspective. You see it as a game, which is fair and it's certainly enjoyable on that level. But it's not a math problem. There is no "either it's this or that."
My perspective on art is that, at its root, its organic, that people infuse art into things that aren't necessarily "art." You go to an art musuem and you might see something that, in its native setting, was a pot or a chair. That's it's primary function. But the people who made it infused it with art, with some form of expression of who they are. Hip-Hop was made to make people dance. But a byproduct was some pretty great writing.
Again, that's my perspective. The world needn't share it. You can still just admire the run for what it is. Much as you can still sit in the chair, or fill the pot with water.
Fair enough. There's no one answer to this one, thought I tend to think that this means that almost nothing isn't art.
The trick is separating art from craft. I can't remember the quote exactly, but Branford Marsalis was talking about Wynton and said something along the lines of "repeating what other people have done and doing it well is craft, that's what I mostly do. Doing what nobody has done before is art, and that's what Wynton does".
So in that sense I can see this run being art and most everything else in a typical game as craft.
Either way, Allen was a man among boys that day.
Howie Long is the most engaging person you could ever hope to meet. My friend and her husband had a condo at the beach and he was their neighbor. Just so down to earth. Rod Martin has a Mexican restaurant at another beach location and I'll always remember my boys being little Pop Warnerites and Rod showing them his Super Bowl ring. Marcus Allen was sick. This was a special Raider team in character as well as talent. They had a certain allure, a chemistry that bonded their mission. The absence of that chemistry over the years has been a major factor in their inability to sustain any kind of winning record, and they've attracted malcontents and loonies by the score.
Coach Cable has already endeared himself to Al Davis by trying and somewhat succeeding in returning a culture of winning. I'm not particularly a Raiders fan, but I am rooting for them to improve. The more teams that play on a higher level, the better the football we see.
Joseph Campbell is fantastic. I also agree with TNC here. I think (and I'm not sure since I'm not done with Hero with 1,000 Faces and haven't really started the Masks of God) but one of Campbell's points was that we the "hero's journey" is a way of framing and understanding the many facets of the human experience and that the the stages of the "journey" can be applied to many things we do because the journey itself is something inherent in the human spirit (soul, whatever) and can be revealed through narrative structure, but can also be seen in many things we do if you know what to look for. Or something like that. I could have missed his point having not finished the book yet.
As a Broncos fan, I'm contractually obligated to hate the Raiders in all their forms.
But that's a beautiful run.
I remember that run. My mom's family have been SC fans since the 50's, and we grew up rooting for whoever the great SC running backs were playing for,and the Bills (Dad was from upstate NY, plus Simpson had played there through the early years of may parents marriage. Serendipitous.)
Allen was the Man. Later years in KC were sad. Like Montana's.
I could be wrong, but I remember Allen and Montana having a couple good years in KC. Not like their prime, but they weren't like Joe Namath for the Rams or anything like that, right?
THey were good-for KC Fans. It's like Favre being the best quarterback Minnesota has had for the last 6 years. Good for Minnesota, but bad compared tot he peak.
I like how the Raiders QB sees Allen coming back the other way, and turns to run and try to block somebody. Before the QB can find anybody to block, Allen is already 20 yards downfield.
"Ma. The Redskins are gonna get killed."
That's funny, because I had EXACTLY the same feeling before that game. I was 13. Some friends of my parents and their kids came over to watch. They were all on the Redskins bandwagon, and one of the fathers asked me who I thought would win. I said the Raiders, and he laughed. I understood--that year the Skins were demolishing opponents. But I just had some gut sense that that game would be different.
"Thou base football-player!"
-King Lear
Here is the NFL Films version - Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0cz6GXP7Xc
I grew up in the East Bay. I was about 7 when I watched the Raiders win Super Bowl 18, and I never really grew up with the old, pre-LA, Oakland Raiders (remember, these were the Los Angeles Raiders back then). My first memory of football was the 1981 Super Bowl winning 49er team (of course I remember where I was when I saw "the catch") and not of the 1980 Super Bowl winning Raider team.
But I have always liked both the 49ers and the Raiders. I know that technically, you are not supposed to like both teams. In fact, many people will argue that it is mutually exclusive. But I have always been both a 49er and Raider fan - maybe it's just because I am wishy washy. However, it is probably because both teams represented aspects of who I wanted to be.
There is such a stark contrast between the 49ers and Raiders, as evidenced by the link (Bill Walsh v. Lyle Alzado). The 49ers were always consummate professionals - both on and off the field. On the field, they were efficient, unselfish, and always making the clutch play when needed. Off the field, they always said the right things, dressed the part, and never got into trouble. They were the guys who told you to work hard, study, eat your vegetables, drink your milk, etc., and then maybe you too would become a Super Bowl winning quarterback and marry a model.
The Raiders, on the other hand, were the exact opposite. They were "different." They were tough. They had swagger. They said what they felt like, and didn't care what anyone else thought. They talked the talk and walked the walk. The Raiders from the mid-1960's to the mid-1980's were a team of misfits, malcontents, and non-conformists... and they won games. They were a team composed of individuals, and the implied message was, "it's okay to be different." That is a beautiful thing. Especially when compared to today's NFL where everything seems so controlled and so sterile (I guess what I am trying to say that the Football itself is probably higher quality than 30 years ago, but players seem to have less individualism on the field and less personality off the field).
Of course, the problem with taking on a "tough guy, outlaw" persona is that you need to constantly back it up on the field, otherwise you look pathetic. Which is probably why today's Raiders are sometimes really hard to watch.
Fighting Words...Your from the East Bay but you're obviously not from Oakland. You either loved the Raiders or hated them for moving to L.A. I moved to Oakland in '79 at the age of 8 and became an instant Raider fan. The team signified the blue collar id of the city. The Hell's Angels who's HQ is in Oakland, use to tailgate in the parking lot. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale were fans and would go to Gene Upshaw's bar. When they moved to L.A. you had two factions, those that hated the Raiders for leaving and the die hard fans who knew they would move back.
The Raiders played the skins in D.C. in week 4 and barely lost that game and that was only because Marcus Allen was injured. I wanted the Raiders to win that Super Bowl so badly it hurt to talk about it. The Skins were so dominant that year that I was scared to even think the Raiders would win. I remember telling my friend that the Skins would win the Super Bowl just so I didn't jinx it.
I tivo'd the entire series and you can get it online if you know where to look. Christensen was a beast back then, and the Raiders team in the first Tecmo Bowl was basically unbeatable with Bo Jackson, Allen, Christensen and Howie Long on defense.
It is a great series and a must watch for any football fan.
It is art. We are still seeing things in sport (not just football) that we can't fathom or no one would think to try and are moving to watch. Troglodytes ran, but Ussain Bolt...
This type of run is more common now, but still...its a great thing to see.
The art of the game is sometimes brutish (eg Adrian Peterson hammering a 300+ lb lineman to the side with a stiff arm), sometimes elegant (Santonio Holmes' game winning SB catch). But it is definitely art when done at the highest level and craft at the NFL level. Maybe we got oversold by NFL Films, i don't think so...either way don't care. I love it.
The America's Game series is a great addition to the NFL films catalogue. If you are patient and don't want to shell out Matt Stafford $$$, they are in the habit of playing marathons leading up to and after Super Bowls on NFLN.
They have also begun making one for each years Super Bowl champion. Very worthwhile viewing. But you can't talk about classic Raiders without posting "An Autumn Wind": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmiVYFueNvQ&feature=related
Football as Shakespeare? I'll bite.
My cast:
Favre is obviously Hamlet
Peyton Manning has to be Prince Hal
Tom Brady is Romeo
Warren Sapp as Falstaff
Help me out here folks!
Peyton as Prince Hal? I don't see it.
This if fun! Let's see,
I'm completely with you on Favre as Hamlet -- both of 'em indecisive as hell.
Can't see Peyton Manning as Prince Hal, Peyton was always the one expected to be "The One", and he's carried himself that way since he was a kid at Tennessee. Can't see him hanging out in bars with Falstaff or ever uttering anything similar to the lines:
"I'll so offend to make offense a skill
redeeming time when men think least I will"
Basically, Peyton is Henry V but he was never Prince Hal first.
I think somebody like John Riggins or Ken Stabler is more that guy, or perhaps the ultimate dude, albeit from another sport, was Andre Agassi.
I like Romo as Romeo -- more star-crossed, and more boyish, than Brady. Romeo was a kid.
Love Warren Sapp as Falstaff but love Tony Siragusa as the fat man even more.
Here's a couple more for ya
John Elway as Prospero (the legend who goes out on top, even as it breaks his heart to say goodbye)
and my personal favorite, Donovan McNabb as Othello
Anybody else got anymore?
This thread requires a hat tip to the QB on that play... the great and very tough Jim Plunkett (Charter Member of the slowly growing club of Chicano Quarterbacks to Win the Rose Bowl (Stanford 1970); Mark Sanchez (USC 2009) is member number 2. Joe Kapp (also a Super Bowl winner) got the Golden Bears of California to Pasadena in 1959 but lost to Iowa.
Jim Plunkett won the Heisman and was the top pick in the NFL draft, going to New England, which failed to provide an offensive line. Several bruising and injury filled years later he washed up on the opposite coast, at the end of the pre-Walsh era of the 49ers. After middling success he was released, and was picked up by the Raiders as a backup QB. He relieved the injured Dan Pastorini in the 1980 season, leading the Raiders through the wild card route to Super Bowl victory against the Eagles, then again replacing Mark Wilson before the game that our host has shown above.
Jim Plunkett's greatest grace was probably in college, where he was an amazing, dominant performer. But in his Super Bowl victories he finds his glory, after a career marked by pain, loss, disappointment, perseverance, and redemption.
A hero indeed.
I'm a Viking fan and, oh, how you break my heart: Joe Kapp never got a Super Bowl Ring.
TNC -
FYI:
In one of his books from decades ago, John Madden claims that his greatest skill as a coach was doling out exactly the right uniform numbers to rookies -- that each player had a number that was inherently right for him and would look right when he and only he wore it. He believes that his greatest stroke of inspiration/genius/artistry in this vein was when he chose "46" for Todd Christensen.
I love this thread but hated that Super Bowl. I'm a lifelong 'Skins fan and that game was the end of my innocence as a sports fan. I was too young at the time to realize that just because your team has become the darling of the league doesn't mean it can't still lose. Come to think of it, I was pretty lucky. It was almost 13 before I had to learn that lesson.
Four years later, in XXII, I considered it some minuscule portion of revenge when Timmy Smith broke the single-game Super Bowl rushing record Allen had set in that hideous debacle. In XXII, my Redskins obliterated the Denver Broncos before the game even reached halftime. For some reason, I see a lot more "art" in that game. Ha!
For all that, it strikes me that football is a visual rather than literary art. There has been some really good writing about baseball and boxing over the years, not so much about football, especially at the pro level, or basketball. On the other hand football seems to be made for visual media; the series that just started on the AFL, Football in Color or Football in Living Color seems to be pretty good.
No doubt athletes are performance artists like musicians or dancers; when I think of the word "ode," my first thought is Pindar's poetry celebrating athletic achievement. But they aren't like Shakespeare. Maybe you can go back to an individual game and rehash the highlights, but five hundred years from now there isn't likely to be anyone interested in reenactments during the summer in every city and small town, let alone five or six productions of the same game with different players on film over the years.
As a writer, one should give Shakespeare his proper due. Whether one likes him or not, there's never been another writer quite like him for durability or universal regard. The word, "bard," signifies a people's poet; Shakespeare is The Bard, and his plays resonate in every continent.
There has been some really good writing about baseball and boxing over the years, not so much about football, especially at the pro level, or basketball.
I think that may start to change in the next ten years. Neither football nor basketball really came into its own as a cultural force until the 70's, so until now you didn't really have writers who grew up with the kind of lifelong devotion to those sports like you had for baseball and boxing.
I haven't read it yet, but I think that Bill Simmons' "The Book of Basketball" may be the kind of read you're looking for on basketball.
Yeah boxing and baseball were a kind of force in the 40s and 50s, that football never was. No one really remembers the first black football players, in the way they remember Jackie Robinson.
On the narrow discussion of whether sports can be beautiful/art, I was reminded of something David Foster Wallace once wrote:
"Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty. The relation is roughly that of courage to war."
Thanks for this clip. I am no Raiders fan, but Allen is one of the best ever as this video shows. This clip of Allen reminded me why I so despise Al Davis and cheer when the Raiders lose.
Tacky and low class are the first words that come to mind when thinking about the way Davis treated Allen.
Davis has always viewed himself as God's gift to football.