I quickly learned what many Sunday widows already realized — that football is not a game but a religion, a metaphysical island of fundamental truth in a highly verbal, disguised society, a throwback of 30,000 generations of anthropological time. – Arnold J. Mandell, “A Psychiatric Study of Professional Football,” 1974 [An inte

Football combines the two worst things about America: it is violence punctuated by committee meetings. – George F. Will

It is veneer, rouge, aestheticism, art museums, new theatres, etc., that make America impotent. The good things are football, kindness and jazz bands. – George Santayana, letter to Van Wyck Brooks, 1927