The Setting
It's third and long in a tied game in the Georgia Dome. The Falcons are on their own 40 with two minutes left in the first half. They are out of timeouts and have to convert here or they'll be forced to punt and then try to hold the Ravens for the remainder of the half. The game has playoff implications and the fans have been invested in every play today. Mike Vick crouches behind his center, Todd McClure, and gives the count…
Ask most people for an example of something beautiful and they will respond by naming flowers, a natural landscape, a sunset, a child's eyes, maybe a favorite painting or piece of music, or a specific woman. What they will probably not respond with is football. Dictionary and colloquial definitions of beauty cluster around its function as a source of pleasure to our senses: beauty is what pleases us. Given this definition, it isn't surprising that few people name football when prompted to identify beauty. The pleasure derived from watching a football game doesn't come across to our senses in the same way that the beauty of a rose or a song does. In the case of the rose or the song, we are aware that what we're seeing or hearing is beautiful, if for no other reason than that we've been taught that these are principal occasions for beauty. In football, the sights and sounds (and smells) are not as apparently beautiful. That is, at most points in a game, a person would be hard-pressed to point out objects of beauty, even though most fans would believe they are there. After all, thousands of fans cram into stadiums to watch their favorite teams, and millions crowd around their TVs to watch from home every week. Their behavior reveals that something about football is pleasing for them. But what? And how can philosophy help us think about our interest in football?
The Snap
The Ravens are back in pass coverage, expecting Vick to throw. Michael Jenkins is in motion, settling into position just before McClure snaps the ball to Vick.
The simple logic of watching football is that football fans watch football because it is pleasing for them. But this definition—a football fan is someone who finds pleasure in watching football—is tautological. That is, the definition replaces the term without adding to it. To say that a fan finds football pleasurable is to say very little. The more interesting question is what about football pleases him.
One answer we often give to this question is that we watch football because we care if our teams (however we decide which teams are “ours”) win. By this thinking, we wouldn't watch if we didn't care who won the game; but this rarely holds in practice. It is a rare fan who is selective enough to watch only his or her team. Many fans will prefer to watch their particular teams and be more passionate about those games but, given the opportunity, will eagerly watch other games. As a simple but effective way to test this statement, ask a fan if he would rather watch a game (live or on TV) or read the box scores in the paper. If it were the case that what we cared about in football primarily was the result, there would actually be a preference for the box score, because we could get the same result by investing far less time. But we don't watch games to learn the final scores any more than we, as Alan Watts said, listen to music to get to the final notes, and no fan would choose the box score. I think that when we read box scores of games we haven't seen, it's to try to imagine what it would have been like to watch the game. Clearly, this shows that there is something in football, beyond winning, that holds our attention.
A better explanation of why we watch football instead of only reading the scores in the paper or watching SportsCenter is that we are drawn to the drama of the sport. There is something emotionally engaging about watching men struggle against each other so ferociously. The intensity at the line of scrimmage is palpable; the players act as if the next play is the only thing in the world. Yet, despite their focus, we know that the play's outcome is uncertain. Each play brings degrees of success and failure to each team that we can discover only in its unfolding.
But ask yourself if you would watch football if it were scripted the way that professional wrestling is. The games might be just as dramatic (they might be more dramatic), but few of us would watch. Football's authenticity depends on the uncertainty of its outcome, not just for us, but also for the players. Terrell Owens aside, football doesn't reduce to its players’ personalities the way that professional wrestling does (essentially a male-oriented soap opera),1 because we respect the reality of what the players are doing.
This aspect, the game's drama and uncertainty, though engaging and requisite for our viewing, fails to account in full for our watching football. The same drama, realness, and uncertainty of outcome that are present in an NFL playoff game are present in Pop Warner games, high school games, and even in games you play in the park with your friends. These are constituents of the game of football, but few people, except for some parents, want to watch at these lower levels of play.
I believe that what accounts for this difference is that at higher levels of play (college and professional), the level of skill brought to the game increases, and with it comes an increase in beauty. The skills of a player like Barry Sanders fascinate us. We are awed by his bodily control and timing as he bends the laws of physics (or at least our perception of those laws) with every unexpected lateral movement. Our thoughts are like defenders’ flailing arms, failing to grasp his movements. The skill of his movements might be beautiful on their own, in the way that the movements of a dancer are beautiful, but the presence of some of the world's best athletes trying to stop him from doing just what he is doing underscores the difficulty of his task and enhances its beauty; it would not do to watch Barry Sanders make the same runs against a team of high schoolers.
Moving from the player to the team, there are teams in the NFL that are thought to be more beautiful than others, and generally the more beautiful teams tend to draw a lot of attention from fans. The St. Louis Rams teams of 1999–2001 are a telling example. “The Greatest Show on Turf,” as they were known, set all kinds of offensive records as Kurt Warner, Marshall Faulk, Isaac Bruce, and Tory Holt picked apart defenses that at times didn't seem to be on the field. There was a beauty to their game that was absent from other teams of their era. The timing, precision, and balance of their offense were beautiful to watch. Other teams, like the New England Patriots, who have done the best job this decade of winning, don't have the same kind of beauty that those Rams had, or possibly that the current Colts have.2 In saying so, I may be exposing an offensive bias in attributing beauty (whether it is mine or ours). Because the offensive team has the ball and is often the focus of our attention, it is easier to see what those players are doing and identify beauty in it. But that is not to say that defense can't also be beautiful. In order to know what can and cannot be beautiful, we need to get a better sense of what beauty is.
The Play Call
The play that Hue Jackson has called involves a play action fake to Warrick Dunn to give Michael Jenkins time to get downfield. The second option is Roddy White on a slant. Vick's third option is to dump the ball off to Warrick Dunn, who by now has had time to sneak out wide and should have room to run.
Having identified a couple of instances of beauty in football, let's turn now to some more specific definitions of beauty. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) gives a philosophically influential aesthetic theory in his Critique of Judgment. One of Kant's criteria for beauty that is pertinent to football is that its source be of disinterest to its viewers. That is, its viewers don't stand to make personal gains from the object of their affection. An investor, seeing the value of his stock double, is not justified in ascribing beauty to his gain. Likewise, the owner of a football team's opinion is compromised when he makes aesthetic judgments of his team. The beauty he sees on the field is dubiously tied in with his financial stake in the team. In contrast, fans, at least when they're not betting on the game, stand to gain little by their team's successes. Whatever pride they take in a win or excitement they gather from a great play fades with their memories of the game. It is only in the shortest of time frames that football fans have any personal interest in the game before them, and personal interest on a short time frame is little more than pleasure. The payoff for watching football comes in watching football. Except in rare cases, we don't watch football to get something else. We watch it because we like it. A situation might arise where a person watches a game, fakes interest even, to impress a boss, a client, or a girl, but generally watching football is an end in itself. And for Kant this is crucial for beauty. It cannot be instrumental. Beauty holds our attention and, at the time of perception, gives us no reason to look beyond it for some other end (including writing philosophy papers about it).
I, for one, am disinterested (in the Kantian sense) in football and can be absorbed in it during a game as an end in itself, as a source of beauty (even though, over the course of a game, there may be only a handful of instances I would call “beautiful”). But there are plenty of people who don't think football is beautiful. Who is right? Is there beauty in football, or isn't there? Kant thinks that aesthetic judgments are nonconceptual. I can't convince a football detractor that football is beautiful any more than he can convince me that it isn't. As we watch the same game, the beauty is apparent, or it isn't. While Kant leaves room for discrepancies regarding particular cases, he thinks that there is a universal claim behind all claims of beauty. When a person calls something beautiful, he is saying more than “I like it.” He is also implying, “and you should too.”3 But beauty is nonconceptual; we can't argue it. So how can we expect universality? One possible answer comes through a kind of consensus. The more people who call something beautiful, the more beautiful that thing must be. This is helpful, but it makes beauty seem metaphysical, as if it's a thing in the world, which can be very difficult to defend to someone who disagrees with you about which things are beautiful. We have certain necessary conditions for beauty (from Kant: It must be an end in itself), but we don't have sufficient conditions. (We don't agree on which things are ends in themselves. My dad, for instance, would watch football only under very specific conditions, and then only as a means to something else.) Without sufficient conditions for beauty, its definition remains open. No one can say what beauty is. But this isn't really a problem because we all know, intuitively, what it is. And we know what beauty is because we know what is beautiful (even though we often disagree on this last part).
The Play
McClure snaps the ball to Vick. Vick takes a quick drop and extends the ball to a streaking Warrick Dunn. Dunn runs for two yards into the middle of a pile before the Ravens realize that Vick is holding the ball behind the line of scrimmage. He is looking for Michael Jenkins breaking down the right sideline, but he's tightly covered by Chris McCalister. Cutting across the center of the field, Roddy White is also tightly covered. Dunn is scrambling to get out wide for a quick dumpoff, but Ray Lewis has already broken the line. Vick sees him coming and tries to take off on his own, but as he makes his move, Lewis dives and gets a hand on Vick's leg, tripping him up. Vick loses his balance and hops on one leg to try to stay on his feet. As the play continues to fall apart, Terrell Suggs charges at Vick, diving at his legs. Vick, still hopping and trying to get back on two feet, leaps up over the diving Suggs and lands running to the outside. He makes it around the corner and breaks an open-field tackle.
One of the compelling defenses of Kant's position is its irrelevance during its demonstration. The viewing subject, during the perception of the beautiful, is in no way concerned with the beauty of the object. Rather, he is consumed by it. The efficacy of the application of the theory is considered after the fact when we reflect on instances we already consider beautiful. Essentially, Kant is giving a rational defense of arational beauty and, if we follow him, restricting the discussion of which kinds of things can be beautiful to those that are ends in themselves. Given that restriction, the number of things fulfilling the definition remains innumerable. Football, as we've seen, is, by Kant's definition, a possible source of beauty and, judging from its popularity, an actual source as well. The question remains: What about football is beautiful?
Because I don't have access to any consensual arbiter of beauty, I have to make do with my senses and my judgments on football. To abstract a description of what I find beautiful in football, I would say that it comes primarily in the movements and spontaneity of certain plays and certain players. For instance, well-thrown passes, sharp cuts from runners that make would-be tacklers miss, poorly thrown passes that receivers turn into unlikely gains, and unexpected, successful, spontaneous reactions. That someone could watch Joe Montana throwing off his back foot under pressure and still find a double-covered Dwight Clark in the end zone (to win the game, no less) and not see beauty baffles me. The same goes for Jerry Rice catching balls all over the field, and Peyton Manning having the ball do anything he wants it to do. I don't think I'm alone in watching for these highlights. On every play I'm rooting for something special to happen, even though I know that it is because of the less spectacular plays that the great ones stand out. When Barry Sanders was playing, there was a chance on every play that he could end up spinning down the field, breaking tackles, and doing things that had never been seen before. But on most plays that didn't happen. Still, the chance of it happening was enough to compel me to watch games that otherwise might have been, well, boring.
Those are my proclivities. I'm biased toward offensively minded teams, preferably ones that throw more than run. And I would take that so far as to say I would rather watch a team lose with offense than win with defense. Heretical, perhaps, to prefer beauty to winning, but as a fan I know when my passions are engaged, and it's not when Tom Brady sets up a field goal.
For another fan, with another set of judgments, it would certainly be possible to appreciate and find beauty in other aspects of the game. All of my examples have come from the offensive side of the game, because this is the part of the game that draws me in. But I recognize the possibility of finding beauty in defense too. In fact, sometimes I do. My appreciation of a well-timed interception can be similar to the appreciation I would have for the receiver making the catch. I tend not to find beauty in a big hit (I react too strongly to the pain I imagine the player is feeling), though I know that to make a good hit requires skill in the forms of strength and exceptional timing. Though I don't find beauty there myself, it takes little effort to imagine someone else doing so. To contrast, I can't imagine anyone watching a player trip, clumsily, over his own feet and call that beautiful (even if the result of the play was “fortunate”).
The philosopher Ted Cohen explains these differences in terms of circles of taste.4 Every person has her own particular circle of taste, which she draws around those things that she appreciates. For some the circle includes football; for others it does not. Among the circles that include football, each will be drawn slightly differently to include different aspects of the game. Mine, as stated above, includes several kinds of offensive plays and a few defensive highlights. Someone else's circle (a former defensive player's?) might include more defensive plays and be more selective with regard to offense. Effectively, Cohen's circles say very little about the nature of beauty. After all, what do they say, other than that a person's circle of beauty includes those things he considers beautiful and excludes what he does not? This nominalism is very much the tautology we encountered earlier: beauty is in the beautiful, and the beautiful is what contains beauty. This circle is drawn around the subject, and beauty is in the subject's eye.
But Cohen draws another circle, this one around the object of beauty. Included in this circle are all those who find beauty in a particular object. All those who find football beautiful would be in the same circle. Dividing “football” into component parts, we could draw other circles around the aspects of the game that have been mentioned: passing, catching, running, tackling, and so on. What Cohen emphasizes in regard to these circles is that all we can know about the members of a particular circle is that they are in the circle. Because we do not know the reasons (if they can be called reasons) for someone's appreciation, we cannot postulate universal standards for beauty. Without the latter point, locating beauty in the eye of the beholder would not preclude a metaphysical basis to it. We could claim that divergent opinions of beauty reflect divergent abilities to identify beauty, that thing. Some are better at identifying it than others. With the object's circle drawn, beauty is seen strictly as a subjective valuation, without defense or justification. There is, as we say, no accounting for taste.
To test out these circles in an informal manner, I devised a short survey and sent it to three people who I thought would have very different football tastes. One, Brian, is an accomplished athlete and spirited football fan; another, John, my father, is not a fan; the third, Ally, is a Korean friend, unfamiliar with the rules of the game. I sent them links to videos of various plays and asked them two questions: (1) Was that beautiful? (2) Why or why not? I will briefly describe each video and give their reactions before trying to draw some conclusions.
Video 1 was Franco Harris's “Immaculate Reception.” In it, Terry Bradshaw, throwing under pressure in a playoff game, has his pass broken by a defender. Luckily, the ball is deflected to Franco Harris, who makes a difficult catch and runs for a touchdown.5
BRIAN: Thought it was not beautiful. Just a lucky play with no execution.
JOHN: Found some beauty here, in Harris's ability to react to changing events with agility.
ALLY: Thought it was messy and hard to follow; not beautiful.
Video 2 was Dwight Clark and Joe Montana's play “The Catch.” Again, a quarterback, Montana, throws under pressure for a touchdown in a playoff game. This time the pass is completed to the intended receiver, Clark.6
BRIAN: Beautiful throw. Beautiful catch.
JOHN: Found some beauty in the excellent timing of the play.
ALLY: Indifferent to this play. Not beautiful. But not not-beautiful, either.
Video 3 was a running play up the middle for a small gain.7
BRIAN: Couldn't see any beauty in this play.
JOHN: Found no beauty. Called it brute force against brute force.
ALLY: Not beautiful.
Video 4 was a long touchdown pass from Joey Harrington to Sammie Parker (at the University of Oregon) that Parker caught in perfect stride.8
BRIAN: Beautiful. The route was well run and the ball perfectly thrown.
JOHN: The coordination and calculation were beautiful.
ALLY: Beautiful because Harrington threw it so far and Parker ran so fast.
Video 5 was a highlight reel of some of Barry Sanders's best runs.9
BRIAN: Barry Sanders's runs were beautiful because of his speed, power, lateral quickness, creativity, agility, and balance.
JOHN: Found his movements to be beautiful in their agility and speed.
ALLY: Beautiful, because he moves everywhere.
Video 6 was of Reggie Bush getting hit hard by Sheldon Brown.10
BRIAN: It was a beautiful play by the defender because of his ability to read the play, then his quickness to the ball, and finally his power in the hit.
JOHN: Not beautiful, just brute force again.
ALLY: Very, very beautiful.
These responses might not tell us anything about beauty as such, and they do not hint at any objective beauty in football, but they are instructive in that they demonstrate various circles of taste. Brian's circle is the largest, with regard to football, as we would expect from a fan. His circle and comments indicate an interest in the more technical aspects of the game. John's circle appears to be drawn around plays similar to those in Brian's circle, with the exception of plays that emphasize the skill of force. But even on plays that both Brian and John called beautiful, Brian expressed more enthusiasm for the beauty, using definitive language, while John tended to qualify his responses, saying that plays had “some beauty,” for example. This, I think, demonstrates that the attribute of beauty is assigned by degree, not in a dichotomous yes or no. Things are not beautiful and not beautiful; they are more beautiful and less beautiful. We could think of a person's most beautiful objects being found at his circle's center and the slightly beautiful falling around the perimeter.
Ally's circle is less consistent, suggesting that context matters to our judgments. Without knowing the rules of the game, she can only guess at the meanings of the actions she sees. Initially, after watching the unremarkable running play, she called it beautiful and commented that the guy who ran all the way into the end zone must be very good. When I explained that that guy wasn't directly involved with the play, that the ball carrier had been brought down upfield, she decided it was not beautiful. And with the hit on Reggie Bush, she told me that it would be more beautiful if it were legal and wondered what punishment Sheldon Brown received. When I told her it was legal and he didn't get in any trouble, she said it was the most beautiful of all the plays.
If there is a conclusion from this survey it is that, with regard to a specific object, such as football, whatever we understand of the context of the object impacts our judgments of beauty. Beauty is not only in the eye of the beholder but also in the mind behind that eye.11
The Outcome
Vick has room to run and it's only the safety between him and the end zone …
These questions of why we watch football and whether or not it is beautiful, who is asking them? The football fan isn't interested in such questions. He is, when in the role of fan, engaged with the game, attentively, emotionally, and aesthetically. The opportunity to ask these questions arises when this person shifts roles from fan to budding philosopher, either after the game or during some downtime in the game, but, critically, not simultaneously with beholding the game. These roles (beholding and reflecting) are distinct. Per the argument, the fan, as fan, has no time for the argument. It takes place on the philosopher's field in a different game, of which the particular football fan may or may not also be a fan. But whether or not the football fan is a recreational philosopher after the game, during the action he cannot be; the game transcends our conceptions of it.
But all games (football and philosophy) come to an end, and the questions have been asked, at least here. So, what do we learn by these inquiries? The definition of beauty is open. Its meaning depends on shifting circles of judgments that each of us makes. And while these judgments don't close the definition any tighter, they do give us an effective way to reflect on what it is that we mean when we call a rose, a child's eyes, or a touchdown pass beautiful. And although I said above that if all we say is that there is beauty in the beautiful and the beautiful is that which has beauty, then we say very little, perhaps there is nothing more to say.12
Notes
1. Thanks to Woodrow Pengelly for this point.
2. This was written long before the Patriots’ beautiful 2007–2008 season.
3. The examples of beauty I've used in this paper have been presented as things that “we” find beautiful, but, of course, you did not choose the examples and may disagree with my selections. What I am really saying is, “I think these examples are beautiful. And you do, too, don't you?”
4. Ted Cohen, “Liking What's Good: Why Should We?” in Philosophy and Interpretation of Pop Culture, ed. William Irwin and Jorge J. E. Gracia (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).
5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnfbKKvUG9Q; accessed 6 January 2008.
6. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PArRGCdJIA; accessed 6 January 2008.
7. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osItKwjOhKk; accessed 6 January 2008.
8. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHwkQtxU-J4; accessed 6 January 2008.
9. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6YQznRq0sM; accessed 9 March 2007.
10. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiOSPYpxTDw; accessed 9 March 2007.
11. A compounding factor for these videos is the camera work for each play. The camera mediates our vision, and the disparity in the quality of the videos can disrupt the consistency of the eye. Bad camera work could make us misjudge a beautiful play. In a sense, then, we might not be talking about the beauty we see in football but about the beauty we see in the video of football. It's important to at least keep this in mind.
12. Thanks to my friend Mike Waite, who told me one day that the Falcons’ new quarterback would change the way I watched and thought about football. I would also like to emphasize to readers that this chapter examines the aesthetics of Michael Vick as a football player and that ethical considerations are beyond its scope.