Michael W. Austin - Football and Philosophy: Going Deep

As a sports columnist, I often write about philosophy. Why, just the other day I was discussing philosophical theories with Kansas City Chiefs football coach and NFL Nietzsche Herman Edwards. My philosophy, Edwards said, is that you've got to hit the quarterback. Among moral philosophers, this quote may not rank with Man is the cruelest animal. But couldn't you argue that both say the same thing? This is the wonderful thing about football. While coaches and players are constantly talking about their particular brands of football philosophies (for example, We want to run the football, We play our corners in bump and run, Only the best players will make this team, I just want to earn my respect), it seems they are, in their own way, touching on some of our larger questions.

After all, while Stobaeus may have asked, What use is knowledge if there is no understanding? it was that tough coach Bill Parcells who said, If you don't quit making that same [bleeping] mistake, I'm going to cut you and send you to a truck stop in New Jersey. It seems to me that Parcells was just taking the next logical step.

Apparently, I'm not the only person to think this way. Mike Austin and his group of talented philosophers, writers, and teachers have taken that next step here. The difference is that Mike Austin and his group of talented philosophers, writers, and teachers are a lot smarter than I am. In this fine book, they use football as an opportunity to discuss some of life's biggest topics, bold and important ideas that philosophers have studied through the years. Some of the chapters that follow delve into questions of our time that seem quite simple until you actually think about them: What is wrong with using performance-enhancing drugs, anyway?

Some of these essays use philosophical principles and ideals to take on sports-bar questions: Is the NFL's salary cap fair? Where does Vince Lombardi, surely the most celebrated philosopher in the history of professional football, fit into the larger philosophical world? Have athletes become too egotistical? And what would Marx think of a college football playoff anyway?

Then, of course, there are chapters dealing with football and God. I recently saw a punter kick a ball high and far; the ball soared, a beautiful spiral that seemed to linger and dangle in the air for a half hour. The football then hit the ground and pitched forward into the end zone. At that point, the television camera pointed back to the punter, and it showed him point up to the heavens, a tribute to the being that allowed him to punt a ball so magnificently. I could not help but wonder, though: If there is a just and fair God looking over this world, wouldn't he have made the ball stop at the 1?

Most of all, this book is thoughtful and more than skin deep and a lot of fun, and if it gets you to think about how college football players are similar to Roman gladiators, so much the better.

After all, as football coaches will tell you, everybody has a different philosophy. I am reminded of the words that longtime professional football coach Gunther Cunningham wrote in a letter to my daughter on the day she was born. He wrote, Always play the game like there is no scoreboard.

I don't know what Plato would have thought of that, but it makes sense to me.

Joe Posnanski
Kansas City Star