It ended up being about like you'd fear a New Yorker article on the NFL would be: a lot of good contextual points, but no point to the overall article. Or, as Gary Andrew Poole sums up: "his takes on fandom are dead-on and well worth reading, but the premise of his piece is shaky."
Poole is talking about the moment where Joe Namath says of Chad Pennington:
"I've only watched him this year as a fan, on television. I haven't had a chance to break down the passing game to see if Chad's going to the right spot or going to the wrong reciver."And in a as-you-well-know aside, Gopnik identifies Roy Blount Jr.'s "About Three Bricks Shy of a Load" as "the best of all books about pro football." It's an old trick and an arbitrary decision, but I never get sick of filing that nugget of information away.
...Nathan's point comes home; on television you see free will instead of a series of forced choices, mostly bad.
