Cultural critic Chuck Klosterman — author of But What If We're Wrong?, The Nineties, and now a new book simply titled Football — joins the Chuck Toddcast for a fascinating, genre-bending conversation that's part memoir, part sports analysis, and part thought experiment about how a singular American obsession will be remembered centuries from now. Klosterman frames the book as a "living obituary" for football, working from his signature premise that over enough time, almost everything fades until a single simplified narrative is all that survives — and that football, despite being the one true common denominator of the modern American experience (it overtook baseball as the most popular sport by the 1970s, even though people at the time didn't realize it), will almost certainly not remain central to the culture a few decades from now. He and Chuck explore how perception dramatically changes over time , how the internet has fundamentally altered our relationship with time itself, and why arguments against the internet today sound exactly like the arguments people once made against television. Klosterman, who only half-jokingly says his "beat" these days is simply reality, argues that we now consume social media on the working assumption that what we're seeing isn't real — a profound shift in how humans relate to information.

The conversation winds through some genuinely original territory about why football works the way it does and what its eventual decline might look like. Klosterman argues football is a fundamentally cerebral sport with intense but widely dispersed moments of action (the Wall Street Journal famously found only 11 minutes of actual action in a three-hour broadcast), that its sheer complexity and total absence of free-flowing movement is exactly why it's never exported well, and that it nearly became a literal embodiment of American exceptionalism. He and Todd dig into whether the NFL can over-expand into a 12-month product, why football is the one American sport that could plausibly survive on pay-per-view, and how the league walks a razor's edge between the maximum physicality fans crave and the safety changes that are slowly, quietly trying to remove hitting from the game — even as the ever-present risk of injury is precisely what raises the stakes and makes it so engaging. There's a wonderful tangent on COVID and 9/11 as the two great timeline-dividing events of the modern era (one slow and shared globally, one sudden and strange), including Chuck's own reflection that the pandemic was unexpectedly a bonding experience with his kids. Klosterman closes by previewing his next book — an alternate history of rock and roll — and delivering a characteristically provocative argument that rock effectively ended as a meaningful art form in the 1990s, that having access to all the music ever recorded has paradoxically led people to listen to the same 600 songs, and that he genuinely regrets ever getting rid of his CD collection, because the day may come when streaming services are broken up and no longer contain all the music in the world.

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Timeline:

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00:00 Chuck Klosterman joins the Chuck ToddCast

01:00 Football is partially memoir, part description of football

03:30 The process of writing the book

05:00 It was like Chuck was “trying to build his brain in public”

07:15 The thought exercise of how football will be remembered in 200 years

08:00 Over time, some things stick and others fade away until one thing is left

08:45 It’s easier to understand a singular narrative

09:30 If something remains in the zeitgeist after 60 years, it has true staying power

12:00 Arguments against the internet sound like arguments against TV

13:45 What do you consider “your beat” these days? Reality.

15:00 Consuming social media with assumption what you’re seeing isn’t real

16:15 Book is a living obituary for football. Eventually, it won’t be central to culture

17:00 By the 1970’s football was the most popular sport, people thought it was baseball

18:15 Football is the one common denominator of the American experience

19:15 In a few decades, football will likely no longer be central to our society

20:30 The perception of Woodrow Wilson changed well after his death

22:00 Perception can dramatically change over time

22:45 How much time should pass before writing about a historical event?

24:15 The internet has changed our relationship with time

25:30 Diving the timeline into pre and post 9/11 and pre/post Covid

26:45 The COVID experience was slow, 9/11 happened suddenly

28:00 People forget how weird the two weeks after 9/11 were

29:30 Covid was a bizarre experience, everyone focused on same thing

30:15 Covid truly the first global event, shared by everyone

31:30 Covid was actually a bonding experience for Chuck Todd with his kids

33:30 History may look back at Covid very differently than we do now

38:15 Will football end as the cultural glue when television ends?

38:45 Cost of TV advertising is not worth the ROI for many companies

39:30 NFL + college football are of the mindset that they can only expand

40:30 Football is our only sport that could survive on a PPV basis

42:15 The majority of people who love football didn’t play it

43:00 Sports show how capitalism operates in a way that’s dangerous

45:45 Complexity has made American football hard to export

46:45 There’s no freedom of movement in football. It’s all planned

48:00 Why hasn’t Rugby caught on in America?

48:45 Football almost became an embodiment of American exceptionalism

49:45 WSJ studied football and found there’s only 11 mins of action in 3 hours

51:45 Football is a mostly cerebral sport with intense, dispersed moments of action

52:45 How important is it that football is in fall and winter?

53:30 People can now escape nature, but nature is very determinative in football

56:30 Most people don’t experience physicality and football demands it

57:30 Is it possible for the NFL to overexpand? Could it become a 12 month experience?

59:30 Owners want to host a Super Bowl, all stadiums will likely have a roof in 20 years

1:01:45 Football will have value as a distraction, but it needs meaning to stay powerful

1:03:00 Attending football games has gotten increasingly expensive

1:04:30 Safety changes have changed the nature of the game

1:05:00 The dream may be to slowly remove the hitting from the game

1:05:30 Fans used to revel in the hard hits, now they’re turning away

1:06:15 The risk of injury raises the stakes, makes it more engaging

1:08:15 NFL walks the line between max physicality and not turning fans off

1:11:00 What is your next book? Alternate history of Rock n Roll

1:13:45 Rock as a meaningful artform ended in the 90s

1:16:00 People have access to all the music in the world, listen to same 600 songs

1:18:30 Regret getting rid of the CD collection

1:19:15 Eventually streaming services could get broken up, not have all music