I thought I loved the NFL series, “A Football Life.” I loved, for instance, the episodes on Tom Landry and Jimmy Johnson.
Then I watched the one on Tim Tebow. It was lame. Next I watched one entitled, “The Fearsome Foursome” (about the Los Angeles Rams defensive line of the 1960s).
It was done by Jennifer Allen, daughter of the late football coach George Allen, and it sucked. It had very little about football and a lot about love and feelings and relationships and caring. It was just what you would expect from a woman given 45 minutes to make a show about four football players. If I start another one of these “Football Life” programs and it is narrated by a woman, I’m going to be quick to give up on it.
When I watch a show on football, I want to understand why one side won and the other side lost. I want to understand how the game worked. I want to understand strategy and fragility on the field. I don’t care about the players kids and I don’t care about their musical ability and their political views and I’m not much interested in their perspectives on racial integration. I certainly don’t care about the narrator and how she named her kids. I don’t want to see footage of her playing with her kids. I don’t care about her and child-rearing when I seek out a documentary on football called “The Fearsome Foursome.” I feel ripped off. Unless she’s hot, I don’t want to see her. I want to learn about football, which is a polite substitute for war. When it comes to reporting on sports and war, most women are going to be limited by their biology just as much as men trying to breastfeed. Women have 1/100th as much testosterone as men and don’t appreciate winning and losing and strategy as much as men. No woman has coached an NFL football team. The women we’ve had as National Security advisors and Secretary of State have been terrible (Condi Rice, Hillary Clinton). There’s never been a female Secretary of Defense. Margaret Thatcher was a great politician but they don’t make many like her and I’m not sure she knew much about football. There’s no woman writing on sports who I seek out. Women are sportswriters because America is now Affirmative Action Nation (yes, there are plenty of competent female sportswriters, but no stars). There’s no female Skip Bayless.
