Some of the questions Chuck Klosterman asks in his new book Football are questions you would expect a Chuck Klosterman book about football to ask: Why are Americans so obsessed with the sport? What does it say about our larger culture? Why is Creed’s Thanksgiving 2001 halftime show a seminal moment in our nation’s history? But one of the most surprising, and winning, aspects of the book is how wonky it is, how obsessive about actual gameplay — formations, strategies, historical figures. Klosterman is sometimes portrayed — I’d argue incorrectly — as a distant, almost glib observer of the American cultural condition. But it’s clear that he loves the sport of football in all its excesses and minutiae, and the result is a book that’s unexpectedly emotional and achingly sincere.

Still, there’s plenty of Klosterman’s signature insights and madman logic here, and the book is, like all his other work, consistently hilarious: His wry, seemingly alien sense of humor has always been his secret weapon. I spoke with Klosterman about his argument that football’s dominance has an end date, whether college football is better than the NFL, and how scared he is that men don’t seem to read books anymore.

In the book, you touch on a long-standing theory of mine, which is that one reason football is so popular is that anyone can watch it and feel like an expert, despite having no idea what’s actually going on. But you’re wonkier about football than the average fan. Do you think that makes you a better or happier fan, or the opposite?
That’s probably just a reflection of my personality and interests. When you’re a senior in high school, you have those, like, albums or yearbooks or whatever, and there’s one page where you have to say what you hope you’ll be doing in the future. My fantasy was to be an offensive coordinator in the SEC. What I think is very funny is that even in my greatest fantasy, I did not have the head job.

A lot of people, myself included, argued for years that football is in existential peril, and almost everyone, again myself included, has given up on that argument. That’s why it’s fascinating to see you suggest that football’s hegemony has an end date. To oversimplify a bit, you think that’s largely because of its overreliance on a television- and streaming business plan that won’t last forever, and that as fewer fans actually let their own kids play the sport, it will become increasingly disconnected from their day-to-day experience. Do you think people our age will see that turn, or will we die wondering if it ever comes?
I think there’s going to be this inevitable economic issue involving cable and streaming television, which will be accentuated by cultural and social issues underneath. They’re able to sort of stave off and fight off as long as the NFL is still in this completely dominant financial position. But if that were to shift, the size of the league makes it paradoxically fragile. Will people........

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