Football Morning In America

I've thoroughly enjoyed my time "visiting" Weekend Edition. But there was at least one notable drawback: Working on Sundays seriously cut into the nine hours I would have otherwise spent watching professional football, slovenly splayed out on my couch in a half-lucid, glassy-eyed torpor. (At least the 4 a.m. wake-up call makes it slightly more socially acceptable.)

So I was happy to assist in producing an interview with Sal Paolantonio, an NFL reporter and commentator for ESPN's variously converged media.

 

He's got a new book out purporting to elucidate How Football Explains America, and however absurd that premise may appear to you, fellow armchair quarterbacks, Paolantonio was clearly well-informed, and I thought he explained his theorem rather convincingly to Liane Hansen.

Unfortunately, time constraints do violence to all interviews, and there were necessarily some interesting responses edited out. Luckily, our modest series of tubes is less beholden to the injustices of a timed program. So here is what Mr. Paolantonio makes of three of my favorite things (besides football): soccer, jazz and a classic George Carlin routine.

On why football hasn't caught on abroad:

On why jazz musicians like football:

On George Carlin's best PG-rated bit (and the military culture of football):

And for good measure, here's the aforementioned routine: