Bullseye with Jesse Thorne is a production of Maximum Fun.org and is distributed by NPR.

It's Bullseye. I'm Jesse Thorne.

Do you like football?

I mean, not everyone does, and this being NPR, there's a fair chance that you might not.

But me personally, I grew up with an autographed picture of Jerry Rice and Joe Montana on my wall.

Now, I'm not the number one football fan in the world.

If I had to pick between a San Francisco Giants baseball game and San Francisco 49ers football

game, I'm probably going to go with a baseball game.

Chuck Klosterman, though, Chuck Klosterman, the writer, thinks a lot about football,

and he watches a lot of football, too. Sundays, book solid. Thursdays want to meet Closterman for dinner? Well, you know, depends on what game is on. Saturdays, too, college football. But Chuck Closterman isn't really a sports writer. He kind of writes about everything, the rivalry between the

Lakers and the Celtics, time travel as a plot device in fiction, the Eagle's song, Take It Easy. And now,

football. That's actually the title of his new book, Football. In it, he examines the cultural impact of the sport as it relates

to American life. Is it heady? Yes, slightly, but it is also very fun and funny and fascinating,

even if you're not a football fan. Let's get into it. Chuck, welcome back to Bullseye. I'm happy to see you again. It's good to see you as well,

Jesse. Maybe this is a stupid question, because you once played football in high school. But when

you are watching a football game on television, what percentage of what is happening would you say you understand? That's a very

tricky question. It's sort of like when you put food in the microwave, do you understand what's

happening? I mean, in a large sense, you obviously do. It's very clear. Molecules are shaking,

right? I don't know. Yeah, well, it's like it's causing the molecules to rub up against each other and the heat comes from inside there's all the like there's another level of how did that happen how did they you know so i would say that when i'm watching on television i have sort of a rudimentary understanding of 98% of what's going on, but in terms of how the game would look

to an offensive coordinator or a player himself or whatever, I probably recognize 20% of what's

happening. You know, Bill Belichick once have a quote where he said, you know, you know, he had to go back

and watch the tape of the game he had just coached.

...