How ‘American Football’ Won Me Over

If you had told me when I was 18 years old — or, for that matter, when I was 28 years old — that, by the time I hit 38, I would spend a good chunk of my summers counting down the days to the football season, I would have looked at you as if you had summarily sprouted a tail.

As a child, I absorbed by osmosis the English disdain for “American football,” and I retained that disdain long after I’d moved to the United States. Baseball made sense to me immediately. Hockey was at least comprehensible. But football? As recently as 2016, I can remember telling my parents that it was “a silly game.”

About the Author

Charles C. W. Cooke

Charles C. W. Cooke is a senior editor at National Review and the host of The Charles C. W. Cooke Podcast.

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If you had told me when I was 18 years old — or, for that matter, when I was 28 years old — that, by the time I hit 38, I would spend a good chunk of my summers counting down the days to the football season, I would have looked at you as if you had summarily sprouted a tail.

As a child, I absorbed by osmosis the English disdain for “American football,” and I retained that disdain long after I’d moved to the United States. Baseball made sense to me immediately. Hockey was at least comprehensible. But football? As recently as 2016, I can remember telling my parents that it was “a silly game.”