But before I start talking about this article, I just want to say a little bit about the recent redesign. I was never all that wild about their old look, but I love the way that they’ve standardized the all-around look of the magazine. I think there’s a little nod to blogs in that all the features and articles use roughly the same spread, and the covers have an awesomely straightforward look that, personally, I’d like to see more magazines adopt.

But enough rambling. The January/February 2009 issue, their “State of the Union” issue, has Barack Obama on the cover and a lot of discussion about the incredibly relevant issues of race in America. There’s a really interesting piece about “The End of White America” and a profile of Michelle Obama that drastically recasts our national debate in a newly compelling light.

But I want to talk about Football, so I’m going to talk about the article “Football’s Hardest Job.”

First, to my surprise, this article was about neither the Detroit Lions nor the BCS, arguably the two most pressing jobs in Football today. No, instead it’s about Bob “Fish” Fishman, one of CBS’s directors for NFL coverage. Most of the story is written from the perspective of a prouction trailer outside The Meadowlands during a game between the Bengals and the Giants, as the writer details what goes into putting an NFL game on TV.

Now, I wasn’t surprised by the amount of work that goes into this process. I suppose it’s kind of like putting together a daily newspaper, except you have to do it all live.  But one of the most interesting observations is that TV is really what made the NFL the powerhouse of American Professional Sports that it is today. I’d go a little further though, and say that TV is why Hockey and Soccer are not more popular in America.

Neither sport translates well to TV, because both generally use the high-from-the-middle camera shot for the the majority of the action. The camera rarely does more than pan side to side, so you have to actively watch to find the action. Football, as this article points out, has an entire team of people whose sole job it is to make sure you never have to wonder where the action is going to be. They have cameras trained on all the likely possibilities for the play, and enough angles that you can see every moment from all different sides. Football–and possibly to a larger extent baseball–come across on TV like a well made movie. Hockey and Soccer come across more like, well, live sporting events.

It probably says something about America that we have trouble sitting through sporting events that aren’t well directed. But I really don’t care. I love football. I watch NFL games that have no meaning, simply because it’s football (and because I wanted to–and did–win my Fantasy League). Football is such a perfect TV product to veg out to because anything you miss will be replayed, and there are more than enough breaks that you can go get a beer, get food, or reach the inevitable conclusion of those two and go to the bathroom. Of course, the Superbowl actually makes you want to watch commercials, or the halftime show (BRUUUCE!), but the focus is still the football. Everything else is decoration.

Canada loves its hockey, and the rest of the world loves its soccer. They’re dedicated fans, so they put up with the nuisances of the broadcast media. But I guarantee that you could attract many more casual fans to either sport by pouring money into the TV coverage. I don’t know how much they could do with hockey, because it’s so fast paced and unpredictable, but there’s gotta be something. I want to see the NHL somewhere besides Versus and NBC’s off days.

But back to the article. One reason I enjoyed it was that the writer, Mark Bowden, captured the excitement of the football match as it was pieced together. Interestingly though, it was so gripping because he wasn’t describing the game itself, he was literally transcribing the way it was coming across on TV.

There were some kind of awkward bracketed moments, where Bowden described what was on the cameras, and one very Atlantic-y explanation of Eli Manning’s heritage, but other than that it was a great article that explained football without actually describing football. I’d recommend it.