Name: The DISTURBING Origin Of Football -- Chuck Klosterman
Uploaded: 2026-01-31T14:01:04.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The DISTURBING Origin Of Football -- Chuck Klosterman' from TAFS Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2026-01-31. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The DISTURBING Origin Of Football -- Chuck Klosterman' from TAFS Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2026-01-31. Transcript available.

What is the story of football?
But tell us the story of football.
Just tell us like, no, no, seriously.
I know.
Oh yeah, it's great.
It's this ridiculous thing.
Okay, but here's...
Okay, I'll see.
First of all, here's how I see it.
It's this ridiculous thing where you see these, first of all, they're mushing,
right?
And you can tell these guys are just mushing their heads, right?
And then you've got the big guys mushing their heads, then you have this whole
like arcane
set of like tort law, right?
They're like, they have to go with like hyper-complicated, yes, yes.
They have to go read the fucking Federalist papers to like understand like, you
know...
Well, that's good for them, though.
It's good to have a good understanding.
I mean, that's valuable.
Did he break the plane and did he...
You know?
Okay, how do you...
How do you feel about this?
Then they have a chain.
Then they have to measure it.
They literally have two flags and a chain that they have to bring out and they
have the
guy come out on the chain...
Catches football in the physical world.
That's good, yeah.
...on the chain gang, right?
And then they have, you know...
Okay.
So the origin...
Okay.
You know what the believed origin of football, American football is?
And it's a pig.
They're throwing a pig at each other.
Well, yeah.
His skin.
Yeah, yeah.
The belief...
It's hard to verify this, but kind of the consensus about the origin of
football was after
the Civil War, there was this belief that young men were no longer going to
face conflict.
They were not going to be involved.
Yes.
And it was going to soften society.
So they were like, we need to find some surrogate for going to war and watching
all your friends
die or whatever.
Uh-huh.
So they invent the sport of football.
You know, they kind of create this game.
And then it evolved sort of in a way it evolved for 70 or 80 years and then
kind of intersects
with television and ends up becoming the thing that we think of now.
Yeah.
But that is kind of believed to be the origin of the game.
That it literally was supposed to simulate the experience of going to war for
young men.
And who is the first modern football player?
You say Jim Thorpe, right?
Well, no, no.
The first modern football player, that's a really hard question.
Because I suppose in some ways it was Jim Brown.
Yeah.
In terms that he's probably the person you can go back the furthest and make a
real argument
that if we literally transported him.
Yeah.
Like just in a time machine or whatever, he might be able to still play.
I mean in some ways like Johnny Unitas and Sammy Baugh were the first sort of
modern quarterbacks.
But it's a hard question because the modern version of football, I mean like no
sport adopts
technology and modernity as much.
So it's much different than say baseball where the way baseball was played by
Babe Ruth actually
is not totally unlike the way it's played now.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
And so in terms of like its popularity, like how did that evolve over time?
Especially in the last 30 years.
Well, it was already the most popular sport in the country in the 70s, but it
wasn't perceived
that way because it was still like baseball's the national pastime.
But already by then, people cared about football more because of the television
experience.
You know, and I mean it's just, it's like almost the perfect marriage of these
two things.
Football is the ideal product to show on television.
Yeah.
Nobody would, no one could have obviously anticipated that from football side
or television side.
Yeah.
And...
How much do you attribute like its success on television to Cletus?
What?
Cletus.
Cletus?
He's the robot that plays electric guitar.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I think that widened sort of its popularity among mechanical prog rock
fans.
Yeah, yeah.
And there was a segment of the audience that was maybe underserved.
Who at Fox came up with that?
I don't know.
The CGI electric, because it's awesome when you see it.
Yeah, it obviously works.
I mean, you know his name.
It's like, how do you know his name?
Um, because I like sports.
Yeah, I know, but how do you, where did you, where is that, I mean, I like
sports, but I...
You see him getting defensive.
He wrote a book on football.
I know, I know.
This is going to be, it's like...
He doesn't even know who Cletus is.
I am.
That's right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You could have consulted with me.
You should have had a whole damn chapter on this.
I thought you were talking about the Simpsons character for a second.
I believe his name is Cletus.
And if his name isn't Cletus, I'm going to be really embarrassed.
Because I'm going to look that up.
It's Cletus?
Yeah.
You got a fast team here.
Dude, dominated once again.
Yeah.
Flip that.
Flip that.
Put that out.
Put that out.
Sales are going down to zero, Penguin.
By the way, it was this proliferation on television, right?
Like TV rights deals kind of like proliferated football in the way that...
Well, yes.
I mean, but also, you know, football is different in the sense that they have
this real strict,
salary cap and no guaranteed contract.
So as the money is inflated in all these sports, football has been able to
almost benefit more
because they don't have to pay as much to the talent.
It seems kind of satanic a little bit, no?
Well, I mean, yeah.
If you're pushing your brain for two seasons and then you shoot yourself in the
chest...
Yeah.
But at the same time, the NFL is probably the greatest example of successful
socialism in
the United States.
So you should be into that.
Is it?
Well, I mean, they do all revenue sharing.
You know, they sort of invented that.
Pete Rozelle said, "We're going to do this.
We're going to do this."
And none of the big markets wanted to do it.
And he's like, "It's going to happen."
And that's why every six years or eight years or whatever it is, the likelihood
that some
random franchise will be good again keeps happening.
Yeah.
But, like, it's not fair.
If you sign a contract and then, like, they're like, "Oh, it's over."
You mushed your brain too much.
So what would be fair?
I'm not saying...
I disagree with you, but...
If a company that's making the most money, kind of, like, there's remuneration
for mushing
your brain.
Well, if you're saying that the NFL should definitely pay for the guys with CTI,
sure,
sure, yes, I agree.
They stand by a contract that you've signed.
Yes, yes, but...
I mean, I think it's cool that Bobby Bonilla gets a million dollars every year.
I just, like...
It is a cool fact.
Everyone loves to mention that.
That comes up every year.
I think it's cool, yeah.
I just think, like, "Fuck the mess."
Whatever.
Give him a million dollars.
Yeah, I guess it's, like, there is an aspect about how it's better on TV.
Like, baseball is a sport that's better live, I think.
Well, it can be both.
Yeah, yeah.
If you're at a nice ballpark on a nice day, it absolutely is better live.
There's no question.
But sometimes it's not.
Sometimes it's, you know, especially the way they've changed the way baseball
is broadcast
now, it has become, again, a good thing to watch on TV.
I mean, like, basketball games, if you're courtside, it's awesome.
If you're in the rafters, it's bad.
The best shot, actually, the best place to sit is really where the camera is
for the show.
Yeah.
Hockey's better live.
That's the only sport that's obviously better live.
You can't follow the fucking puck when you're watching on TV.
Also, you can't.
Most sports try to, like, transfer the live experience to television, and you
can't transfer
the feeling of guys, like, hitting the plexiglass.
But football doesn't try to do that.
The live experience of watching football and the televised experience have no
relationship.
Yeah.
American culture is awesome.
Like, right?
Like, if you go, like, to the middle of nowhere, people know who Mickey Mouse
is, right?
American monoculture has proliferated.
Like, if you listen to the Rolling Stones, like, Mick's singing in an American
accent, right?
Yep.
For sure.
We're so powerful, especially in the 20th century onwards, as a cultural exporter.
Why is this the one thing that...
It's such an outlier because it's the one thing that hasn't proliferated, yet,
somehow,
it's the most fucking popular thing that we have going on here.
Well, I mean, that's actually a really good question.
You know, I think it probably is that football is almost, as you stated,
unnecessarily complex,
right?
Yeah.
It's a hard thing.
Just get 22 guys together and play a football game.
Like, you can, but it's not going to be anything like what football actually is.
It took basketball a long time.
And if it hadn't been for, you know, the original dream team, I think that a
lot of these countries
would still be probably 40 years behind us in basketball.
It takes a long time for people to watch a sport.
Yeah.
Implement it.
And also implement it for kids.
Because, you know, football really isn't a great game to suddenly start playing
when
you're 19.
And you need that kind of infrastructure.
And I also think that, I think probably, you know, it's popular in Germany.
It's not really.
Well, I mean, not popular.
The Rhyme Fire.
But what I'm saying is, I taught...
Do they still have NFL Europe?
Well, I don't think, no.
The London Dragons?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Or the Barcelona Dragons.
The Barcelona Dragons, yeah.
The Rhyme Fire.
I taught a semester of school in Leipzig, Germany, in like 2008.
And I was surprised how much awareness of American football was there.
But, you know, at the same time, I think that, you know, when people...
You say how American culture is just a wonderful thing.
And, you know, as Americans, we can feel that way.
But I think for a lot of other countries, they see it as sort of oppressive and
football
represents, like, the one thing they were able to stay off.
Like, I remember when I was teaching this class and all the kids were always
like,
"America has no culture."
That was their big thing.
And I'd be like, "Well, all you guys love hip-hop."
And they're like, "Well, that's an immigrant culture."
And I was like, "Well, really?"
No, it's not immigrants.
It's people that have been here for 400 years.
I just thought it was a very funny perception of what they thought of hip-hop
as the...
Well, they were immigrants 400 years ago during the slavery, but yeah.
No, I guess it's, yeah.
But it is weird, isn't it?
It is.
It's surprising.
It's surprising.
It's like...
Well, they're from England.
No, no, no.
But why are the Beatles hearing old rock and roll records, right?
Yeah.
Or the Chuck Berry records, you're saying?
Yeah, yeah.
Or the Muddy Waters records, and then giving us back our culture in a new,
exciting way.
Like, that cultural exchange has always been fascinating.
Why are you going to Tokyo, and you see American culture everywhere, but it's
like they've advanced
it, and like, you know, just fashion-wise or whatever.
Like, they've taken our culture, and they're obsessed with our culture, and
then they've
enhanced it.
Do you feel that way about film?
Do you feel that the best films are now made outside of the United States?
No, I'm not that kind of guy.
No, no.
There are great films made outside of the United States, but I don't...
Because rock music is the clearest example of that.
Yeah, rock music is, yeah.
And there are other examples, you know, of it.