This, as you probably well know, is the theme song for the NFL on Fox. Every time you watch an NFL game on Fox, you hear this thing about 20 times over the course of several hours. You hear it during the pregame show as Terry and the boys leave. You hear it before kickoff, when the network airs commercials after a big touchdown, and during notifications about other future NFL games.
For a song that serves so many functions in a single viewing experience, it’s not very universal. In the narrow context of sports TV themes, it’s like most of them, although there is a little extra. A rhythm track anchored by a big, booming drum, a powerful snare drum, a (perhaps synthetic?) hi-hat playing eighth notes, cymbals beating to the edge of their lives, and a chugging rock guitar line. A relatively muted piano, trumpets, the aforementioned guitar and a few spare strings play a subtle and structural melodic role. But the boss, the reason we’re all here, is that classic BAH BAH BAH/BAH BAH BAH/BAH BAH BAH/BAH BAAAAAAAH, played by about 3,000 trumpets. It’s the herald of football’s arrival: the angels of hell perched atop the dome, singing their song of triumph at the mere knowledge that it is, once again, NFL Sunday.
If this song’s role is overextended throughout the broadcast, it’s only because it’s perfect: a brawny, muscular piece of music, as triumphant, militaristic and fun as the occasion demands. Everything the NFL aspires to be as a product is contained in these notes and the feelings they evoke. And of course, when you hear it a million times, it doesn’t make any sense in the world. in front from your mind, but it burrows deep like the bell in Pavlov’s dog brain, telling you, when it comes to BAH BAH BAH/BAH BAH BAAAAAH, that football triumph is imminent.
Unfortunately, sports isn’t all about winning and losing. Sometimes sport is a tragedy. For this, the NFL theme on Fox has a contingency.
Every time the game has to be cut from broadcast due to an on-field injury (an all-too-common occurrence in a contact sport), we treat ourselves to NFL on Fox Theme: Injury Remix. Booming snares are replaced by a smaller drum machine, a bit of funk programmed into the hi-hat buttons. The big melodic backend is replaced by a single electric bass playing a sexless Steely Dan funk line. A little new-age keyboard effect slips into the margins of the track.
The trumpets, the sound of the rising tide of football, sit enthroned in their cases. Their role is now played by a sad, In the style of Bruce Hornsby piano: a recognition that football can also be sad. But it’s still football, and you have to recognize that it’s football, which is why you still hear the NFL theme song on Fox, but just a little sadder now. Every time I hear the NFL On Fox theme (sad version) about a guy sitting on the field while being treated by the training staff after an errant hit left him with a broken leg or a Torn ACL or whatever, I’m instantly overwhelmed. by several collinear thoughts.
At first I think, “Damn, that’s funny. » It’s funny that this sad version of the NFL theme on Fox exists. I imagine a guy in a studio, eyes closed, rocking back and forth, feeling this vein of melancholy in his heart and bringing it to his performance of this sad, sad song. It’s funny that a producer once pointed out that playing the usual theme song during a montage of a commercial might be insensitive, but what most shows do, cut to commercials without any musical cues… well , it’s just a bit without atmosphere. Look, yes, a man has a broken leg, but we’re ALSO trying to sell products during the unexpected downtime that that creates. Can’t we half-ring Pavlov’s bell? Project a certain level of sensitivity while pursuing, you know, making television? I think of this producer who imagines the sad theme. I think of other guys in the room who were like, “Yes, great, sir. »
Then, because I’m watching a football injury on the field, I’m overcome with ambivalence and fear. However, as the Neuroscientist Chris Nowinski wrote in the New York Times Following Damar Hamlin’s recent injury, I don’t really think about the type of injuries I usually see. Because, look: it’s disappointing when someone breaks their leg on a soccer field, tears their ACL playing a sport, or experiences fear of receive-a-kick-in-the-back-of-the-leg sensation that accompanies a torn Achilles tendon. But everyone has, to one degree or another, made peace with injuries as a product of their profession. It’s sad, but in the same way, many inevitable things in life are sad – the kind of resigned sadness that comes with the passage of time.
No, what I’m thinking of is head injuries. Concussions, sub-concussive hits to the head: the gnarly inevitability that has haunted the sport for years. Depending on what happens and who observes it, the problem of head injuries in football oscillates between a problem to be solved through rule changes and medical procedures and an existential threat to the very existence of football and other sports of contact.
A broken leg, even though it’s horrible to see on camera, it’s really not a big deal. Bones heal fairly steadily, fitness can be regained, and careers can continue. There is a kind of person who, whenever a grisly sports injury is shown on television, immediately logs onto Twitter and expresses his disapproval, insisting that you should Never look at him, and that they, for their part, hated him, because they are not sick people. It always seems a bit overdetermined, in my opinion, to take the excuse of an injured person to insist to as many people as possible that You don’t think broken human body is cool. Honestly, I’d rather they look at wounds like they look Donkey instead of performatively lamenting the constant inevitability of sport.
But the head is different. Head injuries are inevitable in all sports, especially serious in football and hockey, and they don’t always heal properly. The consequences of football’s laissez-faire culture when it comes to concussion management range from tragic has appallingeven though the league at least took that more seriously over the last decade. Yet we won’t know for a long time whether trying a little instead of not trying at all will help significantly reduce the epidemic. chronic traumatic encephalopathy among NFL players, or if tackle football is simply screwed up at the root.
I always watch football. Many people who know all this and feel weak or disturbed know it too. I think people who resort to black and white thinking about the game are missing some things about the bigger picture. Players now have a better idea of the risks. Ultimately, football is – and the NFL sometimes seems determined to forget this – fun to play; a maddening tactical exercise where you have to knock guys down, which is more fun than polite society is willing to acknowledge. Well, they are indeed well paid, so much so that even you, if you had the gifts, might consider the risk you take when you step onto the field a decent gamble.
“Every time I hear that stupid, sad piano, it reminds me. It’s the collective groaning of the entire professional football industry and its viewers, who know it can go wrong but continue to play, watch and sell the product.»
But every time I hear that stupid, sad piano, it reminds me. It is the collective groaning of the entire professional football industry and its viewers, which know it may fail, but you can still play, watch and sell the product. The song’s lyrics might as well say: “We’re concerned about/this but we’re/gonna plaaaaaay anyway.” » Far from the sound of trumpets and the wonder of witnessing the weekly buffet of strength and guile on the league field, we are forced, week after week, to silently sort through the complexity of personal responsibility and human rubble to feel good. turning it on every weekend.
What would an ethically perfect fit look like in an ad based on a broken leg? It’s simple: it doesn’t exist. There are no ethical broken legs broadcast on national television under capitalism. But like those people who take to Twitter every time someone sprains their ankle to tell their followers that they personally don’t approve of injuries, Fox decided they needed to let everyone know that ‘They were aware that this football shit wasn’t all happy. . Not by suggesting ways to actually improve the league, like pay players more for their troubles, or ensure that all NFL veterans can participate in the retirement program, or wondering out loud if it’s all really worth it in the end, but playing that classic theme song in a way that makes you slightly sadder than when it’s played normally. Then they show you a bunch of car commercials before starting the game. I guess we all deal with the cognitive dissonance of sports in our own way.
