86 years ago today, Hunter S. Thompson was born.
About 67 years after that, just over two weeks after the New England Patriots beat the Philadelphia Eagles in the Super Bowl, Thompson died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. He left behind the following suicide note:
FOOTBALL SEASON IS OVER No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your age. Relax — This won't hurt.
It was a tragic end to the life of one of the most important and distinct writers of a generation. But much, much less than that, it was a solemn farewell to the game of American football from a man who I believe is one of the gridiron’s most important cultural champions.
I propose an unfortunate hypothesis: American football, the sport that I personally cherish above all others, lacks in cultural influence.
There are a number of reasons why this may be. Perhaps to Hollywood and the broader entertainment industry, the sport’s insularity within the American continent makes art about gridiron football inherently unattractive to overseas audiences. But my guess would be that football is caught somewhere between the aesthetic old-school Americana of baseball, the big city vogueness of basketball, and the broad global appeal of soccer. It’s roots and it’s growth exist largely within the deeply unfashionable regions of the Plains, the Rust Belt and the Deep South. When an actor, artist, musician or writer recalls or touches upon sports within their lives, football typically fails to enter the conversation. There is no Hoop Dreams of football, there is no 42 of football, no The Last Dance, no Moneyball (are we counting The Blind Side?). As Meryl Streep would effectively say in her 2016 Oscar speech, football is entertainment for the unwashed masses.
So perhaps it’s quite fitting that Hunter S. Thompson, product of Kentucky, who started his journalism career as a sportswriter in Florida, so heavily embraced this sport. In it’s brutality and spectacle and stubborn resistance to becoming yet another cultural export from the United States, football managed to be as all-American as he was.
Recently I’ve been reading Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness, a paperback collection of all of his Hey Rube columns that he wrote for ESPN in the late 90’s-early 2000’s. I’d like to share a few of my favorite excerpts about football, written in his singularly vivid, unapologetically political, oftentimes grotesque style.
Hunter on the Baltimore Ravens
Watching the Baltimore Ravens play football is like watching scum freeze on the eyeballs of a jackass, or being stuck for six hours in an elevator with Dick Cheney on speed. The Ravens will pounce on you and gnaw you to death, which can take eight or nine days. The Raven is a queer and dangerous bird, far worse than the Crow. A pack of crows can destroy an owl or an eagle, but a single boss Raven will attack a whole gang of crows and rip the lungs out of its leaders … The Ravens are evil, and I fear them.
Hunter on Oakland Raiders fans
The Raiders of the seventies usually won — except in Pittsburgh, where cruel things happened and many dreams died horribly. You could see the early beginnings of what would evolve into the massive Raider Nation, which is beyond doubt the sleaziest and rudest and most sinister mob of thugs and wackos ever assembled in such manners under a single “roof,” so to speak, anywhere in the English-speaking world.
Hunter on the XFL
I was going to write a treatise on the Meaning of Life this week, but I put it aside at the last moment when I got a tip that this might be the last chance I'll ever get to write anything about the XFL except an obituary … The weird thing about the XFL is that nobody except Vince McMahon was anxious to see it born, and nobody except the cheerleaders will miss it when it's gone. There is no way to explain why it ever happened at all, except that some cluster of corporate thugs in the TV business figured they were in desperate need of a tax writeoff. It was not even good entertainment, much less good football. Not even a drastic rise in the Lewdness Level can save the League now. That might have worked a few weeks ago, but not now. The sudden appearance of live sex orgies and murderous gang-fights on TV every Sunday would be too much for the public to accept all at once. Not even the Clinton White House would have tolerated it, and Bush would call out the National Guard.
Hunter on the XFL’s viewer demographics
Hot damn, the Extreme Football League kicked off this week & drew a staggering 10.3 overnight Nielsen rating for NBC. It was a big hit with the teenage Nazi crowd.
Hunter on predictions for Super Bowl XXXVII
Tampa Bay’s chances of winning on Sunday are about one in five hundred. You’re welcome.
Hunter on how football brings people together
Football fans share a universal language that cuts across many cultures and many personality types. A serious football fan is never alone. We are legion, and football is often the only thing we have in common.
Hunter on Hitler
Adolf Hitler was a sports fan. He would have been right at home at the Big Game in New Orleans. It was his kind of Show — Beautiful athletes, savage gladiators, and a monumental display of Military Firepower.
Hunter on the 2000-2001 NFL postseason
The playoffs have been a bleak anticlimax to a season that was once so full of promise. The two losing teams on Sunday scored a total of six (6) points between them, & the outcomes were never in doubt. (Al) Gore’s family will lose all their bets and one of his daughters will manage to get busted for Drunk Driving.
Hunter on Hall of Fame linebacker Dave Wilcox
Wilcox is not a Hall of Fame linebacker for nothing. He played like a wolverine on speed & had the full-field vision of a human Fly.
Hunter on the Fall of 2002
I have lived through almost 50 pro football seasons, thus far— along with five or six major economic depressions and constant wars all over the world. But I’ll be dipped in shit if I can remember a year in the life of this nation that was was played out against a bleaker and more ominous historical backdrop than the one we have So no matter what we may fight about in this very imperfect forum, remember fellas; we’re all football freaks.
RIP Hunter S. Thompson
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