This painting is a combination of a Steelers football game with the 14th century battle of Crecy. The Cardinals/French are attacking the defending Steelers/English.

I think a lot about the symbolic role that football plays in our society. I think it’s hard to miss how violent football stays, but I think admitting the violence prompts a deeper question: Given the cost of football, why do we value it so highly?

The best I can come up with is that it’s a holding place for a lot of deep, symbolic needs that we have as individuals and as a society. I think it’s analogous to the medieval romances in a way. We don’t talk about people in the military as icons of power, sex, and virtue- but we are happy to do all of that for football players. In Pittsburgh there are any number of non profits, like the Batch Foundation, started by Steelers players to build up the community. In North Braddock the playground we have is from a football player. When I was a kid, I went to a church and listened to the Eagle’s wide receiver Irving Friar talk about his dramatic conversion after nearly committing suicide. Another example- that show, Ballers, is a lot about mythologizing the wild sex lives of football players.

It’s hard to overstate how little I care about football as a game. I wish I cared about it more- I went to Penn State University and was surrounded by rabid football fans. Football is in my family- we were an Eagles family the whole time. I just don’t feel it…emotionally? With that said, it’s impossible to ignore football in our culture completely. I ended up on Mel Blount’s farm for one of my social work jobs. My neighborhood at college was tear gassed three times my senior year because we….won football games.

How do I explain all this? Well, above is my attempt to really get at what I think is going on. I think that football slots into a roll previously filled by knights. I think it provides regional identity, iconic heroes, morbidly entrancing violence, and a platform for society building. It’s very strange to me how people talk as though football is compartmentalized when I think it demonstrably occupies such a large psychic and economic place. Football is profoundly load bearing.

Easter eggs in the painting: I hope that people get the football stuff, but here is some history stuff I think is fun that I put in the painting. The English have longbows and no horses because they were dismounted at Crecy. Similarly, the canon depicted is the first cannon filed on a pitched battlefield. The French have horses because they tried to overwhelm the English with cavalry and crossbows only to be defeated by the longbow. The English Black Prince is depicted as well as John the Good (who is pretty approximate, really, and wouldn’t appear until Poiters). Lastly, the French flag (which occupies a similar position symbolically to the football) is the Oriflamme: the French flag which ensured that God would give them victory. Much liker Hophni and Phineas and the ark of the covenant, this didn’t pan out as good for them as they had projected.

Below: Close ups of the two sides: