Highly recommended: this ESPN.com excerpt from Chuck Klosterman's new book Eating the Dinosaur. It's a precise description of football's appeal by way of a thorough look at innovation over the history of the sport, and what at first seems to be a smart but passing observation about football's contradictory nature (an old-fashioned, stereotypically conservative tough-guy vibe amid constant challenging and upsetting of strategic orthodoxy) is turned by Klosterman's obvious knowledge and affection into something profound.