In his own words | Football, literature and the grip of the gridiron

Michael Oriard played for the Kansas City Chiefs from 1970 to 1973. He is a distinguished professor of American literature and culture at Oregon State University. He is also the author of several books on football, including "Dreaming of Heroes: American Sports Fiction, 1868-1980"; "The End of Autumn: Reflections on My Life in Football"; and "Sporting with the Gods: The Rhetoric of Play and Game in American Culture."

"It was certainly easier in my era than it is today. The money today is so unbelievably different. The media attention is immeasurably higher. You could make it in the NFL, like I did, without having committed yourself to that goal since seventh grade. Having gone to Notre Dame as a walk-on, playing in the NFL was an accident that kept happening for a while.

I was a physics major in college. As it happened, the professor that had most impact on me as a freshman was my English professor.

I went to graduate school in the offseasons. At Stanford. My dissertation was: American sports fiction, suggested by my professor. He realized I had these two rather extreme interests — football and literature. Why not bring them together?

It's relatively easy for a former backup and special-teams player to not be haunted by the things I did. The frustrated ex-jock is one of the more familiar poignant figures in sportswriting, and I wasn't going to be one of those.

I don't follow football with a passion. Playing kind of demystifies it. The last two books I've written are sort of a cultural history of football. The next book is taking part of this story to the present. It comes out in 2007.

Certain patterns continue. For one, there are always people saying the game has declined. Plus, the celebrity quotient is much higher. Ever since sports went on television 24-7, even offensive linemen are closer to being celebrities than they were back in the '70s. They're not just giving up their livelihood when they retire, they're giving up something that makes them special and unique.

Another thing is the enormous money that has been poured into it. The question I looked at is how that affects what the game means as a sport in American culture and American society. I'm trying to understand NFL football as a cultural phenomenon, from an outsider's perspective.

The more socialized and civilized we become, the more we long for breaking out of the little boxes in which we live. Football has an enormous appeal in that regard. Guys on the field are literally larger than life. Emotionally. Psychologically. Symbolically. Even larger than larger than life."