Life & Wisdom Quote by Gregg Easterbrook

Easterbrook’s line sounds like a shrug, but it’s really a scalpel aimed at how fans, media, and leagues insist on treating football as something sturdier than show business. By calling it “fundamentally a form of entertainment,” he’s stripping the sport of its self-mythology: not a civic religion, not a moral proving ground, not a character factory, not a national metaphor that deserves reverence. Just a product designed to keep you watching.

The phrasing does quiet work. “I think” softens the blow while still asserting judgment, a classic columnist move that invites agreement without sounding doctrinaire. “To use it as an example” signals he’s talking about the whole professional sports apparatus, but football is the sharpest case because it’s marketed with the heaviest symbolism: patriotism on the field, heroic narratives, “war” language, and the idea that fandom is an identity rather than a pastime.

The subtext is accountability. If football is entertainment, then the league’s incentives look less noble and more legible: maximize spectacle, protect the brand, manage controversy like PR, and treat bodies as inputs. It reframes debates about concussions, labor, gambling, and public subsidies. We don’t hand Disney tax breaks because Mickey Mouse “builds character”; we do it for stadiums because football gets dressed up as community infrastructure.

Easterbrook isn’t dismissing fans; he’s pushing back against the cultural overreach that makes criticism feel like sacrilege. Calling it entertainment is a way to return proportionality - and to remind everyone where the money and the motives actually live.