American football is a fascinating sport. It defines enthusiasm, power, camaraderie, sportsmanship, popularity, teamwork, trust, quick wits and quick feet. It is a game that combines the strategic nature of chess with the elegant nature of a herd of bulls. Football constitutes the extremes of centralization and decentralization: A master plan is essential for guaranteed success; however, an individual player's momentary initiative may change the dynamics of the whole game.

The popularity of a multi-faceted game such as football seems especially puzzling when one considers the immediate appeal of such one-dimensional sports as American wrestling or boxing. A game that depends both on teamwork and individualism, on masculine and feminine motifs, on slow-moving strategy and intense one-on-one action, could conceivably also depend both on fire and ice. How can an enterprise based on such opposing notions work, and to make things even more inexplicable, work so well?

Could Barthes' cultural codes offer an explanation, perhaps?