I hate football, but God I love it

An excerpt from Pound Foolish by Christopher Harris

Luke O'Neil

03 Sep 2026 • 11 min read

We don't cover sports a lot around here. Although sometimes we do.

It's weird because it's a ripe field for Hell World-y exploitation and the excesses of capitalism. Also I am – for better or worse – a big sports fan myself. That reminds me here's a fun memory that just came up on my Facebook this week.

Christopher Harris writes a lot about sports though. Specifically the NFL. In his new novel Pound Foolish Harris takes his keen eye for reporting on the league and combines it with a gripping serial killer tale.

"Part locker room chronicle, part neo-noir, all American: Pound Foolish tackles a season-in-the-life of a pro football team that has a serial killer in its midst," is how Cumulative Press describes it.

"Someone is murdering women in the orbit of Detroit's NFL franchise. But also: a new season is kicking off and nobody can really prove anything. Plus football is one of the last remaining ties that bind a city. So...the games will go on. And they should. Right?"

I'll let Harris set it up for us first and then read an excerpt below. Order it here.

Harris previous wrote about the bansd Ratboys and Goose for Hell World.

For more in recent book stuff on here:

by Christopher Harris

In the last few days, Green Bay Packers running back Josh Jacobs and Denver Broncos linebacker Jonathan Cooper were placed on the NFL Commissioner’s Exempt list for domestic violence. In the last week, billionaire San Francisco 49ers owner Jed York was arrested for offering $140 in exchange for sexual services over his phone. In the last month, the Bears held a metaphorical weapon against the city of Chicago’s forehead, trying to force them to finance a new stadium or they’ll move to Indiana. In the last year, the Supreme Court refused to dismiss Brian Flores’ racial discrimination lawsuit against the NFL. In the last five years, the Washington Commanders covered up dozens of accusations that team staff filmed nude female employees without consent and made unwanted sexual advances.

I cover pro football for a living, and I don’t know any NFL fans who don’t feel at least a little conflicted about it. The league has obfuscated concussion research, concealed financial records, sanctioned insane concessions prices, regularly humps cops and the troops…and it is mostly run by idiot failsons who’ve never had an original idea in their lives.

But also it's fucking great.

It really is great. The NFL is about to start back up again in a week, and I can’t wait. The games are amazing. The players defy belief. The season’s pace—one game per week, coming on at fall’s outset and going out as the year itself dies—is perfect. The NFL might be America’s only remaining town square. We don’t have many movies in common anymore, or TV shows or books or social media platforms…but we do have football. I hate it, but God I love it.

That’s the feeling I was hoping to get at in my novel Pound Foolish, which is out there in the world as of September 1. The book is the story of a season: players torturing themselves in preparation, fans trying to believe again, the league’s unstoppable gears going around for another year. But this time, in the city of Detroit, someone is murdering women, and there’s convincing evidence that the killer might be one of the players. That's my premise: a serial killer on an NFL team. It’s a mystery, and a former player is the gumshoe. I’m trying to get at this feeling we all instinctively understand: an institution we love that absolutely does not love us back.

Anyway, thanks Luke! (Go Pats.) Here’s a little bit:

He looks up from his phone and the locker stools around him are filled. Everyone’s dressed, and he looks down at himself and he’s dressed, too. Shoulderpads, jersey, hip pads, cleats. This is a big room and nonessential personnel are gone, it’s just players and coaches and trainers, but it’s somehow noisy in here which is weird until he realizes what he’s hearing is a full stadium of sixty-five thousand stoked to a boil.

Someone is standing at the room’s center, wearing #52. Anyone around this perimeter of lockers who was talking or praying or reading a tablet stops. There’s only this linebacker—the Oklahoma Vibe—and the yammer and howlround beyond.

“You got permission,” says the Vibe, panning the circle to talk to everyone. “You don’t need it because y’all are bad motherfuckers. But just in case: you got my permission.”

Moorer says, “Fuck yeah.”

“You got my permission to have fun! Remember fun? Before all the bullshit started sweeping you up, before you learned all the shit you had to learn, before pressure and expectations, do you remember fun?”

“Hell, yeah, I remember,” says Gadson from nearby.

“Just running ’cuz it’s fun. A little kid feeling your legs like they’ll never get tired. Smacking into a buddy, knocking him down, both of you cracking up laughing. It’s a business. I know it is, and every other day of the week you gotta treat it that way, but today you got a choice.” The Vibe’s jaw works like a bicep. Blue ropes swell his temples. “I love the new coaches, I love the staff around here…but to get you ready they gotta scare you. All them other days, they gotta scare you to motivate you. But today you got a choice, boys. You can go out there and be scared or you can go have fun.”

Many of the men in here are going “yeah” and “mm-hm” like church. Someone he can’t see is growling.

“Worries and fear, put ’em right over here. This is about L-O-V-E. We been together every day. And you wouldn’t ever get into this room if you didn’t love playing. Running and jumping like a little kid, just playing ball because your boys are with you and it’s still light outside. Out of breath from laughing so hard. Surprised how fast you really are.” Everyone is on their feet so he also gets up, now men are shouting, the room is swelling. “Real life is for some other time! They’re payin’ you to have fun!” The growling has turned to woofing: teammates he can’t see are barking like dogs. “Let it loose! Let it loose! Do what you want to!” Everyone drifts together, he feels himself pulled into their vortex. “There ain’t anybody to say no! Fuck ’em up ’cuz it’s fun! Fuck ’em up ’cuz it’s fun!”

The players shout and squeeze together and dance, everyone has one arm up. He’s dizzy and his face feels overstuffed with blood like he’s been spinning on a carousel.

“Quiet down, now!” somebody new says, a higher-pitched voice. “It’s the first step, men. Today’s the first step. You gotta be greedy out there, okay. You gotta be greedy for His abundance. You gotta be greedy for His glory. Greedy for rapture.” They’re motionless now, one arm up, heads down. “Let’s go out there and be greedy for Jesus. Go out there and be greedy for Jesus!”

This afternoon is not better and not worse than all other slices of time though it feels like every other Sunday is bound up in it: a history of Sundays tempered into the agreed-upon glorious shape. Dumb nervous excitement masquerades as happiness. There are joyous people up there, endless tiers of faces forgetting or remembering their pain. It’s all been happening forever. Bodies straining together to see, though occasionally one sways out of sync like a scrap of oceanic flora. A roar of disbelief like thousands before it, umbrage followed by release. A man with a spray-painted head waves his arms, elbows locked, conducting those seated behind him but then he’s gone again as they all glimpse the projectile and stand and nothing else matters—it’s really happening—and nobody recalls it ever going this fast. Violent men are of course mixed in: you might suspect them but never be sure, the ones who would kick a stranger or hurt a child, but maybe grievances are temporarily suspended for the common cause. It can go quiet and the stream of advertising is never-ending, but when they cheer there’s nothing else. It’s a sound borne of disaster. On their faces: everything reminds them of something they can’t name. The first long pass, the crowd inhales like an undertow: a high-pitched withdrawal, and when the ball is caught they detonate into a crashing scream wave. The loudspeaker voice announcing the play is like Charlie Brown’s teacher. The spray-painted head bobs in and out of view. A sea of upraised hallelujah hands and wrists twirling white towels. Twin one-hundred-fifty-foot scoreboards above the end zones repeat the miracle. Double-chinned strangers embrace. A woman in a Chicago jersey gestures bring it on and several men laughingly point to their privates. It’s the electric shock of belief. All the past suffering and near-misses, all the hype that piles atop itself every year but nobody seems to notice is exactly the same…what if this really is the season? A blocker spins around angrily as though to fight a man from the other side, catches himself before throwing a punch. A quarterback scratches his neck waiting for old zebras to render judgement. A defensive player makes an embittered juggling motion near the sidelines. A man somehow gathers his limbs into the tightest version of himself on the dead run with only one foot contacting the turf and bends acinonyxally and explodes off that one foot at a perfect ninety-degree angle to intersect with the space he knows a receiver will soon occupy and his genius is in the bracing and straightening and square unfurling like a stunt gymnast whose survival depends on perfect orientation because the contact he’s about to generate is as likely to send him to the hospital as the other man unless he’s inch-precise and his shoulderpads rise and his forearms fire and fans who’ve only just begun to believe they’re really actually here and have calmed down because who can stay delirious that long for the meager events of real life can see it’s going to be bad because it rhymes with a thousand other splatterings they’ve seen presented with surface horror and subtextual admiration and at this instant for some reason the receiver has a gloved hand near one of his earholes as though fielding a phone call and possibly this blocks his view or possibly there’s just nothing he can do and it’s the slowest thing anyone’s ever seen but also unbearably fast as the defender’s body telescopes out to its deadliest length and the receiver stretches for the ball but only halfheartedly because he senses a massiveness about to intersect with his own space/time coordinates and he alligator-arms the pass too late because before he can curl away and before his neck can turtle and before he can fully close his eyes his entire person bewinds around the temporary axis produced by two hundred thirty pounds of ill intent and the receiver’s spine crimps in segments as his feet splay skewampus and his bearded chin blows ceilingward and his helmet comes detached like Robespierre at Concord Square and the ball rolls away innocent and the people don’t know they’re making a sound together but they are. It’s the letter ‘o.’ A tight end blows out an ACL. A cornerback walks off holding his injured shoulder like a sleeping baby. Chicago’s star defensive end blasts the quarterback from behind, the kind of sidewinding thundershock that can end a career, and the ball comes loose and it’s a scoop-and-score and the QB gets up adjusting his rib pads then his hip pads then feels his knees and his shoulders and seems not to be able to tell what part of him hurts most but when a trainer tries to treat him he shakes his head and heavy-foots away from the blue tent. And within minutes he’s back out there and he leads a crisp scoring drive that crystalizes the new coach’s genius—pre-snap motion and confusing route combinations and wide-open receivers—and you can hear the crowd falling in love with each individual play’s success and with the momentum of seeing things work over and over and the crowd’s own uvular intervals get louder and more frequent and then the touchdown blasts the roof off. The spray-painted head is momentarily above the heads of its row-mates. A kickoff is fumbled but recovered by the fumbling team. A drone camera buzzes above the field and a teen tries to throw an empty bottle at it but only succeeds in getting himself ejected. A recorded message from the president plays and a lot of people boo and a lot of people cheer. Two rotund gentlemen in the end-zone front row think they’re on TV and bump bellies. Everyone looks up and realizes it’s somehow already the fourth quarter. A rookie receiver drops a huge third-down pass and Detroit has to punt. One entire stadium section has been given frozen-pizza-sized placards emblazoned with giant number threes and on an important third down they’re all waving these placards and becoming frustrated with the people in front of them who are also waving placards and thus blocking their view of the important third down leading to a daisy chain of frustration, and yet anyone in the section who doesn’t wave their number-three placard gets a sour look because that’s just bad luck. Nervous people, happy people, furious people. In aggregate, it’s a group accustomed to disappointment, which somehow you can just tell from the sounds they make. And then. The score becomes insurmountable. Everything the past four months have convinced you of: gone. Drunk men with slack jaws. Digital wallscapes insisting on MORE NOISE. The realization that cheering for the same silly football team isn’t common interest enough to create kinship. Boys and men standing around the stadium in a pose best described as surrender cobra. Cheerleaders with plucky smiles. An assistant coach covering his face with a laminated play sheet. Boos.

That night the partial moon is a gouge among heaven’s smaller wounds, and the Detroit Police Department finds another body.

Order Pound Foolish here.