Astral Codex Ten

NFL

4 min read

NFL

Article

NFL is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between June 03, 2022 and May 30, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as ""making it to the NFL requires near constant exercise""; “The people who own NFL teams and pay player salaries”; “excitement as NFL draft picks”. It most often appears alongside China, 1 Kings 10-11, 18th century.

Metadata

  • Category: Organizations
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: June 03, 2022
  • Last seen: May 30, 2025

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Your Book Review: The Castrato
June 03, 2022 · Original source
To me, this sounds suspiciously like American football (also boxing/MMA, though perhaps to a slightly smaller extent). Socioeconomic distress? Check—extreme poverty and high rates of local violence are not uncommon in the childhoods of many elite football players. Severe biological modification (with severe health consequences for some) and a lifetime of rigorous training? You betcha. For even the freakiest freaks of nature, making it to the NFL requires near constant exercise and practice. In place of hormone modification through castration, football players modify their hormone levels through nutrition, HGH supplementation, and anabolic steroids. All of this to play an incredibly violent game that causes acute damage—broken bones, ligament tears, concussions, paralysis, and even death—and lasting damage to one’s body and brain. Rise to fame and fortune for a chosen few? Out of the approximately one million high school football players in the United States, 6.5% earn a college scholarship and about 0.1% make it to the NFL and less than half of those individuals stay in the league beyond year 4. For every millionaire star athlete, there are countless stories of people whose only “earnings” from their playing career are debilitating injuries and chronic pain. Patronage by the rich and powerful? The people who own NFL teams and pay player salaries are some of the wealthiest people in the world. A sad or unfulfilling end to life? Retirement from the NFL is notoriously difficult for many athletes, not least because of the chronic pain (often leading to opiate or alcohol addiction) or cognitive decline and mood disorders from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
Inline links: death, Out of the approximately one million high school football players, wealthiest people in the world, Retirement from the NFL is notoriously difficult for many athletes
Universe-Hopping Through Substack
September 29, 2022 · Original source
The other part that struck me is that we’re blogging about profiles of sports reporters now. If Schefter had been an athlete, fine - navel-gazing about how athletes get their talent is exactly what I expect of sports journalism. But he is, in fact, a sports journalist, and we are, in fact, doing sports meta-journalism here. What if this becomes a trend? Will top sports journalists start appearing in commercials advertising office chairs? Will people watch ESPN hiring rounds with the same excitement as NFL draft picks? Will they make sports journalism fantasy leagues, drawing up artificial companies out of their favorite sports journalists and giving themselves points whenever that journalist’s articles get a lot of clicks?
Bayes For Everyone
May 30, 2025 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.