Think the big game that’s drawing to a close is nothing but a silly game? That the Super Bowl is, at best, important only as a pop culture phenomenon–of sports, commercials, and parties that probably make Tostitos more money than any other time of year?

Naturally, sociologists tend to look at things–including football–a little bit differently. In fact, I keep bumping up against football in my academic life. So what’s the deal?

Unsurprisingly, sociologists link football to masculinity. For example, Douglas Hartmann’s piece, “The Sanctity of Sunday Football: Why Men Love Sports” (pdf) argues that football is important because it helps teach males how to be good, masculine, American men; no surprise there. But Hartmann also argues that football is important because it’s one of the (few) acceptable ways for boys and men to express themselves in groups and bond with one another. Could it be that football is really the social glue that holds half of American society together?! Okay, perhaps not. But could this be why fantasy football is so popular? Why we see things like the scene in Knocked Up where a wife suspects her husband is cheating on her…but it turns out he’s just sneaking off to the fantasy football baseball draft?

(And is it strange of me for wondering why Americans look at European cyclists and their proclivity for spandex gear as not being masculine, while the sport that is seen as the epitome of masculinity centers around a bunch of sweaty men in spandex jumping on top of each other? What is it about the context of American football that makes us see this as an expression of raw masculinity instead of tinged with homoeroticism? I mean, I’m just wondering)

But football’s impact seems to be more far-reaching than providing groups of men with an opportunity to bond. When Title IX was passed in 1972, no one realized its potential far-reaching impact on sports programs at schools and colleges across the country. However, during its implementation, it suddenly became clear that because Title IX called for equal athletic opportunities for women, it could be potentially devastating to football. With such a large team and a large budget, football required a lot of resources–and the notion of making football teams coed, or establishing a parallel program for women, was dismissed. But if participation rates and/or spending had to be equalized between men’s and women’s programs…players, coaches, Athletic Directors, and Congressmen alike wondered, with terror: what would happen to football?

It was this concern that shaped debates and policies about Title IX and what exactly constituted equality for the decades that followed. Football, it was argued, was more than just a game; it became a sort of “third sex.” In determining gender equality, it wasn’t men’s sports and women’s sports programs that were compared; instead, there were “men’s sports, women’s sports, and football.”

The sanctity of football, indeed.