Football in Isolation: How NFL Sundays Bring Solace to Incarcerated Fans
As the NFL kickoffs this week fans around the country will cheer from home and watch in isolation, which is how many incarcerated people connect with their favorite sport.
By Josh Pynoos
Football brings friends, families, and communities together, unlike any other American sport. Each year when the NFL season starts, these allegiances and relationships are reaffirmed with the fervor of a centuries-old tradition. As the NFL kicks off this week in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, fans around the country won’t be able to go to fill stadiums, cook at tailgates, pack their local sports bar, or gather with friends and family to root for their teams. Many will be watching football alone, cut off from other people and that’s largely how incarcerated people watch football every week.
Mark Taylor grew in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and had an early connection to the famed Steel Curtain Pittsburgh Steelers teams of the ’70s. Joseph Osorio is from Los Angeles but, at an early age, gravitated to the Dallas Cowboys. Cesar Zuniga also grew up in Los Angeles and was drawn to the bravado and attitude of the Los Angeles (now Las Vegas) Raiders. These three men each served a life sentence in California state prisons and are now part of ARC’s Hope and Redemption team, where they return to California prisons to facilitate classes and prepare many people to return home. Despite supporting different teams, they each agree that watching football can lift a person’s spirit and ease the doldrums of a prison sentence.
“When I first got to prison, I was 19, so sports were the furthest thing from my mind, but I saw that a lot of the guys around me were very focused on watching football,” said Osorio, a lifelong Cowboys fan.
He soon saw how important a role fandom would play to get through his incarceration. Osorio, Zuniga, and Taylor all witnessed the power that football had not only as entertainment but also as a way to feel connected to society beyond prison walls.
“TV stations were so limited. It was a welcome reprieve when football games were on,” Taylor said. “Sports allow you to escape from prison for the two or three hours that game is on.”
Game Day Rituals
Like any fan, Osorio had his game-day rituals and preparation for kickoff. On game day, he rose early so he could dedicate the entire day to immersing himself in football.
“I’d do my laundry, eat breakfast, and make sure everything else I needed to accomplish that day was done before 8:00 a.m.,” he said. He started with the morning pregame shows and then enjoyed the full slate of games every Sunday.
He wanted to show off and exhibit how much the team meant to him despite being confined.
“If the Cowboys were playing, you weren’t getting me out of my cell. You can’t get a Dallas Cowboy hat or a jersey or even a sticker in prison. So I became creative.”
With color pencils, markers, and pens, he started to stencil out a Cowboy star. Osorio made his stickers and flags as symbols of his love for the Cowboys. Every Sunday was a ceremony for Osorio to keep his spirits up while he was incarcerated.
“Every Sunday, I would pull all that stuff out and make it visible on my windows,” he said. “All my Cowboys stuff was up in my cell to see.”
He was rooting like he was at a sports bar in his cell. So, if the Cowboys lost, Osorio would be dejected and put away his self-made Cowboys gear. If they won, he would be proud to display his fandom. He embraced the stomach-churning rollercoaster ride of being a football fan, even while confined to a prison cell.
The most important person on Sundays was the cook who would prepare the pre-game meal, a prison spread made of pouches of rice, beans, pork skins, soups, and burritos on the side. Once the feast was ready, the rest of the day was focused on football. When a team scored, or big play was made, the building erupted with a cacophony of cheers.
“You could feel the building getting ready to collapse,” Osorio said. “People were banging on their bunks and cells”
A Time Out
Zuniga credited following the NFL with helping him cope with incarceration and not being absorbed by the culture of prisons.
“Watching football from prison made your time go so smoothly,” Zuniga said. “It would make the years go by so fast. The time in prison, many think, is a standstill. Actually, time in prison isn’t slow.”
To survive many years in prison, Zuniga had to stay active to make the time go positively. He saw many people become depressed, disconnected, and consumed by the fact they had many years to serve, and they couldn’t find pleasure in relatively small things like football.
Zuniga noted football had a positive effect on people’s attitude and changed the culture on the yard.
“When football season came around, prisons’ violence would go down,” he said. “Nobody wanted to be in trouble or go to the ‘hole,’ because it meant they wouldn’t have access to TV and miss out on football and seeing their team. When football season was over, you could tell it wasn’t the same.”
Like any fan, the outcome on Sunday weighs heavy.
“If your team wins on Sunday, you’re gonna have the best week,” Zuniga recalled. “But if your team loses, then you’re going to have the longest week.”
Zuniga dealt with many years of those bad Mondays as the Raiders were mired in many recent losing seasons, but his support never wavered.
Rooting for football and the Cowboys gave Osorio something to be a part of and offered a respite from the personal pain he was feeling in prison.
“You can be going through a lockdown or the tough situations in your life that you have gone through in prison,” he said. “But on Sunday, if football is on, you’re going to be able to escape whatever it is you want to. Sunday, when football was on, allowed me to get away from those problems.”
Even though Osorio enjoyed watching from his cell, he knew he was missing out on how free society celebrated football. He would call his wife who would watch the Cowboys with friends and family. Osorio yearned to share these special moments that football creates with his loved ones.
“At the time, I could only hope for a day when I could come home and watch the game with them,” he said.
These precious hours watching a live broadcast event was a way to feel connected to the outside world to which he hoped to return one day.
The 12th Man
Life in California prisons is notoriously segregated by race.
Osorio notes that sports can bring people inside together, no matter what someone’s identity or background was. Prison culture and yards create segregation where to survive each race congregates separately. But inside, football on Sundays can transcend institutional norms.
“Jail and prisons are so segregated that each day a different race would control the TV, but the trump card to that dynamic was sports. Whenever football games came on, everyone would watch,” said Osorio.
The sociability of football also extended to the correctional officers, Osorio added. The correctional officers would often chime in on the football talk on the yard, and it was one way for them to see how alike incarcerated people were to themselves.
But the rooting interest can get competitive, just like in the stands of a game or a local sports bar. Inside prisons, the NFL casts a larger net than other sports. Many out of state teams were just as popular as California teams like the 49ers or Raiders.
“In prison, you will run into guys that are not from New York or Texas, but they are Cowboys or Giants fans,” observed Osorio.
Now free, Osorio returns to prison as a life coach, and when he mentions football, it helps him build a natural rapport with the class he leads.
“Each member of the class will yell out their football team, and they take pride in it,” he said.
Football isn’t just a way to build camaraderie. Having a team to root for can be part of an identity. Incarcerated people are taken from their communities but find ways, big and small, to bring their communities with them.
In addition to watching football, fantasy football was another way to stay entertained and feel like part of society, despite no internet access. In prison, fantasy drafts and leagues are commonplace.
Zuniga and his buddies could recreate how friends and coworkers in free society competed over whose fantasy team scored the most touchdowns and yards. While watching football and playing fantasy with friends inside might seem just a laidback activity, feeling a part of society became integral for these men to stay grounded, motivated, and linked to the free world.
“Playing fantasy football was the most fun I had in prison,” Zuniga added.
Home Field Advantage
Since returning home, Taylor has focused on his freedom and reentry journey. He found time to visit and walk around Heinz Field, the home of his beloved Pittsburgh Steelers, where he was able to soak up the Steelers franchise’s history by finally being physically present as a fan.
Osorio came home in January of 2019. But the first game he watched with his family was on Thanksgiving 2019, prime viewing for most Cowboy fans. For Osorio, it meant so much more.
“I was given a parole pass to go to Las Vegas where my family lives,” Osorio said.
His family knew how emotional it was to share his love for the Cowboys on Thanksgiving with them. While his Cowboys lost, Osorio finally experienced life as a fan with his family, a more joyous feeling than any game day result. He finally got to don a Cowboy jersey and hat. Osorio still dreams of attending a game in Dallas at “Jerry’s World,” but the pandemic has put that dream on hold.
Now home, these men can enjoy their freedom and football. Although they’ll have to enjoy this season, like many others, potentially cut off from family and close friends, they can still appreciate that they’ll be rooting for their teams with many other Americans, including those who are currently incarcerated.
As COVID-19 has spread across CA prisons, it can be an even more foreboding time for incarcerated people. But football will be there every Sunday to give them a small bridge to the outside world.
Osorio experienced football’s healing power while inside, “As crazy as it sounds, football was therapeutic.”
Josh Pynoos is Policy Associate at the Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC).
