17776 (2017)

17776 imagines football in the distant future and asks what the sport becomes when the conditions of ordinary life have changed. Its opening frames football’s present-day problem as a crisis: young people are abandoning the game, partly because parents fear the health risks, while research and the NFL’s response suggest that something is deeply wrong. The page then breaks into an unsettling loop of repeated warnings, turning the introduction itself into a sign that normal expectations - and perhaps the familiar world - are coming apart.

The story unfolds across 25 chapters, mixing written scenes, videos, and navigation through places ranging from Nebraska and Tennessee to Alaska and New York City. The chapter titles move between questions about strange events and locations, hinting at a mystery gradually explored through conversation and observation. At its center is a speculative vision of a future in which people’s relationship to time, life, and sport has transformed, allowing football to become something far larger and stranger than a conventional game. Rather than presenting a straightforward prediction or argument about rule changes, the work uses an imagined future to examine what makes football meaningful when its old limits no longer apply. Its unusual multimedia form is part of the experience: glitches, video segments, and abrupt shifts in place make the reader piece together the world as the characters do.