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NYT: Is It Wrong to Watch Football?
In the hype leading up to Super Bowl 50, many journalists are asking whether football should be watched at all. The Cleveland Plain Dealer offered the headline “Football and its unavoidable violence is becoming a moral dilemma,” while USA Today and the CBC ran two different stories sharing the title “Is it immoral to watch the Super Bowl?”
The New York Times held a colloquy on the issue, inviting two former NFL players and two laypeople to answer the question, “how can fans enjoy watching a game that helps ruin players’ lives?” I’m quick to dismiss elitist sniffery at the simple joys of blue-collar entertainment, be it the proliferation of chain restaurants or the love of shoot-’em-up movies, but the Gray Lady’s coverage was more balanced that I had expected. Below are brief excerpts of each argument.
Football is a spectacle of extreme athleticism, controlled mayhem and violence that entertains our thirst for domination. To really appreciate the glories of the game and what it does, though, maybe fans should watch more of it, and get closer to the real game.
Try 24-hour coverage of a player’s life, as they pop pills and get surgery. Then ‘game suits’ can let fans feel every ‘tremendous hit’ on the field.
Perhaps, to really show the game fully and augment the experience, telemetric technology imbedded in uniforms could inform viewers of the condition of the anterior cruciate ligament, broken forearm or separated shoulder of their favorite players.
Helmets could discolor and ooze when the dura mater in a player’s cranium is damaged…
My God, how brave and proud we must feel! Watch. Watch closely. See everything.
Over the last few years, the N.F.L. has made 39 rule changes to enhance player safety. Kickoffs were moved to the 35-yard line from the 30-yard line to increase touchbacks and decrease dangerous kickoff returns. A more rigorous protocol was established for dealing with concussions. Independent medical spotters can now call a timeout if they see that a player may have been concussed. Receivers on a pass that is intercepted are now classified as defenseless players. These are just a few recent changes that have had measurable results…
So as you watch the Super Bowl on Sunday, know you are watching an evolving game and that it is safer than it has ever been. Football has great life lessons and instead of shunning it, let’s all come together to make the game safer.
The thrill of watching a player get up after a big hit has been replaced with the concern that he’s unknowingly suffering permanent brain damage – damage the N.F.L. has gone to extreme lengths to cover up. While the N.F.L. punished Mike Vick for victimizing animals for sport, they knowingly victimized humans for sport.
Further, the N.F.L.’s influence has turned college athletics into a minor league with major problems. Players are recruited too young, used up too quickly, and left ill-prepared for the real world when their careers flame out, their young bodies riddled with arthritis, their future brains ripe with C.T.E.
The San Francisco 49ers linebacker Chris Borland retired last year at age 24 because of concerns about concussions. But John Urschel, an offensive lineman for the Baltimore Ravens who loves the challenge and elegance of mathematics, continues to play because he loves the game as well.
They are free to make their choices. Sports have the potential to give voices to the disenfranchised, and they provide economic and educational opportunities available to young African-American men. When I profiled Josh Norman of the Carolina Panthers, I saw how he used his nonprofit, Starz24, to address issues of food insecurity and income disparity in his hometown of Greenwood, S.C. I realized that for some athletes, the football field is a platform for larger aspirations — it gives them a chance to nurture young athletes and be an inspiration in their communities.
Football is my favorite sport, hands down. My primary complaints with the NFL are the constant stoppage of play and the barrage of flags for the mildest infractions or celebrations — Roger Goodell has overseen its descent into the No Fun League.
A career in football undeniably has physical consequences, but so does any job that requires physical exertion. Talk to a 40-something construction worker, small farmer, or stewardess and they’ll complain about the aches, pains, and surgeries required from their often grueling routine. If physical safety was the only concern, we would ban millions of jobs as inhumane.
I agree most with ex-NFLer Marvin Washington who notes that the game is safer than it has ever been and will only get better. What do you think, Ricochetti: has the recent coverage of football-related injuries lessened your enthusiasm for the game?
Published in Sports
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If your answer to “Should you feel guilty watching football” is yes, then you are answering exactly the way the social engineers want you to. We are turning into a nation of wimpy beta males. Stop the madness. Stop allowing them to win when they are such a tiny percentage of the population. Leftist dogma is being written by dorky little guys who never made the team and homely women who never got the guy. They never got over high school and they want the rest of the world to be as unhappy as they are. I am not buying, sorry.
In high school, for some mysterious reason they tried to recruit me to the football team (a friend, who’s about the same height and weight, did become the quarterback, so I guess I might have been a candidate).
I had no interest as I wanted to remain uninjured, as much as possible.
So football injuries are hardly a new topic, in my mind at least.
I don’t watch football because I find it boring. “A unique American sport, violence interrupted by committee meetings,” is the old critique.
I don’t mind the violence on TV (I’ll watch other violent sports, like motorcycle racing), but the second aspect keeps getting worse and worse.
I guess it’s indicative of the pathological modern view that increasing bureaucracy somehow improves life, a view I don’t share.
Better add basketball, lacrosse, skateboards, horseback riding, skiing, and bicycling too…
Sports related concussions per 100,000
(According to an American Association of Neurological Surgeons report cited in the story, cycling is the leading cause of sports-related head injuries in children under 14, causing 40,272 injuries, roughly double the number related to football (21,878).
More than half (55%) of TBIs among children 0 to 14 years were caused by falls. (CDC)
My point is not to say football is without risk for kids. The parents of the kids and the kids themselves need to decide if the risk is worth it given the facts. But neither is it so relatively dangerous that it should be singled out for special treatment. Something else is driving that, I think people on the thread have touched on that point, and I certainly don’t think I should be made to feel guilty for watching it.
Claire,
There are some things that simply don’t translate. I was nth string middle linebacker and I was 5th board on the chess team. Although I enjoyed throttling people on the chess board, it did not fully compare to the feeling of scrimmaging in the snow. However, I have always felt that if more people had the sublime pleasure of scrimmaging in the snow they wouldn’t be all that excited about watching the game on TV. Just an intuition. Yes, parents should be allowed to make informed consent about things that effect the health of their children. You know like an abortion. Not what the NYTimes had in mind.
There are some things I can’t explain to you.
Regards,
Jim
I rest my case. That’s nuts.
Regards,
Jim
Exactly right. The left wishes to dismantle America piece-by-piece, and destroying football is just as much a part of that agenda as is flooding the West with hostile, unassimilable aliens from Muslim nations and guilt-tripping anyone who objects. To hell with that. Conservatives must resist and extricate leftism from our society, in every form, root and branch. It is a matter of cultural and national survival.
Only concussion I’ve had in my life (undiagnosed at the time, but looking back at it now) was while snow skiing. And a friend of mine from High School died in a skiing accident. So better throw that one on the list too.
I will reserve judgment for 10 or 20 years, that is until the media frenzy dies down and researchers who are not pimping the grant committee come up with long-term and reproducible and politically agnostic data. Does this remind anyone else of global warming “science?”
Pending that, I would really like to see a controlled study of life outcomes for a large group of aggressive adolescent males, comparing those who play professional football for lots of money with a cohort who are simply left to their own devices. I have a distinct impression as to which group would be better off (and survive) in 30 or 40 years. But I could be wrong.
A lot more brain damage is caused by television than by football.
Hey! I resemble that remark!
We all take risks and live dangerously, it seems.
On 12 year-olds playing football, I would leave it to their parents. I would not look askance at consenting parents and go “tsk, tsk” to assert my morally superior preference–unless I am willing to assume full responsibility for those families’ well-being henceforth.
Btw, I have always wondered about traffic injuries during holidays. AAA estimated that there were 123 serious injuries and 1.17 fatalities per 100,000 people travelling during the labor day weekend in 2013. 123 serious injuries and 1.17 deaths compares badly against the 64-77 sports-related concussions in football cited in #69.
You might say travelling/visiting/vacations are more important than sports but then there’s always the safer public transportation as alternatives. Would you then, Claire, be among those people who would go “tsk, tsk” to those families who risk greater odds of serious injury including death (to their charges) than in football?
Speaking for myself, I celebrate my “participation” in football as customer and supporter.
The Reticulator: We all take risks and live dangerously, it seems.
No. I’m not just diseased. I’m a carrier.
My attitude toward car safety is different from most people’s, I think. People always compare the danger of Activity X to the risk of being killed in a car accident and proudly say to me, “But you’re not afraid of cars, are you?”
To which I reply, “Yes, I am. Very.” I’m highly aware how dangerous cars are, and worry far more about car accidents than things that are less risky. Probably because I lost a number of friends at an impressionable age, although given the statistics, I suppose most people my age will have.
I certainly think — and will often say — the equivalent of “tsk, tsk” to people who take stupid risks when driving, or don’t use seat belts, or drive when they’re really not that good at it.
A friend lost his three-year-old son under just those circumstances. They were driving on Thanksgiving day. He, his wife, and his younger son –a newborn — survived, although his wife was badly injured. It was just an unspeakable tragedy, and I think of it often. He violated no traffic laws. The babies were in car seats. But he somehow lost control of the car, and his little boy was killed. It happened about nine years ago.
I do, genuinely, worry more about car accidents than I do any other hazard, and certainly think less of people who treat this risk lightly, yes.
A large segment of the population does not need to fear brain damage because they go through a typical day and never use their brain once.
That is one reason there so many Liberals, Progressives, and Democrats.
Seawriter
Yes, absolutely leave it to the parents. But as more information becomes available about the long term effects of repeated head trauma, that updated information should be made readily available to parents whose children participate in all sports.
If a child develops a passion for something, by all means, indulge them as much as is reasonable. IMHO all kids need a passion, something for which they are willing to discipline themselves and into which they invest their time and energy. If that passion happens to be a sport, well, so be it. That’s why I let my daughter participate in cheerleading.
But to answer the question asked in the OP, no, I don’t feel guilty for watching either college or pro football.
Don’t look up the statistics on falling in the shower…
The shower is fine, it’s the bathtub that’ll kill you. But you’re usually fine if you’re in my age bracket.
No one ever wins an argument with me by saying, “But why aren’t you worried about [insert actual hazard]?” I’m the only person I know who will, for sure, not only know all about the hazards of [x], but worry about it all the time.
Non-stick bathtub appliqués? That’s just common sense.
The shower is fine, it’s the bathtub that’ll kill you. But you’re usually okay if you’re in my age bracket.
No one ever wins an argument with me by saying, “But why aren’t you worried about [insert actual hazard]?” I’m the only person I know who will, for sure, not only know all about the hazards of [x], but worry about it all the time.
Non-slip bathtub appliqués? That’s just common sense.
If John Glenn had used them, he might have become President.
Seawriter
I’m pretty sure anyone who comes to a football conversation armed with words like appliqués cannot be convinced football is good.
My point wasn’t about whether cars are dangerous or not dangerous. Of course they are dangerous instruments and that’s what I tell my son every chance I get.
My point was that, even with seat belts etc, these holiday statistics do not look good. My point was that I don’t see people, who preen about as if football is immoral, also preening about how immoral it is to drive private cars during the holidays and then agitating to eliminate private driving during the holidays.
This football “issue” (or in my view, hoohaa) seems to me mainly one about people–those prone to assert own moral superiority, who use morality to couch what’s ultimately differences in preferences. There is a spectrum of such folks; the liberals dominate the spectrum and are insufferable; of course I don’t put you among them; you reason.
I’m with you, Casey. Are those like those sand paper fish that are stuck to the bottom of the tub?