NFL Football is Too Brutal

It is said that football is now the American national pastime. Be that as it may, what does that say about us as Americans, especially in light of yesterday's federal court ruling which gave preliminary approval to compensation for former football players who now live with serious injuries and debilitating conditions?

There are somewhere in the area of 4,500, four thousand five hundred, an outstanding number when you consider how relatively few men have played professional football, former NFL football players suing the National Football League for failure to address the physical and psychological damage the game has done to them. Many former football players have publicly stated that they will not encourage their sons to play football. Why? Because it is too brutal.

Too brutal. Yet we as a nation encourage this activity.

What does this say about us as that nation? It is not something we care to dwell upon. Should we dwell upon it, it might cause us to ask questions which we do not want to answer, let alone ask. Such questions which may cause us to ponder whether we ought to feel as we feel on autumn Saturday and Sunday afternoons in the fall in the good old U. S. of A.

We don't ask, because it will harsh our buzz. We just want to be entertained. If that means watching grown men possibly scarring themselves for life, even when freely choosing to do so, it's okay. We need that, it seems.

Do we also need former players so messed up that they will not watch the game, a la Mike Webster? He's the center from the famous Steel Curtain teams of the 1970s who lived a post football life of trauma and instability. Do we care about that? After all, he chose to go down that road. Is that our problem?

Yes, quite frankly, it is. When we as a society encourage young men to behave that way, it is our problem. Their lives are on us. Lives like these: http://www.gq.com/sports/profiles/200909/nfl-players-brain-dementia-study-memory-concussions?currentPage=2

We can regret them, of course. Yet we can do more. We can question whether we ought continue to support a mentality which says this okay. We can question whether our values need to be prioritized better. We can do that.

But we won't. We're Americans, after all. We don't need to question our motives. We're the best.

What is left, then, is the penultimate question: who will explain that to Mike Webster?

The Football Mentality Speaks Ill of America

Baltimore Ravens middle linebacker Ray Lewis is being fawned over by football fans, as his presence in tomorrow's Super Bowl (insert your favorite Roman Numeral here) marks the end of his career. But does he deserve the accolades?

We have before us a man who found himself in the middle of a murder investigation in 2000 but was allowed a plea bargain in order for testimony against others. He is a self proclaimed Christian who lives with a partner, and has fathered six children with four different women. Now he stands accused of using steroids in order to return more quickly from an injury.

And we are supposed to look up to him.

This is not to single out Ray Lewis. But it is to illustrate that there exists, among football players perhaps more than any other sport, the idea that winning is everything, the individual is a demigod if he produces on the field, and that the football mentality is to be seen separate from personal morals and sportsmanship.

Can we separate who we are on the field from who we are in daily life? Can we with any real legitimacy excuse actions on the field, or actions designed to stay on the field, without a consideration of what those actions say about us or our gamesmanship? Al Kaline and Alan Trammell seem the same guys on and of the diamond, and are praised for it. Ty Cobb is similarly condemned. Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens are now shunned in the baseball world for actions which call into question their integrity, both personal and athletic. Whither football?

Do we, at the altar of football, sacrifice our integrity for the sake of a mere game? Because this isn't all about Ray Lewis. It's about his coach defending a hit so brutal that it was fined by the league as, basically, 'that's football'. It's about the New Orleans Saints, ironically, given the team name, putting out bounties on opposing players. It's about a game, and nothing more than a game, where fathers who played it won't encourage their sons to follow in their footsteps due to the sheer barbarity involved. It's about a sport where thousands of former players are going through traumatic experiences due to its effect on them. True, they weren't forced to play. Yet they were surely encouraged by a mentality which preyed upon them, and told them to do whatever they had to to be stronger, faster, and more savage.

This is what football brings to the table. Play the game, do what you must to yourself to win, and all other offenses will be forgiven. Because you are a football player. What applies to the general public does not apply to you. Sportsmanship? We'll slap you on the wrist with a little fine if you hurt someone, because we really want you to do that. We want you to hurt someone. All the charity work in the world will not and cannot excuse the Colosseum mentality which pervades the NFL. Win there, and you're a hero. The fallout is irrelevant.

That's football, Americans. It's high time we began to question its legitimacy.