NFL
Watching football has become especially difficult for me this season. That should be understandable, this has been a year of controversies. We’ve had the protests, the shitty fan reaction to the protests, the awful owner statements, Trump calling the players sons of bitches, Cam making a sexist comment during a presser, the Ezekial Elliot suspension/non-suspension/re-suspension, and the shadow of Kaepernick looming over every TJ Yates or Nathan Peterman snap. I could go on.
I seriously could go on: because that’s just 2017. The past 15 years have seen cheating scandals, bullying scandals, racism in locker rooms, countless domestic violence allegations and charges, homicide investigations, suicides, the discovery of CTE. A never ending river of bullshit.
But now we’re onto the final stretch of this season and much of that baggage has seemed to lighten in our collective minds, so on 12/4 I was excited to watch a good competitive game of rivals in the Steelers and Bengals. What i got was this.
Ryan Shazier has since had spinal surgery and was even seen the stands of a Pats v Steelers game, but unfortunately for Shazier, that hit will most certainly be his most memorable contribution to this season.
The conversation about football has changed in the past couple of years. The early retirement of a number of promising young players (d’brickashaw ferguson, and chris borland most notably), the (admittedly pretty bad) movie Concussion, and Junior Seau’s suicide are just a few issues that have driven football conversations for the past couple of years. In fact, I have probably spent more time discussing the horrible effects of the sport than the game itself.
If you have spent an entire sunday watching football and not considered the moral dilemma that the sport entails, then you may not actually be watching the games. Playsmartplaysafe.com, an initiative created by the NFL to “drive progress in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of head injuries, enhance medical protocols and further improve the way the game is taught and played,” documented 244 reported instances of concussions in the 2016 preseason and regular season combined. So at 21 total weeks of football a year, that’s a little over 11 concussions per week (again, this assumes that the reported number is accurate). Now knowing the impact those concussions can have on the quality of life of the players as they age, we’re faced with the fact that on any given week we are probably going to witness an injury that will ruin a human being’s brain forever.
Notable writers and prominent academics Malcolm Gladwell and Chuck Klostermann both have expressed doubt in the stability of football’s future. And while i used to think of Gladwell’s perspective as naive, the thought of how a parent could watch that hit and still be excited for their son to play Linebacker in high school is becoming more difficult to imagine.
Savvy sports fans have been questioning what it would take to knock football off it’s perch as america’s most popular thing. But i think there might be a paradox in examining football’s popularity. In short the most popular thing about football is its popularity. I know that sounds stupid, but i think about it like this: I watch and love basketball because i love how the athleticism manifests itself in expressive and even artful forms of teamwork. I watch and love football because almost everyone i know watches football.
I spent a number of months working in Baltimore as a PA on a TV set. The crew was filled with people who I had little to nothing in common with. We didn’t talk about work, or politics, or art, we talked football. Not sports, mind you, football.
And this makes sense. The design of the game allows for various types of athleticism to be showcased. Precision hand eye coordination, explosive speed, immovable girth and strength, and any combination of the 3. Combine this with high-impact violence, and you’ve made something supremely watchable.
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I’m not sure if i think there is a more effective and universal cultural bridge between people in this country than football. This phenomenon is represented in your workplace’s fantasy football league. I’m willing to bet the only fun conversations you’ve had with those weirdos in the IT department are based on that league.
I’m not sure how much a coastal millennials should have in touch with football anymore. This thing is a relic of an America that none of us want. An America where anonymous white men control the physical safety and financial livelihood of poorer, often blacker, men. An America that justifies its greatness purely through its ability to physically brutalize its opponent. Where your race is still used as a qualification for the sport’s highest leadership positions. Where women are almost completely absent except for on the sidelines talking about the actions of men, or dancing for a (literally) criminal amount of money.
It’s ironic that Trump publicly criticized the NFL this season, because the “America” that his slogan envisions is certainly the one embodied in our most popular sport.
But I’m not even here to question the infrastructure of the sport, i mean, it’s essentially the same political/economic infrastructure this entire country is still built on. And while i’m as passionate about changing that as any other coastal snowflake, I’m just here to talk about the game.
So back to the question: “how do we fix football?” What kind of rules can we add? What new (or old) types of helmets can we use? Is it better to aim low or high? Should we practice more? Should we shorten the season? Should refs throw more flags? Less flags? How do we get to the perfect version of football? I think I’ve found my answer to this question, and I think I’ve actually known it for a long time. The sad truth is that this is probably the most perfect version of football that we will ever have. I’m afraid that the platonic ideal of football doesn’t prevent injuries or brain trauma, it encourages them.
During the the 12/4 edition of Monday Night Football, over 10 million people were watching across the country. We didn’t just watch Ryan Shazier’s whole body go limp, we saw Vince Williams break down on the sideline, having to watch a friend and teammate potentially lose mobility in his body. Then, after all was said and done, we also watched the most violent game of the year.
Later that week Steelers safety Mike Mitchell publicly defended football. “I changed my family legacy by this beautiful game of football forever. So let’s not try to turn this into some evil, dirty game. This is a combat, contact sport, there’s gonna be injuries. That’s just what it is. But if you don’t want to get injured, don’t come out here. This is for real men. This is a man’s game.”
I was dismayed by Mike Mitchell’s comments. Not because he’s at all misguided, he’s mainly right. There is a human cost to this game, and there always has been. I can’t tell you how many hard hits and amazing plays i saw from Junior Seau as a kid. He is among my all-time favorite players. Yet, only now do i realize that every great memory he provided me was not worth this one bad one.
“There’s gonna be injuries” has always been true, but what’s also true is that it’s always been unacceptable.
So I’m going to try and stop watching football. This is easier said than done. Football is so obviously our most powerful national touchstone, that i struggle to even think of what the runner up might be. But I can’t continue to feel this complicity every time i see one of these men go down. I can’t stand to listen to another commentator ask “will he be the same?” as a player is carted off the field. This isn’t normal. It isn’t good.
…Thank God I still have the Warriors.
