This week\u2019s \u201cfrom the library\u201d book: \u00a0Against Football: \u00a0One Fan\u2019s Reluctant Manifesto<\/em> by Steve Almond. \u00a0I was originally going to pair this with Why Football Matters<\/em>, by Mark Edmundson, but I got tired of the latter book; at any rate, I thought this would be a full-throated defense of football but it seems to be more ambivalent.<\/p>\n Here are Almond\u2019s criticisms of football:<\/p>\n 1) Football causes brain injury to those who play the game with the rigor demanded at the professional, college, and potentially high school level. \u00a0This isn\u2019t just a matter of concussions, but blows to the head that fall short of concussion cause injury, too. \u00a0What\u2019s more, the culture of football \u2014 \u201cbe a man\u201d and don\u2019t complain \u2014 as well as the continued increase in the size of the players, exacerbate the problem.<\/p>\n 2) Football celebrates violence. \u00a0The success of a football player is measured in terms of how successfully\/violently he is able to tackle his opponent, and spectators become indifferent to the injuries (opposing) players suffer.<\/p>\n 3) Football compels cities and states to spend ridiculous quantities of money on ever-newer, ever-larger stadiums, for which the teams pay a \u201crent\u201d that doesn\u2019t come anywhere close to resembling an appropriate sum, all due to the threat to move the team out-of-state, the threat of which succeeds due to the NFL\u2019s anti-trust exemption.<\/p>\n 4) Football players do bad things.<\/p>\n Items number 3 and 4 are not unique to football. \u00a0Cities spend wildly inappropriate sums of money on ever-newer, ever-larger baseball and basketball and hockey stadiums. \u00a0And pro and college athletes of all kinds behave badly.<\/p>\n With respect to #2, I don\u2019t know. \u00a0I suppose I\u2019d have to ask you, readers, what your experience is, because in my football viewing (with my husband \u2014 who, I\u2019ll remind you, does not come from a football culture, and only learned to watch the game in grad school \u2014 or with \u201ccivilized\u201d adults) tackles are simply a function of the \u201cstop the opponent from moving the ball\u201d component of the game, not an end to itself. \u00a0Football seems, in that sense, to be different than hockey, where fights erupt with regularity, and fans cheer the players on, and penalties are so built into the nature of the game that the \u201cpower play\u201d is a basic part of gameplay. \u00a0But maybe in a different crowd, players are admired for brutality.<\/p>\n But item #1: \u00a0that\u2019s the biggest issue.<\/p>\n Yes, there are many occupations which come with risk:\u00a0working on an oil platform in the Gulf is risky, but the workers are well-compensated for their trouble. \u00a0There are plenty of occupations in which the body is worn out prematurely \u2014 even low-paying jobs like migrant farmworkers. \u00a0But the nature of the injuries that football players face \u2014 memory loss\/dementia, suicide, and other issues that get at how one functions mentally, as well as devastating sudden on-field injuries \u2014 are of a different dimension entirely than the bum knee. \u00a0These injuries have not been tracked adequately to really understand how pervasive a problem this is, especially because these injuries tend to be invisible until it\u2019s too late, and the NFL has done their best to minimize the issue.<\/p>\n Should prospective pro players, or college players, simply be informed more thoroughly of the risks before setting foot on the field? \u00a0Would it make a difference? \u00a0Would these men be able to adequately consider the risks, or would the rewards, or potential rewards of a highly-paid football career, be enough for them to ignore the risks \u2014 and, even if they should choose to do so, is it right for this choice to exist?<\/p>\n Which gets to the question of my title: \u00a0knowing that football harms its players, is it moral for the rest of us to spectate, and participate in various ways in the Football Industry?<\/p>\n Now, as a disclaimer, I have only a moderate interest in football in the first place. \u00a0If the Spartans are playing U of M or some particularly important season-end game, I\u2019ll watch, but not if it takes too much special effort \u2014 though at the same time I think there\u2019s a further set of reasons why college football as it now exists is a terrible thing. \u00a0But I do think that, of the major spectator sports, football is more interesting than the others because of the narrative component and the variety of actions \u2014 passing vs. rushing \u2014 compared to the back and forth, back and forth, goal-out-of-nowhere of soccer or the endless baskets of basketball. \u00a0 I\u2019m also partial to hockey, out of the visual interest of men in skates.<\/p>\n I also know that there are boys for whom the game of football, insofar as it gives them a goal to work towards as a team, leads to self-improvement. \u00a0And, of course, as a general rule, one shouldn\u2019t throw the baby out with the bathwater, for instance, if changes in rules can increase player safety.<\/p>\n So: \u00a0what do you think?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This week\u2019s \u201cfrom the library\u201d book: \u00a0Against Football: \u00a0One Fan\u2019s Reluctant Manifesto by Steve Almond. \u00a0I was originally going to pair this with Why Football Matters, by Mark Edmundson, but I got tired of the latter book; at any rate, I thought this would be a full-throated defense of football but it seems to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n