I used to love football. Jim Brown, Gale Sayers, OJ Simpson, Joe Montana, Jerry Rice… loved them all.
But then OJ slaughtered his ex-wife and her new lover…what?
I turned more and more to golf, which I played, and which had an amazing moral code of sportsmanship where players called penalties on themselves, for example.
And then I saw the documentary “League of Denial”, and later the movie “Concussion” and all I could see when looking at football was endless brain damage - CTE - Chronic Traumatic Encephalitis - brain death, personality change, high agitation, early and torturous death. I can’t watch.
But this post is about something more toxic about football than the damage to the brains of the players. It is about how the domineering win at all costs ethos of football has poisoned America’s vision of what it is to be a man.
First, to be a man is to be BIG. The average weight of men has skyrocketed since TV football took over the sports world in the ‘60s.
Also, to be a man was to be scary, intimidating, domineering. Pound and punish and push and humiliate your “opponent” (enemy).
And, to be a man was to do anything to win, win, win, win, win…just look at the two most famous football quotes -
“ Winning isn’t everything; it's the only thing”. Vince Lombardi. Green BayPackers - actually first said by Red Sanders. UCLA 1950. “
“Just win, baby”. Al Davis. Oakland Raiders.
I think these are toxic messages to American boys and men. It substitutes domination for legitimate masculine virtue. It is counterfeit masculinity - just be scary.
And we have a large part of one of our political parties where the men are big and fat and wear camouflage outfits and carry pistols and assault weapons and drive huge pickup trucks with giant American and confederate flags from them and do their best to be threatening.
And, let’s not forget that they elected a mentally disturbed wanna be dictator/king who never never never never admits that he made a mistake or that he lost. And is calling for violence now to stay out of prison.
I choose a much better, and more deeply spiritual version of sport and of manhood. The great sportswriter Grantland Rice wrote in a time that honored sportsmanship:
For when the One Great Scorer comes
To mark against your name,
He writes - not that you won or lost -
But HOW you played the Game.
"Alumnus Football”
―
To mark against your name,
He writes - not that you won or lost -
But HOW you played the Game.
"Alumnus Football”
―
