Is there an activity that Americans give more of their attention to and know less about than professional football? The essence of N.F.L. life is the intense weeklong process of preparation for Sunday, which takes place at the thirty-two N.F.L. team “facilities.” The New York Jets allowed me to spend more than a year with them at their team facility in Florham Park, New Jersey, while I wrote a book, but that was unusual. Most visitors to N.F.L. facilities receive only supervised tours on the order of state visits to Pyongyang. In an era of exposure, the national passion operates in almost total seclusion, apart from the televised games. Perhaps the distance gives it an allure that increases the pleasure. Or, possibly, those who watch wouldn’t like what they’d see if they got too close.
They have reason to worry. For all its present popularity, trouble has been lurking for football. Recent glimpses into the insular culture of the game have revealed bounties promised in New Orleans for injuring opponents, a tight end charged with murder in New England (he’s pleaded not guilty), and particularly abusive hazing in Miami. Most significant, a growing body of scientific evidence and investigative journalism, such as the recent PBS documentary “League of Denial,” and the book of the same title, has found that players are at risk for chronic traumatic encephalopathy—the degenerative brain disease previously more associated with boxers. For decades, the N.F.L. seemed indifferent to the consequences of head injuries, and may even have concealed evidence of the dire long-term cognitive costs of concussions while disseminating more anodyne information to players and their families. This has led to a perception that professional football is the Big Tobacco of sports, a profit-obsessed corporate entity with a callous lack of concern for the human beings who take the big hits.
As a result, many fans are torn. They love football, in part because of the human car wrecks, but they are repelled by the thought of enjoying a blood sport that brutalizes the minds and bodies of players. It used to be easy to say that the players knew what they were getting themselves into. Now that this has proven untrue, at least for the veterans, it’s more challenging for Americans to take uncomplicated pleasure in watching young men, many of whom grew up in poverty, play a sport they’re not sure they want their own sons to pursue. It has been the American way to tolerate our moral misgivings about the public institutions that define us, from Southern segregation to drunk driving. Then, sometimes abruptly, the queasy reservations veer into disgust and rejection. What can the N.F.L. do, going forward, to make fans feel better about the sport?
They have reason to worry. For all its present popularity, trouble has been lurking for football. Recent glimpses into the insular culture of the game have revealed bounties promised in New Orleans for injuring opponents, a tight end charged with murder in New England (he’s pleaded not guilty), and particularly abusive hazing in Miami. Most significant, a growing body of scientific evidence and investigative journalism, such as the recent PBS documentary “League of Denial,” and the book of the same title, has found that players are at risk for chronic traumatic encephalopathy—the degenerative brain disease previously more associated with boxers. For decades, the N.F.L. seemed indifferent to the consequences of head injuries, and may even have concealed evidence of the dire long-term cognitive costs of concussions while disseminating more anodyne information to players and their families. This has led to a perception that professional football is the Big Tobacco of sports, a profit-obsessed corporate entity with a callous lack of concern for the human beings who take the big hits.
As a result, many fans are torn. They love football, in part because of the human car wrecks, but they are repelled by the thought of enjoying a blood sport that brutalizes the minds and bodies of players. It used to be easy to say that the players knew what they were getting themselves into. Now that this has proven untrue, at least for the veterans, it’s more challenging for Americans to take uncomplicated pleasure in watching young men, many of whom grew up in poverty, play a sport they’re not sure they want their own sons to pursue. It has been the American way to tolerate our moral misgivings about the public institutions that define us, from Southern segregation to drunk driving. Then, sometimes abruptly, the queasy reservations veer into disgust and rejection. What can the N.F.L. do, going forward, to make fans feel better about the sport?
by Nicholas Dawidoff, New Yorker | Read more:
Image: Mike Ehrmann/Getty