Football

I have liked football for a long time now but there has to be something wrong with a game that is being constantly interrupted so that injured players may be hauled off the field. It is too big a subject to be ignored and the manner in which the television commentators talk about the injuries is almost as alarming as the injuries themselves.  Players are invariably praised for "playing with pain," their "toughness" an aspect of their value.  I have no credentials in this field, but neither do the commentators, and I think that pain is a useful symptom, a sign of something out of order, and that it must usually be bad practice to continue to play a game like football when your body is not sound. 

Sometimes the injured player is helped off the field by someone of normal proportions, thereby impressing upon the viewer the preternatural bulk of many of these athletes.  It cannot be healthy to be that big.

And now comes Malcolm Gladwell, investigator of diverse phenomena, to explain that all the limping and all the golf cart rides are, compared to the effects of innumerable subconcussive blows to the head, just temporary inconveniences.  His article is here.  A recent segment on the News Hour provides visual evidence, in the person of former NFL great John Mackey, of effects described in words by Gladwell.  Dog fighting, Gladwell points out, is regarded with aversion despite the many parallels between the dogs and the athletes in "America's game," including most especially the desperate, pitiful attempt to please on the part of both dogs and linemen.

I should be boycotting but I could not help tuning in last night when Notre Dame played Stanford.  Why is a team as mediocre as Notre Dame on national tv almost every weekend?  The obvious answer, that the nation's Catholics love to watch and cheer for the Irish, is for me and I am sure many others a sufficient reason always to pull for the other team--which is itself another reason to televise Notre Dame games.  Anyway, last night I was disappointed when the purity of my rooting interest was vitiated by the sight of Condoleezza Rice in the press box, presumably cheering for the same team as I.  Stanford had the ball last and won, 45 to 38. 

My resolution is not even to notice how often Notre Dame, now 6-6 for this season, is on national tv next year.  It makes no sense to care who wins football games and, by watching, you likely contribute in some infinitesimal way to the breaking of bodies and brains.