Should consenting adults be allowed to play football?
Prior to a debate on the subject at New York University earlier
this month, 53 percent of the audience opposed a ban on college
football (and just 16 percent supported). Following the debate, 53
percent of the audience supported a ban.
That dramatic opinion shift comes in the wake of several
decleaters to the game’s reputation.
In March, the NFL came down hard on the New Orleans Saints,
whose bounty program offered financial incentives to defenders for
injuring opposing players. More than 1,500 players have joined
lawsuits against the league for not informing them of the dangers
of the game. The suicide of Junior Seau, whose extremely long and
violent NFL career unleashed not unreasonable speculation that so
many jarring hits may have unmoored the beloved linebacker’s mental
circuits, has hurt the league worse in every way imaginable than
the Saints or the suits.
“American football is dying,” John Kass writes in the
Chicago Tribune. “It’s about time.” He thinks parents will
forbid their children from playing, thus starving the NFL of fans
and participants. For parents who shuttle their kids to Pop Warner
practices, he advises: “So why not make it simple and just give the
kids packs of cigarettes instead?”
There’s strong evidence, not speculation, that cigarettes cause
cancer. There’s no evidence, just speculation, that football caused
Junior Seau to kill himself. Writers making connections between the
self-administered demises of two retired stars (Seau and Dave
Duerson) and the gridiron might as well ponder the pitfalls of
their own profession. Do the unhappy endings of Ernest Hemingway,
Hunter Thompson, and Arthur Koestler demonstrate a link between
scribbling and suicide?
Journalists have parlayed a few tragic anecdotes among tens of
thousands of retired professional athletes into a national
anti-football frenzy — in a football-crazed country, no less. But
statistics, experience, and observation strongly suggests that the
people playing football are healthier than those watching it — and
even those refusing to watch.
A government study commissioned by the NFL Players Association
found that athletes in the league lived longer than their male
counterparts in American society. The study looked at 3,439 men who
played for five years or longer in the league between 1959 and 1993
and discovered 334 deaths. Had the results mirrored statistical
norms among American men, the researchers would have found 625
deaths. It turns out that professional football players have lower
rates of cancer and heart disease.
Who would have guessed that there are health benefits to all
that running, jumping, pushing, and pulling?
The number of football deaths at all levels has fallen
dramatically over the last half century. Present hysteria aside,
rule changes and advances in equipment have made it a safer game.
During the second half of the 1960s, brain-injury deaths averaged
more than 20 per year for football players. That figure is now less
than five per year in a sport played by millions.
Perhaps four deaths annually, and an uncountable number of
concussions, is an unacceptable price for what amounts to an
amusement. Former American Spectator writer Malcolm
Gladwell said as much in that NYU debate by wondering aloud about
the ethics of watching a game in which contestants risk
life and limb. But every year about 40 Americans die skiing, about
800 die bicycling, and about 3,500 die swimming.
Are those dangerous activities permissible because they haven’t
captured voyeurs the way the NFL has?
Like football, there are benefits to skiing, cycling, and
swimming. There aren’t figures on how many lives those activities
extend and enhance. But sensible people know that skiing, cycling,
and swimming are on the whole good for you.
So is football.
When I played in high school, I spent five to six days a week
working out in the weight room and sprinting on the track in
anticipation of the season. I strangely ran with weighed-down tires
roped to my waist, broad-jumped my way up stadium bleachers, and
imbibed powder-based concoctions that the vitamin store insisted
were healthy but that my palate insisted were not. All that trouble
resulted in a touchdown reception, a fumble recovery, and a few
special teams tackles. I spent most of my senior year on the
sidelines rather than on the field.
Football never bruised my brain. It bruised my ego.
One senses an ego bruise may be responsible for the
football-phobic jumping on the pile. Eggheads resenting all the
attention jocks received way back when now relish bestowing the
wrong kind of attention upon them. Thus, a cultural tic masquerades
as a public-health crusade.
It’s a shame that the smart-set isn’t smart enough to grasp the
benefits of contact sports.
One rarely sees neighborhood kids in pickup football games
anymore. They’re too busy playing video games, text messaging, and
friending strangers on Facebook. The unhealthy aversion to football
(and other sports not named “soccer”) has little to do with head
injuries and much to do with an indoor society that’s lost its
head. Surely strenuous outdoor activity is a fine remedy for what
ails climate-controlled, obese, antiseptic adolescence.
Playing football is good for you. Being a wuss isn’t.
