I played football in high school, starting for our two-time conference championship team, and while I earned my share of recognition as a cornerback and wide receiver, with a strapping 5’7” frame, I didn’t fare very well in actual collisions. Indeed, I got knocked out a few times.
Now, if memory serves me correctly – admittedly a dubious concept for someone coming out of a concussion – I begged the coach to let me go back in. My coach was tough as nails, but he was a smart guy and said, “We aren’t playing around with the head.”
All this came to mind in watching the controversy over NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s tightening up of the prohibitions of helmet-to-helmet contact. Concussions have been rising in football for quite awhile as the players get bigger and faster and the collisions more brutal.
One might think the players would welcome the greater protection, but the more vocal ones seemed to pooh-pooh Goodell’s actions. But then, what else are the players going to do? Scream praises for Goodell because they are scared of getting hurt?
That’s not what a football player does whether in high school or in the NFL. What fan is going to cheer for a scaredy-cat? And fan enthusiasm drives the entertainment juggernaut of professional football. Moreover, the philosophical question of treading the fine line between entertainment and violence and other extremes is one that may be about football this time, but comes up frequently in the entertainment world.
Fans love violence. We love to see a cataclysmic hit. We love to see a good fight. One of the reasons cited for the rise in football’s popularity is its sheer, legal, mayhem. Baseball – my favorite sport growing up – is pretty dull on such counts and even baseball’s brawls seem kind of dopey. Hockey? Now there’s some real blood. Boxing? Actually, not bloody enough, so let’s bring in Mixed Martial Arts.
And just so we don’t think this is just about the pros, take a look at YouTube or other social networking sites and you’ll see an amazing abundance of not just hockey fights and football hits, but backyard brawls, apartment wrestling, and much more besides.
This puts Goodell in a tough spot. His product is violent. Penalize the violence and it seems hypocritical and it may run off the fan base. Let it go, and you’re going to have brain injuries; maybe even death. Goodell is not alone; college football too has to face this. But possible charges of hypocrisy aside, he’s done the right thing.
He’s trying to find what the Greeks might call an Aristotelian mean or what Buddhist might call a Middle Way (though it’s a bit daffy to think of Aristotle and Buddha as big-time football fans). More simply, he’s trying to find a moderate balance to what the game is about and protecting the athletes.
And that’s where fans could play a role but no one with an entertainment product really wants to touch. Ask fans to have responsibility? Potentially alienate your market? Come off like a moral tut-tutter hectoring the customers who pay your bills? What sane entertainment executive would touch such a third rail? But it is a role that we couch potato fans could play to reduce concussions in football now and perhaps it is something they might do in other entertainment industries as well.
Moderation doesn’t grab the television cameras very much. But as we munch our chips and drink our beer in front of the boob tube, we might want to cultivate an appreciation for the game apart from the life-threatening and body-maiming stuff. Strategies, play sequences, misdirection, and just the sheer resiliency, passion and effort of players and coaches have their own entertainment value. Indeed, it seems to me that fans that do look for these things enjoy the game more.
I’m as big a football fan as anyone. When I started first grade, my parents told my teacher that they didn’t think I could recite the ABCs, but I could tell her the starting line-up, jersey numbers, and college alma maters of the Chicago Bears, then coming off their 1963 NFL Championship. Even at 6 years old, I diagrammed plays for the high school coach, who said the plays would actually work in a game. (Of course, my father was the president of the School Board, so what else is the poor guy going to say?)
My aunt became a professor at the University of Texas in the 1960s and added more fuel to my football fandom and later, I earned two degrees from Notre Dame in the 1980s and taught for eleven years at Michigan. Voilà! The three winningest major college football programs in history (OK, yes with acknowledgment of the historical prowess of Yale), which made for a lot of football watching.
I’ve seen fans make a difference in an actual game a zillion times through their passionate cheering. To protect the players who entertain us and the game we enjoy, fans could help a lot by supporting Goodell now. It might set a nice precedent for fans of other events as well.